Republicans Join Democrats To Stop Ban On Gender Reassignment Surgery In The Military

Republicans Join Democrats To Stop Ban On Gender Reassignment Surgery In The Military

Two dozen backstabbing House Republicans joined forces with the Democrats Thursday in culling an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prevented the Pentagon from backing gender reassignment surgery for service members.

The 214-209 vote overturned and tossed out an amendment proposed by Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-MO, who said the military budget must be centered on protecting the nation – not changing the sex of a service member.

Hartzler reasoned Thursday during the House debate about her amendment that money should only be used for defense priorities and not in social experiments that would hurt military readiness.

“There are many problems, but funding transition surgeries with tax dollars is problematic because the surgery is very costly. Surgical recovery time decreases the deploy-ability of our soldiers, and funding transition surgeries means diverting money from other defense priorities.”

She continued to plead her case:

“We must have soldiers who can deploy if called upon. Military members undergoing transition surgery are non-deployable for up to 267 days. Similarly, regular hormone treatments render individuals non-deployable into the future. It makes no sense to create soldiers who are unable to fight and win our nation’s wars and unfair to non-transitioning individuals who must leave their families and deploy in their place.”

Hartzler said the issue at stake is not the assumed ‘right’ of transgendered service members to use taxpayer funds to validate themselves, but America’s need to be protected and safe. She continued to explain:

“This is about addressing [North] Korea, Russia, ISIS. We need every defense dollar to go to meeting those threats, not anything else, and we need to make sure our troops are ready and can be deployed.”

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., took it even further with his explanation of why you don’t do what the house just did:

“You’re joining the U.S. military. Choose what gender you are before you join. We’re not stopping transgender people from joining. We’re saying taxpayers in this country right now are not going to foot the bill for it.”

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