In 2010, Barack Obama signed an order ending the prohibition against homosexuals serving in the United States military. At the time, the argument was that this made sense because new attitudes about homosexuality meant that (a) homosexuals’ presence would not destroy unit cohesion and (b) they couldn’t be blackmailed if they were already open about their sexuality. Thirteen years later, the Biden administration is ordering service members to respect the pronouns of those who are on the merry-go-round of “gender identity.” In other words, we’ve gone from “let gays serve” to “pander to those with mental disorders.”

The Center for Military Readiness has done a careful review of new military policies emanating from the Biden administration. This review shows that one of the Pentagon’s paramount concerns isn’t military readiness but making so-called “transgender” troops feel validated:

Since January 2021, Defense Department officials have expanded woke transgender mandates in significant ways.  A comprehensive CMR Policy Analysis titled Biden Pentagon Quietly Expands Woke Transgender Policies in the Military, summarized here, compares Joe Biden/Lloyd Austin directives to the 2016 transgender policies of Barack Obama and Ashton Carter.

As in the Obama years, the Biden/Austin policy fully embraces the idea that individuals can change their “sex assigned at birth to a different gender role.”  Department of Defense Instruction 1300.28, updated on December 20, 2022, has changed the official vocabulary of this pseudo-science, using the phrase “self-identified gender” instead of “preferred gender” throughout.  

The DoD Instruction stipulates that if a person “self-identifies” as a person of the opposite sex, and if the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) changes a person’s bureaucratic “gender marker,” a man claiming to be a woman must be treated as a woman, and vice versa.

Military commanders, doctors and nurses, chaplains, and military men and women at all levels must endorse and act on this ideological belief or suffer career penalties if they don’t.  Alleged “biases against transgender individuals,” which are prohibited, could include anything from “misgendering” people with the wrong pronouns to expressions of concern about medically questionable hormone treatments or surgeries for adults or military dependent children.

Notably, while the regulations care deeply about affirming that a person can change his or her sex through belief, coupled with dangerous drugs, mutilating surgery, and enforced speech for others, they are utterly silent about religious liberty, medical competence (military doctors cannot question the delusion or the “treatments”), and the rights of real women to be protected from a fully intact man claiming to be a lesbian sharing their living quarters and bathroom facilities.

Image: China’s manly military on parade. YouTube screen grab.

Most notably, military readiness doesn’t factor into the regulations, either. China, when not laughing, is ecstatic.

The focus on “transgender rights” is just a subset of the Biden administration’s deep dive into the mad, hate-filled, destructive world of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” On Saturday, the Department of Defense reflected the policies of those leftists holding power in the Pentagon by sending out a truly reverential DEI tweet:

Diversity is a strategic imperative critical to mission readiness and accomplishment. We were on site for the 2023 inaugural @DoD_ODEI Summit as DEIA experts led forums to advance the DEIA and DoD mission -- because our people matter. pic.twitter.com/VX42BC1Imo

— Department of Defense рџ‡єрџ‡ё (@DeptofDefense) February 18, 2023

Elon Musk, who is red-pilling at the speed of a Tesla’s acceleration abilities, had the perfect response:

Your strategic imperative is defending the United States

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2023

We live in dangerous times. China, America’s most threatening geopolitical opponent, has a huge, fiercely traditional military (i.e., men are men, and their goal is to kill the enemy). Meanwhile, America ensures that its men in dresses feel good about themselves. Obama and Biden took the finest military in the world and, within slightly more than a decade, destroyed it more completely than any enemy could have.