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Trump’s Contempt for Transgender Heroes

Active duty members of the military and their spouses participated in this year’s LGBT Pride Parade in San Diego.Credit...David Maung/European Pressphoto Agency

Last year, there was a reunion of the crew of the U.S.S. Francis Scott Key. The submarine had been launched in 1966, and was part of the Navy’s nuclear fleet until its decommissioning in 1993.

Machinist Mate First Class Monica Helms was nervous about going to the reunion. She’d served on the Francis Scott Key as well as on another sub for eight years. But she’d come out as transgender since that time. It wasn’t clear how her shipmates would react.

She needn’t have worried. “It was an amazing experience,” she told me. “We were just shipmates, that’s all it was.” Thirty years later, there was still a sense of loyalty, not only to the country, but to the people with whom she had served.

“The fact that we were all doing the same work, experiencing the same stress, going through the same problems, that put you on the same level as them. They see that you are willing to do the job, and you can do it, and they are fine with that. They trust you.”

I spoke with Ms. Helms on Wednesday, about an hour after President Trump announced, in a series of tweets, that transgender people are not welcome in America’s military, reversing a movement toward open and unashamed service initiated during the Obama administration.

No, thank you, President Trump. Thank you for making it clear, once again, that you were lying during the campaign when you tweeted to L.G.B.T. people: “I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.”

Transgender Americans have served and are serving courageously in our military. “I came from a long line of people who have served in this country,” said Ms. Helms. “To have someone say to me, I’m not worthy to be allowed to serve, simply because I’m different, is a horrible and bigoted way of looking at things.”

The statement isn’t just horrible and bigoted. It’s also inaccurate. Trans medical costs to the military are not “tremendous” — they are negligible.

A RAND study commissioned by the former defense secretary Ashton B. Carter found that transgender service members would “cost little and have no significant impact on unit readiness.” It estimated that paying for active-duty members to transition would cost $2.9 million to $4.2 million a year. The study also found that there are around 2,450 transgender active-duty service members (though other estimates go above 15,000). What will these people do now?

And as for “disruption” — that’s how some people in the last century viewed the military service of African-Americans.

In fact, “today is the anniversary of President Truman fully integrating black Americans into the military,” Amanda Simpson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who also happens to be transgender, pointed out to me. “It’s abhorrent and disrespectful that President Trump would choose this anniversary to discriminate against our service members,” she continued. “He’s picked on the most vulnerable people to create a distraction, but he’s picked on the wrong people — he’s picked on service members.”

The country’s armed forces reflect not only the kind of country that we are, but the one we wish to become. In speaking of the service of black American in World War II, Bill De Shields, a retired Army colonel, once said, “The symbol of black participation at that time was ‘the Double V.’ ” That meant “victory against the enemy abroad, and victory against the enemy at home. The enemy at home of course being racism, discrimination, prejudice and Jim Crow.”

For trans people, the enemy at home is alive and well; just last week the Texas Legislature convened a special session in order to try to enshrine anti-trans bigotry into law. Discrimination is a threat not just to trans Americans but to all of us who live in a country in which one group of people is told that they do not belong.

As a co-chair of Glaad, I spent Wednesday morning hearing from dozens of vets struggling with the sense that the country they served does not value their lives.

Vandy Beth Glenn, a former Naval officer, said she joined the Navy “to serve and protect the nation and the system of government that stood for so many ideals I cherished: freedom, equality, a guarantee of various rights.” She continued, “I don’t believe Donald Trump feels anything but contempt for transgender Americans — or any human beings beyond his immediate family.”

More and more transgender service members have begun coming out before retiring. Jessie Armentrout, a Naval engineer, said that “being transgender did not affect my ability to serve my country with honor.” She went on, “I served this country to protect everyone’s rights and freedoms and one would think that would include my own.”

For what possible reason, in 2017, should we turn back progress toward equality? If the president is truly focused on “decisive and overwhelming victory,” should that fight not include victory over the forces of bigotry and ignorance?

After her service on the Francis Scott Key, Monica Helms went on to create the transgender flag — a set of pink, blue and white stripes. “The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives.”

A few years ago, the flag was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, turning Machinist Mate First Class Helms into a kind of transgender Betsy Ross. On the occasion of that acquisition, Ms. Helms said with pride, “It tells the world that trans people are part of this country.”

The message that the president sent out today tells the world the opposite.

Jennifer Finney Boylan, a contributing opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College and the author of the novel “Long Black Veil.”

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