Reuters’ Matthew Lavietes has his priorities in place. A plague sweeps the globe, economies fall and a fateful geopolitical realignment is imminent, and Lavietes is writing about … trans people who want to play soldier.
You have to hand it to Big Trans -- they’re doing their best to remind us that, world crisis or no, they’re still the fashionable victim group. A couple of weeks ago Vice worried that the coronavirus would keep trans people from having “life-saving” operations. Now Lavietes, writing for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, tells us “calls are growing” to lift the ban on trans troops. That’s right, there’s a groundswell of demands that the U.S. military accommodate the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of people who feel that their fight against biology entitles them to fight the nation’s enemies.
You see, these excluded individuals just want to help. Lavietes holds up one Nic Talbott as an example. Talbot has “put himself on the frontline of the new coronavirus pandemic - he got a job at his local Walmart.” Er, okay. “His first choice was to enlist in the military but, as a transgender man, he was not allowed.”
Talbot said, “I'm just kind of standing here on the sidelines watching everything happen in front of me … I am capable, qualified and willing to do more, but there's this barrier in front of me that makes absolutely no sense.”
Talbot’s impulse to help is admirable, but isn’t there some happy medium between Walmart and the 82nd Airborne? EMT? Nurse? Auxiliary cop? Wouldn’t those jobs be more directly useful to a nation in a health crisis than, say, bosun’s mate on a frigate?
They would, of course, but they wouldn’t be of political use to Talbot. Lavietes explains that Talbot is “plaintiff in one of four lawsuits filed in federal courts challenging the ban.”
Turns out, the tsunami of righteous demands for “Theirs” restrooms on aircraft carriers is mostly coming from Reuters itself. Lavietes cites the LGBT activist Lambda Legal group, and a couple of other people in the same situation as Talbot. That’s about it.
The article really is just the product of a note on somebody’s editorial calendar: Lavietes says “Sunday marks the first anniversary of a ban on trans people joining the U.S. Armed Forces. But with most recruitment stations closed due to coronavirus lockdowns, calls are growing for President Donald Trump's policy to be reversed.”
But if the recruitment stations are closed …? Sorry, I was trying to follow the logic. Bad idea.
