Not surprisingly, in his 2023 State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden glossed over matters of national defense.  Not counting outstanding performance by our men and women in uniform, several national security fiascos – including the Administration’s inept response to Chinese spy craft incursions into American air space – suggest that Biden’s Department of Defense is pursuing different priorities. 

Operating under the constantly stated mantra “Diversity is a Strategic Imperative,” the Pentagon is concentrating on misplaced priorities and woke social mandates, including expanded orders to ensure accommodation of transgenders in the military.

A comprehensive CMR Policy Analysis reveals that policies regarding persons who identify as transgender, or suffer from gender dysphoria, are being pushed to new extremes, quietly moving under the radar:

• CMR Policy Analysis: Biden Pentagon Quietly Expands Woke Transgender Policies in the Military (8 pages)
• Summary, CMR Policy Analysis (4 pages)

This is happening even as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and other military officials keep trying to deny, dissemble, or withhold information on the existence or results of woke social policies.

In preparing this original policy analysis, CMR compared the recently updated Joe Biden/Lloyd Austin transgender policies to those imposed by President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter  in 2016.

CMR notes at least six significant changes that have been made incrementally since Biden took office in 2021.  In summary, the Biden policy:

         1.  Changes official DoD vocabulary to reflect transgender ideology

2.  Specifically involves the military service academies and ROTC (contract) programs

3.  Holds commanders directly responsible for all alleged “biases against transgender individuals"

4.  Allows cross-dressing and other “transitioning” behaviors on-base as well as off-base

5.  Allows “de-transition” procedures if costly treatments do not resolve gender dysphoria

6.  Restricts collection and disclosure of data on “incidents of harmful behaviors”involving sexual orientation and transgender persons

These mandates are prime examples of woke policies in the military, which impose progressive ideologies and take them to extremes with enforced compliance, even if it hurts the institution. 

Challenge to Congress

A recent independent, high-tech survey on politicization of the military done by the Heritage Foundation found that among active-duty respondents, 80% said the “changing of policy to allow unrestricted service by transgender individuals” decreased their trust in the military.

Sixty-eight percent of active-duty responses reported seeing a “growing politicization” of the military, and 68% said that it would impact their decision to encourage their children to join the armed forces.

In view of recent problems with recruiting and retention, the 118^th Congress should renew previous demands for information on military transgender policies.  Congress also should consider mandating that all Defense Department agencies and educational institutions return to recognizing scientific realities of biological sex, not “self-identified gender.” 

Servicemen and women deserve reality-based health care programs, with protection of the rights of doctors and nurses whose medical ethics and religious convictions differ from transgender ideology. 

Military women deserve separate-sex athletic teams and reasonable privacy in female-only living facilities.  And instead of policies that allow hyper-sexualized drag performances on military bases, the Department of Defense should encourage discipline instead of indiscipline.

(Navy Times photo above depicts a strip show performed by Yeoman 3^rd Class Joshua Kelley, a.k.a. drag queen “Harpy Daniels,” on the carrier USS Ronald Reagan.  Several more drag queen shows and story hours for children on military bases occurred in 2022.)

Americans are awake and aware of woke-ism in the military, and they will hold the Administration accountable for social policies that undermine morale and readiness in an increasingly dangerous world.

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The Center for Military Readiness is an independent, non-partisan, public policy organization, founded in 1993, which reports on and analyzes military/social issues.  More information is available at www.cmrlink.org, and tax-deductible contributions to CMR can be made by clicking here.