The Pentagon is expected to soon announce it will allow transgender individuals to serve openly in the U.S. military, with a think tank finding that the impact on unit cohesion will be minimal and the disruption to deployments negligible.
It’s not a matter of if the ban on transgender service will be repealed, but when — even as some concern remains over the implementation of new regulations.
Army Staff Sgt. Shane Ortega, a transgender soldier formerly based at Wheeler Army Airfield who’s been outspoken about the need for LGBT rights, said he’s overjoyed by the impending policy change, but also sees problems to be worked out.
“To me, it’s kind of a heavy issue because I’ve been working on this so long,” the 29-year-old told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in a phone interview. “Of course, I’m thoroughly, thoroughly excited and very much relieved and happy about the news.”
Ortega said he’s exercising “practical patience” because after 11 years, first in the Marines and then the Army, he knows how military policy works. And sometimes doesn’t.
“This next year of the implementation process is the part I’m more concerned with than the actual celebration” of the policy change, he said. Ortega wants to see an integration of transgender service member rights, chain of command responsibilities and medical services, with the recommendation that there be an LGBT liaison at every military base to facilitate the new regulations.
He gave the example of an East Coast soldier just a month ago seeking his help because “the post general said (that person) could not receive hormones, period — which is against regulations. Even a post general doesn’t have the authority to tell a person they can’t seek medical treatment.”
Ortega, a bodybuilder who last year was dead lifting 480 pounds, was born a female, but as long as he can remember has identified as being male. In 2011 he started taking testosterone — with the knowledge of Army doctors, he said. He also had breast reduction surgery.
Ortega came out nationally as transgender in a 2015 Washington Post article, which noted that of his three combat tours — two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan — the first two were served as a woman, the last as a man.
By last year the service branches had adopted policies that made it much harder to discharge transgender service members, but official prohibitions remained. Last July, Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered the establishment of a working group to study “the policy and readiness implications of welcoming transgender persons to serve openly.”
“The Defense Department’s current regulations regarding transgender service members are outdated and are causing uncertainty that distracts commanders from our core missions,” Carter said, adding that the most important qualification should be service members’ willingness “to do their job.”
The Pentagon contracted think tank RAND to look at the integration issue, and in March came back with a report finding that there may be only about 2,450 transgender service members in the active component and 1,510 in the Reserves.
“We find that less than
0.1 percent of the total force would seek gender transition-related care that could disrupt their ability to deploy,” the study said. “Existing evidence also suggests a minimal impact on unit cohesion as a result of allowing transgender personnel to serve openly.”
Eighteen countries allow transgender personnel to serve openly, including Australia, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom, and in “no case was there any evidence of an effect on operational effectiveness, operational readiness, or cohesion,” the study found.
Gender transition-related treatment costs for active-duty service members are estimated to be $2.4 million to $8.4 million annually, “an amount that will have little impact on, and represents an exceedingly small portion of” active component health care costs totaling $6 billion in fiscal 2014, RAND said.
Complications arise in sex identification transition, however, and the RAND study notes that if transgender personnel are allowed to serve openly prior to transition, “DOD will need to establish policies on when individuals may use the uniforms, physical standards and facilities (e.g., barracks, restrooms) of their target gender.”
Ortega said other issues include, “How do you prove your authentic gender? Or are we going to recruit people that have not transitioned yet?”
But he himself won’t be the beneficiary of the new regulations, when they are ironed out.
The former CH-47 Chinook helicopter crew chief said he is medically retiring from the Army on July 20 with disabilities. He’s already moved to San Francisco.
“I have severe migraines. It affects my vision. I’m super (light) sensitive,” he said. He also has foot problems from running so much in combat boots, he said.
Ortega attributes the migraines to traumatic brain injury from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq in 2006 that he said left him with a daylong headache and ringing ears for a week.
“Medic says you are OK, and you continue to train, you continue to fight,” he said.
