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The Story: A federal court judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s promised ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. And the court’s rationale has disturbing implications that will affect us all.

The Background: The judge issued the temporary injunction because, she claims, the plaintiffs in the case are likely to succeed in establishing that “exclusion of transgender individuals from the military is unconstitutional.”

The injunction restores the status quo that was set at the end of the Obama presidency. In June 2016, Ash Carter, the secretary of defense under President Obama, repealed the ban on allowing transgender men and women to serve openly in the military. At the time, Secretary Carter gave the services one year to implement any necessary changes.

In June 2017 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis modified the policy by putting a six-month hold on allowing additional transgender people from enlisting in the service. On July 26, President Trump issued a statement via Twitter announcing, “The United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” A formal presidential memorandum followed on August 25 that required the military to authorize, by no later than March 23, 2018, the discharge of transgender service members.

Several transgender people, including both current service members and also those wishing to join, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in an attempt to block the ban. In her ruling on the case, Doe v. Trump, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Defense Department cannot discharge transgender service members or prevent candidates from joining the military because of their transgenderism.

The lawsuit also attempted to overturn the prohibition on using military resources on sex-reassignment surgeries. The judge determined that since none of the plaintiffs in the case is seeking such surgery, the court had no jurisdiction to rule on that part, and so that prohibition remains in effect.

The judge determined that the president could not merely claim the policy was in the interest of national security. “A bare invocation of ‘national defense’ simply cannot defeat every motion for preliminary injunction that touches on the military,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly said. “On the record before the Court, there is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effective on the military at all. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects.” [Emphasis in original]

Why It Matters: This ruling is likely to have significant long-term ramifications for national security, and allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military will have detrimental effects on morale and discipline. Even more significant, the ruling reveals what is becoming the status-quo thinking within the judiciary on issues of transgenderism.

The judge notes that she is persuaded the president’s memo is a “form of discrimination based on gender.” Let’s examine the reasoning she uses to come to that conclusion.

In establishing her first premise, Judge Kollar-Kotelly says, “It is well-established that gender-based discrimination includes discrimination based on nonconformity with gender stereotypes.”

Her second premise is, “The [memos’] exclusion of transgender individuals inherently discriminates against current and aspiring service members on the basis of their failure to conform to gender stereotypes. The defining characteristic of a transgender individual is that their inward identity, behavior, and possibly their physical characteristics, do not conform to stereotypes of how an individual of their assigned sex should feel, act and look.”

These two premises lead to her conclusion: “By excluding an entire category of people from military service on this characteristic alone, the [memos] punish individuals for failing to adhere to gender stereotypes.

From a legal standpoint, the first premise is rather uncontroversial. Many women have been discriminated against because they have not conformed to a particular cultural view of how women should act in the workplace. But notice the shift she makes in her second claim. The judge is saying that because nonconformity to gender roles is a “defining characteristic” of transgenderism it is “inherently” discriminatory because it punishes them for “failing to adhere to gender stereotypes.”

The radical nature of this reasoning cannot be overstated. A federal court judge is saying that it is illegal to make distinctions based on maleness and femaleness because such distinctions are not rooted in our biological sex but on the more flexible category of gender. If you think I’m exaggerating, try to think of a situation in which a biological woman would receive special protection that would not also be allowed to a biological male.

Women-only colleges? Women-only dressing rooms and showers? Women-only sports teams? All would be discriminatory since they exclude biological males who don’t conform to stereotypes of what it means to be a woman.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling may eventually be overturned by a higher court. But her reasoning is likely to become imbedded as the default legal rationale, affecting every law that touches on gender.

If you think women now have it hard in a “man’s world,” just wait until the law says that every man can be a woman too.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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