Why Christians Should Applaud the President’s Military Transgender Policy

By Michael Brown Published on July 27, 2017

Some LGBT activists are lambasting Christian leaders for supporting the president’s policy on transgenders in the military. In their view, these leaders are celebrating an act of cruelty and discrimination, thereby contradicting the message of Jesus. Is there any truth to this charge?

Trump’s LGBT Critics

In the words of Bill Browning, writing for LGBTQ Nation, “While their supposed savior was best known for his radical inclusivity and teachings to love one another, these charlatans are celebrating discrimination in the name of their God.” (Browning was referring to Tony Perkins, Micah Clarke, and Bryan Fischer, well-known evangelical leaders.)

Other activists have protested, although without the attack on Christian leaders.

Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner tweeted, “There are 15,000 patriotic transgender Americans in the US military fighting for all of us. What happened to your promise to fight for them?” (For the record, a more accurate number is between 1,320 and 6,630 transgenders out of a total of roughly 1,300,000 million in active service.)

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, was stronger still. He wrote, “This heinous and disgusting action endangers the lives of American service members, undermines military readiness and makes our country less safe. It is also the latest effort by Trump and Mike Pence to undo our progress and drag LGBTQ people back into the closet by using our lives as political pawns.”

According to Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, “Today further exposed President Trump’s overall goal to erase LGBTQ Americans from this nation. Trump has never been a friend to LGBTQ Americans, and this action couldn’t make that any more clear.”

And Michelangelo Signorile called the ban a “brutal, authoritarian act against an embattled minority.”

What Trump’s Decision Does

How, then, could Christian leaders support, let alone applaud, the decision? The answer is simple: It’s practical, wise, and godly.

I understand that trans-identified persons will take the policy as a slap in the face, for which I’m sorry. They will also feel rejected by people like me who applaud the president’s actions. I regret that as well.

As for trans-identified Americans who have served in our military, I commend them for their service. I’m sure that many of them are courageous.

But the military is not concerned with whether its decisions hurt people’s feelings or offend them. The only question is: What will make us into the best military possible? It’s not hard to figure out why including people who identify as transgender, as a rule, does not fit well into that equation.

Here are just a few reasons why the president did the right thing.

Why This is a Good Thing

1) The military isn’t a lab for social experiments. Accommodating openly transgender people in the military is a massive social experiment. It means women sharing showers and bunks with biological males who identify as female. It means men living together with females who identify as men but still get their periods. It means everyone having to accommodate people at all stages of “transition.” Why impose this on the military?

2) The military cannot waste money on “transitions” for those who identify as transgender. This includes paying for sex-change surgery, hair removal, and daily hormone supplements. It could even mean reverse surgery for those who have regrets. Why in the world should the military be responsible for this?

Walt Heyer is a former MTF (male to female) transgender underwent sex-change surgery (as it was called). He has devoted years to researching the relevant issues. He points out that the military is struggling to provide good health care for its veterans. Why add to this a burden of several billion dollars to meet to fulfill the desires of transgender servicemen? And what about the higher percentage of mental and emotional disorders experienced by trans-identified individuals?

3) The military has requirements for men and for women. This becomes clouded and complex when men can (pretend to) become women and vice versa. For example, must a FTM (female to male) person perform at the same level as other men, including strength and endurance tests? And what if hormone treatments are not at hand during combat? Will this affect the person’s service? Once again, these new issues should not be imposed on the military.

But President Trump’s decision is not just right. It’s godly too.

The Rights of the 99 Percent

It’s not right or fair for the military to impose the struggles of less than 1 percent of those serving on everyone else. What about the privacy rights of the 99 percent? What about their needs? And with sexual abuse rampant among our troops, why would we want to put women at further risk by having biological males rooming with them?

Recently, a MTF prisoner was transferred out of the female prison where he was doing time since he was allegedly having sex with the women. He still had his male plumbing and was still attracted to women, despite identifying as a woman. Do we want this in the military too?

The aggressive LGBT agenda in the military has also trampled religious liberties underfoot, as revealed by headlines like these: “Soldiers Plead for Release from ‘Transgender Training’” and “Pentagon’s Transgender Policy Steamrolls Religious Liberty.” Why does our military want to scorn the deeply held beliefs and convictions of hundreds of thousands of its best men and women?

Religious liberties are basic to the well-being of our nation. That includes our military. Pushing back against the LGBT assault on those liberties is right and good and godly.

Jesus Transforms With New Life, Not Surgery

What about the claim that Jesus “was best known for his radical inclusivity and teachings to love one another”? Actually, He was best known for transforming all those who followed Him. He did not merely forgive the woman caught in adultery. He told her to “go and sin no more.”

He also defined marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4-6). He taught that all sexual sin outside of marriage was defiling (Matthew 15:19-20). And he reaffirmed the sexual ethics of the Torah, which included the prohibition of homosexual practice (Matthew 5:17-20; Leviticus 18:22).

As followers of Jesus, then, we reach out to the hurting, offering them new life in Him. But we don’t throw out logic, common sense, or the concern for the well-being of everyone else. Nor do we ask the military to risk the lives of others to affirm the feelings of people suffering from gender dysphoria.

So yes, I applaud the president’s decision, and yes, I do so as a follower of Jesus.

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