Trump: No Transgenders In The Military!

[seer]

Note for anybody that missed the news on this topic:
- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's current view is that the 1964 Civil Rights Act implicitly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation on the grounds that it amounts to sex discrimination, and that sexual orientation discrimination in employment is therefore illegal.
- Lower courts in recent years have upheld such an interpretation, including a federal appeals court in April this year (it is a "common-sense reality that it is actually impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without discriminating on the basis of sex.").
- The Trump DoJ just submitted an unsolicited court brief in a case to which it isn't a party, arguing that the 1964 Civil Rights Act shouldn't be interpreted as banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.

None of this applies to the military, we didn't even have free speech rights: https://law.freeadvice.com/governmen...dom_speech.htm

[Bill the Cat]

An important observation.

Of course, asking any LGBT person would have given the same response. When LGBT people say that it's the social oppression that's harming them not their LGBT identity, they aren't just saying it for the fun of it, it's from experience.

Of course they are. No one WANTS to be abnormal. My son is a high functioning autistic with ADHD. I know the two are not completely congruent, however, there is a point to be made. You know what causes him the most distress? People avoid him because they say he is weird. He doesn't worry so much about his autism or his ADHD, which are diagnosed mental disorders, but constantly gets distressed over people making fun of him. But he understands that he ISN'T just like everyone else, and that he has certain challenges he must work through and around that are unique to his condition in order to exist in this world. But it still isn't the oppression at the root of his disorder - it's the disease itself. That trans and homosexuals deal with some public distress isn't the root of their disorder either.

[Adrift]

You won't find a single person here surprised that major health and psychiatric organizations are seeking to change what they consider aberrant. The LGBT block, and those that defend it are incredibly politically influential. Politics has the power to call up, down, and left, right. Psychiatric issues that decades ago would have been a no-brainer to diagnose are now too fuzzy to call. Distinguished doctors are denigrated and their careers ruined for not towing the line.

The excuse that co-morbid issues are related to persecution is largely bunk. We live in a world where LGBT is not only accepted, but absolutely celebrated throughout the West; Where we parade in our streets, and intentionally over-represent LGBT in our media to show pride, and to continue the normalization process. Young people, especially those entering their teenage years, who are already disoriented by biological changes, are finding themselves even further frustrated, and anxiety-ridden over sexual confusion that decades ago wouldn't have even entered their minds. Peer pressure, our national celebration, and the overt coolness factor of aberrant sexual orientation is seeing people who, again, would never have even considered anything but a normative sexual orientation, experimenting. There's this idea out there that because our culture is open to LGBT orientation, that it's allowing more people to come out of the closet, and that explains the growing number of LGBT people, and while that may be the case for many, many are also coming out because social pressures are now changing how people express their sexuality.

Personally, I don't believe that those who support LGBT initiatives are doing so malignantly. I think the vast majority of those who support LGBT causes believe they are doing a great good. Even those who are influencing the medical world to rethink sexual abnormality and mental illness. I think most people who support these causes do so ignorant of the damage they're causing. I think that if people want to vote, that they should have the right to vote their conscience. That goes for both those who support LGBT initiatives, and those who support religious moral values that are in contrast with the world's moral values. I believe that as our world grows darker and darker, and Christians are moved to the fringes of society, that our light will attract people who want something that the world cannot offer till Christ comes and sets the world right-side up.

[Bill the Cat]

If what I understand is correct, if you have been treated for ADHD with medications like Ritalin the military won't take you.

Correct. It was one question on my daughter's application.

[Bill the Cat]

I'm not saying transgenders who have been treated with hormone replacements anti depressants etc should be admitted. Indeed, quite the opposite. If a healthy fit person who is having an identity issue; who does not disclose this decides to serve, they should be allowed, if they are mentally and physically fit, especially if they have the capacity to put issues aside and focus. no person on hormones for the opposite sex should serve due to the bone and muscle wasting that occurs not to mention the risk of cancers. As far as don't ask don't tell, this shouldn't be a question. Lots of people with Aspergers serve and do extremely well in branches of the military especially mechanical and logistics. They have not been disqualified. There are people who don't disclose their history strictly so they CAN serve and do well. If every person who signed up disclosed everything they'd ever been diagnosed with by age 18 almost everyone would be disqualified.

I was talking to an Army recruiter a few months back, and he said only about 10% of all 18 year old males are qualified for service, whether it be physical or mental issues. That was one of their largest issues when it came to enlistment numbers.

[Bill the Cat]

Actually that's not true the Army and Marines won't but the AF and the Navy will.

https://www.thebalance.com/new-asthm...policy-3353970

Under the new standards, ADD/ADHD is disqualifying only if the applicant has been treated with ADD/ADHD medication within the previous year and/or they display signs of ADD/ADHD. For applicants with a previous history of ADD/ADHD who have been off medication for more than one year, and they do no demonstrate significant impulse activity or inattention during MEPS processing, the MEPS examining official may find them qualified for military service without submission of a waiver.

Records review is still required. Any history of being evaluated or treated for ADD/ADHD must be documented. As a minimum, all treatment (if any) within the previous three years must be submitted to MEPS, in advance, as part of the medical pre-screening. Full medical records are required if the applicant was ever treated for ADD or ADHD with any medication other than Ritalin, Adderall, or Dexedrine, or if there were any additional psychiatric symptoms, such as, but not limited to, depression.

MEPS may require school transcripts to demonstrate acceptable academic performance for the year without medication. If treatment for ADD/ADHD occurred throughout the school environment, but wasn’t stopped until after the applicant left school, there is still the possibility of waiver consideration.


Drug Issues with ADD/ADHD

The most common of these drugs are Ritalin and Adderall. Adderall is often over-prescribed as well as over-used by college aged men and women. In fact, the use of Adderall is reaching epidemic proportions among over-stressed high achievers as a go-to drug to perform at a higher standard in both academics and athletics. If there is documented use of Adderall in a non-prescribed basis — as in an emergency room visit — with such side effects as high blood pressure, stroke, or other aggressive disruptive behavior, you will likely be unable to obtain a waiver. Waivers are only reviewed on a doctor prescribed program for minor attention deficit issues. Any depression, bipolar disorder, or other mental health problems associated with some ADD/ADHD diagnosis tips the scale into an area of medically disqualifying issues that are not waiverable.

[Jedidiah]

Interestingly conservative lobby groups who were lobbying Trump on transgender military service, have said they didn't want a ban on transgender service and what they were actually asking for was to prevent the Pentagon from paying for any medical costs associated with transgenderism.

An estimate of Pentagon spending on transgender medical costs suggests that currently around 0.004 to 0.017% of the Pentagon's current spending on healthcare for service members goes to covering transgender-related healthcare costs.

The only legitimate medical costs related to transgenderism are psychiatric.

[Cow Poke]

The only legitimate medical costs related to transgenderism are psychiatric.

And those could be best handled outside the military.

[seer]

Then there is this:

(Reuters) - The Trump administration told a U.S. appeals court that federal law does not ban discrimination against gay employees, a sharp reversal of the position former President Barack Obama took on a key civil rights issue.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a friend of the court brief, told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Wednesday that Congress never intended Title VII, which bans sex discrimination in the workplace, to apply to gay workers.

The department also said the court owed no deference to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces Title VII and has argued since 2012 that the law bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The brief came hours after President Donald Trump said he would ban transgender people from serving in the military. That would reverse a 2016 policy adopted by Obama.

Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said the brief was consistent with rulings by 10 federal appeals courts and "reaffirms the Department’s fundamental belief that the courts cannot expand the law beyond what Congress has provided."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-justice...145307532.html

[Mountain Man]

I mean, it's not the like the Bible is completely silent about cross-dressing and effeminacy.

But still, the behaviour would likely have been considered simply homosexual since the notion of transgenderism is a relatively recent phenomenon.

[Leonhard]

I mean, it's not the like the Bible is completely silent about cross-dressing and effeminacy.

The vice of effeminacy, does not mean a man is acting 'femininely', it is rather the lack of fortitude and perseverance. Something effeminate is something soft, it yields when pressure is applied, it doesn't stand up. It can be the more classic interpretation in so far as you expect women to be weak, and not endure, and shy away from challenge; And therefore by excused for failing. You can make the argument that there's a link, and you wouldn't be alone, but personally I find it a little strained.

You're right about cross-dressing though.

[Leonhard]

But still, the behaviour would likely have been considered simply homosexual since the notion of transgenderism is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I agree, though its not hard to show that the Bible conceives of humans as being made essentially as two sexes, each one meant to be complimentary to the other in holy matrimony. So abandoning one's sex, is living contrary to one's nature.

[Adrift]

The vice of effeminacy, does not mean a man is acting 'femininely', it is rather the lack of fortitude and perseverance. Something effeminate is something soft, it yields when pressure is applied, it doesn't stand up. It can be the more classic interpretation in so far as you expect women to be weak, and not endure, and shy away from challenge; And therefore by excused for failing. You can make the argument that there's a link, and you wouldn't be alone, but personally I find it a little strained.

No, contrary to the effort of some LGBT apologists, the word "effeminacy" (malakoi) is not so far off from what we understand it to mean. As Robert Gagnon points out,

Source: The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics by Robert A. J. Gagnon

If then malakoi refers to a general critique of effeminacy in men, what kind of effeminacy would generate such a serious penalty for a Jew? In 1 Cor 6:9 malakoi are sandwiched in between adulterers (people who commit an act of immoral sexual intercourse) and arsenokoitai (people who have something to do with an immoral act of same-sex intercourse). Immoral sexual intercourse, then, would appear to be an identifying mark of the malakoi. Furthermore, the epithet "soft" itself suggests males playing the female role in sexual intercourse with other males.

These suppositions are confirmed by reference to the views of another first-century Jew, Philo. Philo twice uses the word malakia ("softness, effeminacy," alongside of the term anandria, "unmanliness") in his discussion of homosexual behavior in Spec. Laws 3.37-42 to refer to the behavior of passive homosexual partners (hoi paschontes) who cultivate feminine features. He describes men who braid their hair and who use makeup and excessive perfume in an effort to please their male lovers. He does not limit himself here to "call boys"; the effeminate partner could become the active partner's mistress or even wife. The issue of sex-for-sale or prostitution never even comes up in Philo's critique. Admittedly, Philo does refer to the fact that some of these "male-females" (androgynoi) can be seen strutting at the head of festal processions celebrating the mysteries of Demeter. Some of these "unholy ministers," Philo says, have mutilated their genitals in a desire to be permanently transformed "into women." We may presume that some of these cultic functionaries brought in temple revenue as prostitutes. Nevertheless, Philo does not restrict his description of the phenomenon of feminized passive partners to such figures. Indeed, his critique focuses not on idolatrous associations or the exchange of money but rather on the deliberate effacement of the masculine stamp by these male-females, first by allowing themselves to be penetrated as women by other men, second by taking the further step of feminizing their appearance. They are those "who, accustoming themselves to be infected with a female disease, drain away both their souls and their bodies, leaving no ember of the male gender to smolder. . . . and with devotion practicing as an art to transform the male nature into female, they do not blush." The law sentences to death this "male-female (androgynon) who counterfeits the coin of nature." These are the kinds of effeminate men that for Philo are judged "worthy" to be killed (cf. Rom 1:32: "worthy of death") by "those who obey the law" (Spec. Laws 3.38, alluding to Lev 20:13). Similarly, in his description of the men of Sodom in Abr. 135-37, Philo uses the word malakotes (softness, luxury, decadence") to denote the whole feminizing process of receptive male partners in homosexual intercourse. Their feminization began with the act of sexual intercourse, irrespective of subsequent effeminate dress and mannerisms: "men mounted males, the doers not standing in awe of the (male) nature held in common with those who had it done to them. . . . Then, little by little, by accustoming those who had been born men to put up with feminine things, they equipped them with a female disease ... not only feminizing their bodies with malakotes and daintiness but also bringing their work to completion by making their very souls more degenerate."

© Copyright Original Source

[Leonhard]

No, contrary to the effort of some LGBT apologists, the word "effeminacy" (malakoi) is not so far off from what we understand it to mean. As Robert Gagnon points out,

Thanks for the touch up Adrift, I'll return to the Church Fathers to see what they wrote on it.

I still think its a mistake to interpret it as men acting like women. Unless by that you mean that's its a virtue for women to be cowards. That this is an essential and defining characteristic of women, that these men are seen as imitating. It still appears to retain the grain that its to shy away from challenge, to be coward-like, etc... To be in the eyes of the Greek 'unmanly'. That men acting like women is also unmanly I'm not going to contest. I just don't think its the point of the word.

[Cow Poke]

No, contrary to the effort of some LGBT apologists, the word "effeminacy" (malakoi) is not so far off from what we understand it to mean. As Robert Gagnon points out,

Source: The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics by Robert A. J. Gagnon

If then malakoi refers to a general critique of effeminacy in men, what kind of effeminacy would generate such a serious penalty for a Jew? In 1 Cor 6:9 malakoi are sandwiched in between adulterers (people who commit an act of immoral sexual intercourse) and arsenokoitai (people who have something to do with an immoral act of same-sex intercourse). Immoral sexual intercourse, then, would appear to be an identifying mark of the malakoi. Furthermore, the epithet "soft" itself suggests males playing the female role in sexual intercourse with other males.

These suppositions are confirmed by reference to the views of another first-century Jew, Philo. Philo twice uses the word malakia ("softness, effeminacy," alongside of the term anandria, "unmanliness") in his discussion of homosexual behavior in Spec. Laws 3.37-42 to refer to the behavior of passive homosexual partners (hoi paschontes) who cultivate feminine features. He describes men who braid their hair and who use makeup and excessive perfume in an effort to please their male lovers. He does not limit himself here to "call boys"; the effeminate partner could become the active partner's mistress or even wife. The issue of sex-for-sale or prostitution never even comes up in Philo's critique. Admittedly, Philo does refer to the fact that some of these "male-females" (androgynoi) can be seen strutting at the head of festal processions celebrating the mysteries of Demeter. Some of these "unholy ministers," Philo says, have mutilated their genitals in a desire to be permanently transformed "into women." We may presume that some of these cultic functionaries brought in temple revenue as prostitutes. Nevertheless, Philo does not restrict his description of the phenomenon of feminized passive partners to such figures. Indeed, his critique focuses not on idolatrous associations or the exchange of money but rather on the deliberate effacement of the masculine stamp by these male-females, first by allowing themselves to be penetrated as women by other men, second by taking the further step of feminizing their appearance. They are those "who, accustoming themselves to be infected with a female disease, drain away both their souls and their bodies, leaving no ember of the male gender to smolder. . . . and with devotion practicing as an art to transform the male nature into female, they do not blush." The law sentences to death this "male-female (androgynon) who counterfeits the coin of nature." These are the kinds of effeminate men that for Philo are judged "worthy" to be killed (cf. Rom 1:32: "worthy of death") by "those who obey the law" (Spec. Laws 3.38, alluding to Lev 20:13). Similarly, in his description of the men of Sodom in Abr. 135-37, Philo uses the word malakotes (softness, luxury, decadence") to denote the whole feminizing process of receptive male partners in homosexual intercourse. Their feminization began with the act of sexual intercourse, irrespective of subsequent effeminate dress and mannerisms: "men mounted males, the doers not standing in awe of the (male) nature held in common with those who had it done to them. . . . Then, little by little, by accustoming those who had been born men to put up with feminine things, they equipped them with a female disease ... not only feminizing their bodies with malakotes and daintiness but also bringing their work to completion by making their very souls more degenerate."

© Copyright Original Source

Wow, the things one learns on Tweb.