March 29, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Traditionally, people have understood the role of the military – the navy, the army, and the air force – to be the protection and defence of the nation and its interests as well as peacekeeping purposes around the world. These days, the military is rapidly becoming a new front in the war over gender ideology.
Two years ago, for example, I reported in this space on the diversity training that Canadian sailors were receiving after a naval officer sent me the PowerPoint presentation they were given. This presentation included a condemnation of “heteronormativity” as well as an illustration of gender fluidity via the use of “the Genderbread Person.” Members of the Canadian infantry have also told me privately that the push to insert these new ideologies into the armed forces is massive.
The social justice warriors pushing these new ideologies have become so powerful, especially under the Trudeau government, that the Canadian military has apologized for even considering the idea that the dramatic physical strain of transitioning from one gender to another might disqualify someone from a career in the military. From the CBC:
The Canadian military says it mistakenly rejected the application of a transgender woman from Brantford, Ont., over concerns related to her hormone replacement therapy. Now, Canada's Armed Forces is changing the way it handles complex medical applications in an effort to make sure this same problem doesn't happen again, said Col. Jim Kile, director of medical policy.
“It was a misunderstanding we created, there's no way around it,” Kile told CBC News. “For complex cases, whether they're transgender or otherwise, they're going to go to our senior medical office from now on.We don't want this to happen to transgender folks who are trying to get into the military, or anyone who is trying to get into the military with a condition.”
The military's mea culpa comes a day after CBC News first published 24-year-old Kennedy McArthur's story. She applied to join the reserves in the Brantford 56 Field Artillery last summer, but was denied because she takes estrogen, the military said in a letter…
To break it down bluntly, Kennedy McArthur is a biological male who is transitioning to female, and takes estrogen as part of that process. One can imagine that estrogen treatments might be detrimental to the physical rigors required by the armed forces as part of their training. In today’s political climate, however, social engineering has pushed back previously primary concerns of the military in order to ensure that the political priorities of the gender ideologues now take precedent:
Kile said he phoned McArthur on Wednesday to try to make the situation right. “I phoned the applicant for two reasons. One was to explain what we did wrong, and two was to apologize for it, and to express to her that it was never our intent to hurt anybody,” he said. “Further to that I explained that we were simply going to go forward with putting in a failsafe within our process with the recruiting medical office to reduce that kind of mistake to as close to zero as we can get.”
All McArthur has to do now, Kile said, is provide some more information from her doctor. “Then we move forward,” he said — though he could not speak to her situation specifically, citing confidentiality issues with her medical file. McArthur said that as far as she understands, her doctor just needs to sign off on a testimonial saying that she can still provide the services required by the military, despite her use of hormones. “And my doctor has already said there's no reason my use of this drug would debilitate my performance in the military,” she said.
That is how far and how fast the power and influence of the gender ideologues has spread—a Canadian colonel had to phone a biological man in the process of taking estrogen in order to physically transition to female and apologize because the military initially rejected McArthur’s application due to concerns over those treatments. It hardly needs to be pointed out that military men are not generally in the practice of taking estrogen treatments in an attempt to eliminate their inherent masculinity, but to even make such a point these days is to immediately be accused of “transphobia.”
In contrast, the American military has decided to restrict the entry of trans people into their armed forces due to concerns over these very treatments. President Donald Trump rescinded his previous policy in order to allow for the implementation of a policy that has been developed, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, under the direction of Defense Secretary James Mattis and “through extensive study by senior uniformed and civilian leaders, including combat veterans.” According to CNN:
Following a Pentagon policy review after a tweet by President Donald Trump last year, the White House said the policy will say “transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria — individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery — are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances.”
…According to a Pentagon memo about the policy, exceptions to the ban include people who have been “stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession,” servicemembers who “do not require a change of gender” and troops who started serving under the Obama administration's policy prior to the new memo.
This policy, of course, has already been labeled a “transgender ban” by trans activists, who are not content with the fact that they have the right to do whatever they like to their bodies and to live however they choose. This is not enough anymore. Trans activists believe that they have a right to serve in the military regardless of the impact of physical transition through surgery and hormone treatments, the right to teach children that their gender may not match their biological sex, and even that people born male can compete in sports as females (which has already had some pretty brutal results.)
Gender ideology has already swept academia, much of the media, and has been adopted and championed by progressive politicians. But surely we can all agree that the military should be exempt from being subjected to a decade-old social experiment that is already showing ominous warning signs?
