Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced Thursday that the Defense Department has lifted the ban on transgender people serving in the USA military, saying the all-volunteer force should be able to recruit the most qualified from “100 percent of America’s population”.
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“I’m confident that we have reason to be proud today on what this will mean for our military”, he said.
No longer will transgender men and women be banned from open service in the military. Ash Carter, Defense Secretary, made the announcement after studying the issue for almost a year.
The decision comes a year after Carter announced it would review its current policies on transgender service, and five years after the nation ended the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military in 2011.
The Defense Department and the military need to avail ourselves of all talent possible in order to remain what we are now – the finest fighting force the world has ever known.
“We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer forces to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified-and to retain them”, he said. Carter says only a person’s qualifications should matter, and that there should be no other unrelated barriers to service.
The move ushers in a cultural change in the USA military, coming after the force ended a ban on women serving in certain combat roles and scrapped the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prevented gay and lesbian soldiers from serving openly.
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Secretary Carter also reported that the Pentagon would incur the cost of gender reassignment surgery once the person in question had spent at least 18 months in their transitioned gender before joining the military.
