The White House is not putting pressure on the Pentagon to hasten its scrapping of a policy that discriminates against transgender Americans who wish to serve in the military.
During a press briefing with reporters on Monday, administration spokesperson Josh Earnest said the president believes the Department of Defense is proceeding forward on lifting the ban against transgender service “as conscientiously as they should.”
He added that the president had no plans to bring up the issue with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter during a planned meeting between the two later in the afternoon.
The Obama administration has in recent weeks taken aggressive action to protect transgender Americans from state and local discrimination efforts. Last week, it sued the state of North Carolina over its so-called “bathroom bill,” and issued a directive to schools across the country informing them they could lose federal funding for discriminating against transgender students.
The White House has not, however, moved with as much gusto to protect US soldiers who don’t identify with the sex given to them at birth.
According to a RAND Corporation estimate, there are roughly 2,450 active-duty transgender soldiers who are vulnerable to discharge under current policy.
It’s been nearly a year since Secretary Carter pledged last July to begin work on opening transgender service in the armed forces. He convened a task force to study the issue and develop a new policy. Since then, there has been little movement forward. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that “internal resistance” at the Pentagon stalled the change.
“If there was consensus on it, yeah, we would have done it,” Peter Levine said, the department’s acting personnel chief told the paper. “Obviously there are different views from different officials in the services,” he added.
During an appearance at the Air Force Academy on Colorado last week, Secretary Carter claimed that allowing transgender soldiers to serve openly “is a complicated issue.”
“I think it has a lot of ramifications that are very practical ones,” he said, while adding that he’s still committed to shelving the discriminatory policy.
Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) called for removing the ban during an appearance on C-SPAN Tuesday morning.
“The military should judge people based on performance,” he said. “We need the very best men and women to serve in those roles and some of them are going to be transgender, some of them are going to be gay, some are going to be women, some are going to be black, some are going to be white. It doesn’t matter.”
Rep. Polis added that recent moves by the military to be more inclusive toward women have removed a lot of the thornier questions surrounding transgender service.
“With the allowance of women to serve in all combat roles, it’s a little less of an issue with regard to what someone’s gender is when they’re in the military,” he said.
