Three high-ranking Democratic Congress members reintroduced a bill that would create a commission to investigate historic and ongoing impacts of anti-LGBTQ+ military policies on servicemembers and veterans. They reintroduced the bill on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s executive order kicking transgender people out of the military.
The Commission on Equity and Reconciliation in the Uniformed Services Act — reintroduced on Tuesday by out Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) — would create a 15-person commission to study past Department of Defense (DOD) actions “policing sexual orientation and gender identity in the uniformed services, from the beginning of World War II and onward.”
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“Approximately 114,000 servicemembers were discharged on the basis of their sexual orientation between WWII and 2011, while an estimated 870,000 LGBTQ servicemembers have been impacted by hostility, harassment, assault, and law enforcement targeting due to the military policies in place,” the bill’s introducers said in a press release.
“These separations are devastating and have long-reaching impacts. Veterans who were discharged on discriminatory grounds are unable to access their benefits, and under the Trump administration, LGBTQ+ veterans and servicemembers have been openly persecuted,” the release added.
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The commission created by the legislation would gather testimony and hold hearings on the effects that anti-LGBTQ+ policies had on discharged soldiers’ physical, mental, psychological, financial, and professional well-being, including their ability to access military benefits.
The commission would also study the effects the policy had on straight soldiers, particularly women and people of color who were targeted for their perceived queerness. The commission would then issue a report on its findings to Congress one year after the commission’s first meeting.
The report would include suggestions on how the DOD and government can streamline processes for discharged soldiers to update and amend their military records, how the federal government “may offer an apology” to LGBTQ+ veterans and their families, and “appropriate ways to educate the American public about institutionalized and government-sanctioned discrimination.”
“Qualified servicemembers were hunted down and forced to leave the military at the direction of our government,” said Takano, who is the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s ranking member and chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus. “These practices have continued, now with our government targeting transgender servicemembers. The forced separation and dishonorable discharges LGBTQ+ people received must be rectified, benefits fully granted, and dignity restored to those who have protected our freedoms.”
Rep. Jacobs said, “Instead of righting wrongs and making amends to our LGBTQ+ service members and veterans who’ve suffered injustices for decades, I’m ashamed that the Trump administration has doubled down: kicking trans folks out of the military and banning their enlistment.”
“We know that LGBTQ+ service members and veterans have faced so much ugliness — discrimination, harassment, professional setbacks, and even violence — that has led to unjust discharges and disparities in benefits, but we still don’t have a full picture of all the harm caused. That needs to change,” she added.
The bill is supported by the Minority Veterans of America, the Human Rights Campaign, Equality California, SPARTA, and the Transgender American Veterans Association.
One year ago, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender people from the military. The order referred to trans identity as a mental disorder that is selfish, dishonorable, deceitful, and undisciplined. His order affected an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 trans soldiers.
Last May, the Republican-slanted Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could implement its trans military ban while lawsuits against it proceed in lower courts. At least one federal judge ruled against the ban, writing that the military’s justifications for banning trans soldiers were “harmful,” “come up very short,” and “invoked derogatory language to target a vulnerable group.”
Trans people were first welcomed to serve out in the military in June 2016 when the administration of then-President Barack Obama ended the Pentagon’s decades-long ban against out trans soldiers. The Obama administration also instructed the Department of Defense to cover the medical costs for trans soldiers’ gender-affirming care.
Sarah Warbelow, Human Rights Campaign Vice President of Legal, wrote, “This discriminatory ban insults their service and puts our national security at risk. Expelling highly trained members of our military undermines military readiness and wastes years of financial and training investments. It also needlessly upends the lives of families who have already sacrificed so much. The Commander-in-Chief should prioritize our military’s safety and readiness, not use his position to issue bans on entire groups of people.”
A short history of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: Why it happened, and why it was repealed
DADT was instituted in 1992 by President Bill Clinton. Though Clinton initially wanted to allow LGB people to serve as their authentic selves, congressional Republicans and the heads of the U.S. military branches opposed it, so the ban was Clinton’s “compromise.”
However, by 1998, Clinton admitted that DADT hadn’t functioned like he thought it would. The erratically applied policy more than doubled the number of LGB people dishonorably discharged from the military and increased anti-gay sentiment in the ranks. It also led to LGB servicemembers having to lie and stay closeted while they risked being blackmailed, interrogated, and threatened with violence from fellow servicemembers.
Interestingly, the so-called War on Terror, which followed the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, led to the lowest number of discharged gay and bisexual soldiers in nearly 30 years. This was likely due to them staying closeted and commanders not discharging qualified soldiers. Regardless, it undermined the claim that out servicemembers undermined military readiness.
Concurrently, gay activists and groups like the Servicemembers League Defense Network increased public condemnation of the policy, stating that tens of thousands of gay military members had already successfully served with some degree of outness (and no serious repercussions). These groups also noted that the policy undermined the U.S. military’s supposed virtues of truth, honor, dignity, and respect.
In a December 2010 Senate vote, eight Republican senators crossed party lines to repeal the ban in a 65-31 vote. Four days later, President Obama signed the repeal into law. The next year, the DOD created a Support Plan for Implementation of the repeal. The full repeal went into effect on September 20, 2011.
A 2021 report commissioned by the heads of the U.S. military found that repealing the ban had no negative impact on military readiness, effectiveness, or unit cohesion, despite worries to the contrary. At least 32,837 service members were discharged from the military due to their sexual orientation since 1980, according to DOD data.
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