The Dishonorable Way Transgender Troops are Being Discharged
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Imagine being a juror and hearing these instructions from the judge, “If the defendant has been formally charged with a crime, your only option is to find them guilty. Your job is to determine whether they’ve been charged. That’s essentially what the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) new guidance does to administrative separation boards in cases involving transgender service members. Administrative separation boards exist for one reason: to weigh evidence and recommend a fair outcome. The new process for cases involving transgender troops does the opposite. It pre-wires the result and erases the record.
Here’s the key language from DAFI 36-3211, Military Separations, published on August 12:
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Action by the Administrative Discharge Board (Enlisted) or Board of Inquiry (Officers)
1. The sole question for the board is whether the member has a current diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria, or exhibits symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria.
2. If the board finds the member has a diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria, or exhibits symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria, the board must recommend separation.
That means that if a board finds a current or past diagnosis—or even symptoms consistent with—gender dysphoria exist, then it must recommend separation. Under prior policy, members who medically transitioned through the military health system were required to receive this diagnosis.
The policy goes further: it restricts what the board can consider, eliminates recordings, and prohibits the standard options for probation or rehabilitation. This doesn’t even consider the fact that the services are using an administrative process to discharge people for what they refer to as a medical condition, while other medical conditions are handled through the Disability Evaluation System. For anyone who cares about standards, this should set off alarms. Why you should care (even if you’re not transgender):
Boards lose independence
When policy tells members the outcome once a checkbox is ticked, it swaps judgment for automation. Today it’s gender dysphoria; tomorrow it can be any condition or class the politics of the moment calls for. Performance no longer matters.
The new rule sidelines evidence of fitness, deployment history, awards, and commander input—the very material boards were built to evaluate.
Transparency disappears
A no-record rule guts oversight and appeals. Abbreviated transcripts mean less to review, less to correct, and less trust in the outcome.
Readiness takes a hit. Pre-ordaining separations of proven performers wastes talent and signals that politics—not standards—decides who belongs.
A Real Example
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Senior Master Sergeant Jamie Hash chose the harder path of involuntary separation because she believed a board would examine her whole record. It would be her day in court to prove that transgender service members belonged.
“I wanted to stand before the board with the full weight of my record and force them to decide on my fitness after going through the entirety of my performance, service, and character.”
Jamie isn’t an abstraction. Her career has overflowed with accomplishment since she started as an Aircraft Armament Technician in 2011, loading F-15s with weapons. She later retrained to become a Workforce Planner and has deployed in support of Operations Inherent Resolve, Juniper Micron, Juniper Shield, Juniper Nimbus, and Octave Shield. In her current assignment before being placed on administrative leave, Jamie was a legislative fellow working on Capitol Hill, an honor that goes to only the best of the best.
As a small selection of her awards, Jamie has earned multiple NCO and senior NCO of the Year awards across echelons, Military Volunteer of the Year, NCO Academy John Levitow Award (Top 1% of Class), DAF HQ Visionary Leadership Award, and was a Senior NCO Academy Distinguished Graduate.
Jamie was rated the #1 of 45 master sergeants by her organization on her way to selection for Senior Master Sergeant in under thirteen years, a meteoric rise.
She did what we ask of senior NCOs: deploy, lead, and remain worldwide qualified.
When I checked my understanding—wasn’t the point of going involuntary to get the facts on the record, even if a political appointee makes the final call?—she didn’t hesitate.
“Absolutely! Why wouldn’t my performance, decorations, and fitness over the last 14 years be the determining factor? Why wouldn’t my deployments and worldwide qualification matter? Why is a short-term diagnosis from nearly a decade ago suddenly deciding I can’t serve after exceeding standards year after year?”
Jamie should be on a recruiting poster, not attending a preordained discharge board. Let boards be boards.
Our compact with troops is simple: meet the standard and you’ll be judged fairly.
These changes say the opposite—identity over merit, paperwork over judgment. They break faith with the purpose of boards as fact-finding bodies that hear sworn testimony and decide by a preponderance of the evidence whether a member should be retained.
What can be done? Restore recordings and verbatim transcripts. Route medical issues through the Disability Evaluation System. And above all: remove the must-separate presumption so evidence—not labels—decides who stays.
That’s how you honor the people who raise their right hand. That’s how you protect trust, readiness, and the integrity of the uniform.
Trans Passports Are A "GO" Again
Links to the Executive Orders Affecting LGBTQ+ Lives​
A resource providing our community, family, friends, and allies with links to the names and texts of the actual executive orders issued since January 20, 2025. The substance and intent of the orders is less open to debate in this format. Text quotes are cited directly from the document listed. These are presented free of commentary, opinion, or interpretation. Being armed with the facts is the most important and forthright way to have a discussion about how LGBTQ+ existences are being denied by these Executive Orders.
Click on the EO # or Title for Full Text
It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable ... “Sex” shall refer to an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.” ...“Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.
Recently, however, the Armed Forces have been afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service like physical and mental health, selflessness, and unit cohesion....expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service....This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual's sex....The Secretary shall promptly issue directives for DoD to end invented and identification-based pronoun usage
It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.---The phrase “chemical and surgical mutilation” means the use of puberty blockers ... to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex ... This phrase sometimes is referred to as “gender affirming care.”... Ending Reliance on Junk Science ... agencies shall rescind or amend all policies that rely on WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) guidance, including WPATH's “Standards of Care Version 8”.
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.....schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies..... young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed ... “Social transition” means the process of adopting a “gender identity” or “gender marker” that differs from a person's sex. This process can include psychological or psychiatric counseling or treatment ... modifying a person's name ... or pronouns ... calling a child “nonbinary” ... eliminating Federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology.
National
Supreme Court to Hear Ban on Trans Care
Since 2021, 24 states have banned hormone therapy for transgender youth with gender dysphoria.
Attacks Based on Gender Identity Up 16% from Prior Year, Those Based on Sexual Orientation Up 23%; Once Again, Race and Ethnicity-Based Hate Crimes are the Largest Category
“Every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person in this country should be free to live their lives without fear that we’ll be the target of a violent incident purely because of who we are and who we love,” said Kelley Robinson, Human Rights Campaign President. “Unfortunately, the latest FBI hate crimes data shows that even as public acceptance of LGBTQ+ people continues to grow, and overall crime continues to decline, hate crimes against us are not yet showing signs of subsiding. Make no mistake, politicians who spread disinformation and demonize our lives are contributing to this violence.
“This trend needs to end. LGBTQ+ people need full non-discrimination protections in law, nationwide. All law enforcement agencies must commit to fully reporting data on hate crimes in their communities. And politicians and community leaders across the country need to stop lying about our community and inciting hatred against us. It's time we build an America where LGBTQ+ folks don't just survive, they thrive - in every town, every state, every corner of this nation. That's not just a dream, it's our fundamental right as Americans.
The FBI’s report noted that there were 2,402 recorded incidents relating to an alleged victim’s sexual orientation in 2023, up from 1,947 the year before, and 547 relating to an alleged victim’s gender identity, compared with 469 the year before. The gender identity category included 401 instances that were specifically anti-transgender and 146 that targeted someone who was gender nonconforming.
Race/ethnicity motivated hate crimes remained the largest category, making up 51.5% of all hate crimes. Hate crimes based on religion moved into second, just ahead of sexual orientation.
For the second year in a row, more than 1 in 5 of any type of hate crime is now motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias. To learn more about fatal violence against transgender people, which disproportionately impacts Black transgender women, read the HRC Foundation’s research from the last 10+ years.
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Election 2024
Delaware Elects first Transgender Woman to Congress
PBS: The 119th Congress will have several members whose elections made history. One of them is Representative-elect Sarah McBride, a state senator who won Delaware’s at-large seat in the House. She will become the first openly transgender member of the United States Congress. McBride joined Amna Nawaz to discuss more.
Legislation
LGBTQIA+ rights are being challenged throughout the south and the midwest. Read more about how legislators "stack the deck" with paid to testify "experts" with little or knowledge of treating gender dsyphoria.
