Trans Military and Bathroom Bans

Hey, trans, fam. This is the mess Imaras Guide to our political hellscape. And that’s me, Amara, I kind of hope you know that by now. I’m so glad that you’re here because this is the show where we break down and process everything that’s going on in politics, and we try to do so, to point out all of the absurdity and ridiculousness, to keep from crying through everything that’s happening, to laugh and to find a little hope in the darkness. If you’re here, it means that you subscribe to Translash Fam, and that’s wonderful, but why don’t you consider giving the gift of a Translash Fam subscription to your loved ones or people that you like, or even your haters like, I think that this is a good show for haters. So in advance and the gifts that you’re going to give to your haters and also the people that you love, thank you so much. You’ll be helping to support all the free content that we make all year. Today, on the mess, I’m going to tackle the upcoming Supreme Court case that may decide the future of gender-affirming care in the United States, Trump’s plan to reinstate and expand the trans military ban and conservative attacks on Sarah McBride’s identity and access to bathrooms as a heads up, the mess is recorded a day or so before you get it. So in the wild world of politics, where it moves so quickly, things may have changed, and if so, now you know why. Okay, let’s get messy. So not only did we just have to endure an incredibly challenging election and election result in which trans people were blamed for everything, but we now have to go before the Supreme Court to basically defend our right to equal access to health care, just like everybody else, and that is going to be in the case that’s before the Supreme Court, US versus Skirmetti . Now I’m going to be there in person, so I’ll be able to tell you next time we get together everything that happened. But essentially, this case is going to decide whether or not gender-affirming care for trans youth is constitutional. Now that’s the potentially surface argument. Now it’s not surface for the families that it’s going to impact, and it’s not certainly surface for all of the people that are directly impacted by it, including caregivers and hospitals and all the rest of it. So by surface, I don’t mean because it doesn’t have an impact, but I mean surface, as in the argument that it appears to be at first glance because below that is the possibility that this case will decide whether or not gender-affirming care itself is constitutional overall. It just depends on how the Supreme Court decides to decide, in its opinion, and telling us what they’re going to do here is Chase strange Oh, who is going to be the first ever trans person in history, out trans person in history to argue a case before the Supreme Court. He’s doing so on behalf of the plaintiffs in this case, the kids in the state of Tennessee that are impacted by a gender-affirming care ban there. He’s doing so in his role at the ACLU, and this is from democracy. Now,

Tennessee has categorically banned medical treatment for adolescents only when that treatment is prescribed in a manner that Tennessee considers inconsistent with a person’s sex. So what we’re arguing before the Supreme Court is that, look, this is a simple example of sex discrimination. So if you take, for example, a transgender adolescent boy, he cannot receive testosterone to live consistent with his male identity because he was assigned female at birth. Had he been assigned male at birth, he could receive that same medication for that same purpose.

So for all you constitutional nerds out there, the essential argument is exactly as Chase described, because existing cases before the Supreme Court already have ruled that trans people are covered by sex discrimination laws, specifically in the Bostock ruling, which covered trans people’s right to not be fired from their jobs because of who trans people are because of sex discrimination. And so Chase is saying that that argument applies to gender-affirming care that these plaintiffs, these youth, would be able to get this care if the state saw them as their gender, and because there’s an inconsistency in applying who gets access to care that is essentially sex discrimination and that the Supreme Court should rule On behalf of these trans kids and their families. Now that would normally be making sense in a time which made sense, but we know all too well that this Supreme Court is willing to create whole new arguments for how they’re ruling out of thin air, almost, and we know that they’re willing to overturn precedent, like 50 years of precedent. Two generations of precedent, as they did in the Dobbs decision, which wiped away Roe v Wade. So it kind of sky’s the limit and jump off. And that’s why people are worried, because of constitutional precedent that gender-affirming care for trans kids should be constitutional following that strict interpretation, that conservative interpretation, we know that that’s not what’s necessarily ruling the day right now. So they could just ban gender-affirming care overall for trans kids, or even decide, in a sweeping decision that trans healthcare is not constitutional for anybody, and ban it more broadly. We don’t really know how this is going to go, but we know that the stakes are enormous, and that’s why everyone needs to be paying attention to this case and following it closely, because what is already a terrible and treacherous situation for trans youth could be even worse, with outright bans nationwide, with there not being any safe space in America, with the families that have packed up and moved or sent their kids to live with a relative in another state, just so that they could receive the care that they need in order to continue to live and to thrive. There may be no safe space in America for them or for any trans people, so make sure that you watch this, because this might be a case where it’s actually a justice isn’t blind. Mess Next up, and the hits just keep coming from the Trump administration, and they’re not even in power yet. Is the latest? The latest is the possibility of a ban on trans people in the military. Here is a description of what’s at stake by first post, President-Elect Donald Trump is planning on signing an executive order that would remove all transgender members from the US military. Now, according to a report by the Times, the contingent order could come on his first day as president in January. The directive is expected to affect 1000s of active military personnel who are transgender and would be deemed unfit to serve.

Now you all might remember that the Trump administration came in last time and put a military band, which really emphasized people on coming into the military, banning recruitment on all these other things, and immediately were taken to court, and it was tied up. And eventually, the trans-military ban was undone by the Biden administration on day one, literally when they came in. So just four years later, on day one, the Trump administration not only plans to implement the previous ban on recruitment and all the rest of it, but now actually actively go and kick 15,000 trans people out of the military on day one. Now, 15,000 people may not sound like a lot, but for the military, it is. 15,000 people is essentially the same size of, you know, a division of troops which the army relies on to do whatever they’re doing around the world. Well, the problem is that the army right now is having a problem meeting its recruitment goals. So not only are you not recruiting people, you’re going to take a substantial number of people out of the military and put them out on the street. It doesn’t make any sense, right? Like this trans-military ban makes absolutely no sense, but does make sense if you are who the Trump administration has embraced in order to rise to power, namely, Christian nationalist, and that’s embodied by the person that they’ve named to be their secretary of defense nominee, Pete hex Seth, you know a Fox News contributor or commentator, but Pete hexa is actually not only a known Christian nationalist but has white supremacist tattoos all over his body. He’s such a misogynist, believes so much in strict gender roles that his own mother came out and denounced him and said that she felt sorry for any woman who had ever been in a relationship with, or whom he’d ever known, that’s his mom. And so when you are a Christian nationalist president that has embraced authoritarianism and is nominating a white supremacist as Secretary of Defense, it makes sense that you would do something like this, but it is ruinous for the trans people, however you feel about the military, who have devoted their lives to serving their country in the way that they see fit, and who built entire lives, who may be close to retirement, who rely on it for healthcare, who have families inside the military. And so it is a disaster for those people. It is a disaster for the military and its goals, and ultimately will be a disaster for the country, for having all of these people who have had their lives ruined solely because of the arbitrary nature of a wild political philosophy. And I’m just going to say that so unlike the old army motto. Don’t we know that this is going to be not all who you can be kind of mess. So everything about the Trump administration seems back to the future, doesn’t it? I mean, back to the future on the military ban, and we’re going back to the future on the conversation about trans people using bathrooms. We’re talking this is a 10-year-old conversation that has somehow been resurrected. The lid on the coffin has been popped out, and we’re talking about the ghost of trans bathroom bands, but we wish that it was a ghost. It has actually been taken up by a congressperson whose name is Nancy Mace, who, just over a year ago, was saying that she believed in trans equality and thought that trans rights could coexist with religious freedom and that we had to find a way to make that happen. Well, with the election of Donald Trump, all of that’s gone out the window, and suddenly she says that trans women are not her equal and that they shouldn’t be allowed to use the bathroom because it makes her feel unsafe. Now, it would be one thing if all of this was rhetoric. It would be even one thing if this was just a bill that was dropped before Congress, that they could actually debate and that may go to the Senate and may not pass, or, you know, whatever the legislative machinations that can happen around the processes on Capitol Hill, but no Nancy mace decided to target the bathrooms on Capitol Hill, meaning that she’s specifically targeting Sarah McBride, the first trans person to ever be elected to Congress by refusing her right to use the bathroom. Now I just have to say this sounds straight up like a page out of segregation to me, and it sounds like in their Back to the Future Ways that that’s what they want to try to mimic and again resurrect. And it puts Sarah McBride in an impossible position, namely, because the Speaker of the House agreed with Nancy mace. Mike Johnson said that he would ban all trans people from using the bathrooms on Capitol Hill, and proceeded to issue a statement saying just that, and that put Sarah, again in a terrible position, because she’s not even a member of Congress and knows that she’s not equally welcome, just like everybody else, and that’s the point for us To decide who gets to be human and who doesn’t get to be now, Sarah’s position caused a little bit of stir online, with people saying that she should get arrested, or she should, you know, do all of these different things, but Sarah hasn’t been sworn in. Hadn’t gotten her office by the time that this all erupted, and didn’t have a staff like is just kind of out there on her own. It’s like the CEO of a corporation targeting you when you just got the offer letter. You’re not even working there yet. And so what was she supposed to do, especially when Democrats who were in Congress, Democrats in the leadership, had days to stand up for Sarah, to show Sarah that the leadership was going to have her back in very substantial ways, and that didn’t happen. And so as a not yet even newly minted employee, it’s easy to see how you don’t know what to do. The problem is that, oh, this just sets a really bad example and tone for the rest of the year with a federal bathroom ban, which means that trans people couldn’t use the bathroom in any federal facility, and they could even decide to expand it and ban bathroom access from any program or building that receives federal funding, which can include schools all across the country, which is terrible. But in all of this, Sarah tried to keep her head and tried to keep her head above water, and say that while these people were wild and out, she was focused on her job and focused on maintaining her Grace and her dignity. This clip is from CBS.

I would like my grace to contrast with the grandstanding that we’re seeing right now. I would like my approach of respecting everyone to contrast with the disrespect that we are seeing right now. I’d like to see I’d like people to see my competence in governing in contrast with their chaos. But despite what she said to me, all of this seems just like a urinal and a stall mess. Thank you for being a translator subscriber and sorting through all the mess with me today, if you like what you heard on the show, then make sure that you go to Apple podcast and leave a review at times like this that we’re in right now. These Apple reviews are really essential. They kind of keep the haters away, like an apple a day I’ll be back in your feed and two weeks to sort through all of the shenanigans and all of the beta. Energy that’s going to come up between now and then I’m your host. Imara Jones, this show is produced by Aubrey Calloway Sander Adams is our senior sound engineer and contributing producer, and this episode was engineered by Lucy Little, Oliver Ash-Klein oversees production as the director of podcasts at Translash Media. This show gets your ears with the help of our social media team, Courtney Cobb and Morgan Asprey. And of course, this show is made possible by translash fam subscribers like you. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you soon.