Pentagon Officials Misled Congress on Transgender Troops by Asserting Falsehoods that DoD’s Own Data Contradict, and by Calling Equal Treatment "Special" Treatment
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Authors
Bishop, Alan
Mayer, Mark V. (Marcie)
Schultz, Tammy S.
Ventresca, Marc J.
Wingrove-Haugland, Erik
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2019
Date
2019-12
Publisher
Palm Center
Language
en_US
Abstract
Two senior Pentagon officials testified on February 27, 2019 before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel in defense of President Trump’s proposed ban on transgender service members, which the Defense Department plans to reinstate once permitted by courts. In their testimony, James N. Stewart, performing the duties of Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and Vice Admiral Raquel Bono, Director of the Defense Health Agency, misled Congress by asserting falsehoods about readiness and deployment and by saying that applying a single standard of fitness equally to all service members means giving transgender troops “special accommodations.” Their mischaracterizations echoed many of the main points in DoD’s 2018 “Report and Recommendations on Military Service by Transgender Persons,” known as the “Mattis Report.” Both the written and verbal testimony introduced deceptive, erroneous, and false assertions about the ostensible risk that gender dysphoria poses to readiness and deployment and about standards that DoD plans to apply to transgender service members. DoD witnesses deemed gender dysphoria a risk despite the fact that 1) every Service Chief testified in Congress that inclusive policy has not compromised readiness; 2) no evidence supports the assertion; 3) a global medical consensus finds the medical condition is treatable and should not be disqualifying; and 4) DoD’s own data concerning the successful deployment of hundreds of service members with the diagnosis contradict the claim. DoD witnesses defined transgender individuals as a deployment risk and then blamed them for being “unwilling” to adhere to standards written specifically to exclude them from service.
Type
Report
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Business and Public Policy (GSBPP)
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
7 p.
Citation
Bishop, Alan; Mayer, Mark V. (Marcie); Schultz, Tammy S.; Ventresca, Marc J. and Wingrove-Haugland, Erik. 2019. Pentagon Officials Misled Congress on Transgender Troops by Asserting Falsehoods that DoD’s Own Data Contradict, and by Calling Equal Treatment "Special" Treatment. Palm Center Blueprints for Sound Public Policy.
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.