The U.S. military is suffering at the hands of the Obama administration, both financially and in terms of recruitment and retention. It has prioritized political correctness over military readiness. The latest social engineering experimentation occurred when the Department of Defense lifted regulations preventing those who self-identify as transgender from serving, which had long been in place due to medical and readiness reasons. In fact, the new policy allows the military to also pay for active duty service members who identify as transgendered to obtain hormone therapy or even sex-change surgery.

This is a problem for a number of reasons. First, this policy does not contain any religious freedom protections for chaplains, doctors, counselors and other service members who would object to providing counseling or medical treatment in a way that endorses a person's identity as transgendered. Even commanders, through the administration's new policy, will be forced to affirm "gender identity" by using the pronoun of the member's choice, even if it does not correspond with the service member's biological sex.

Second, this policy uses federal tax dollars to pay for service members' gender transitions, resulting in a reduction in individual readiness of the service members undergoing the treatment during a multiyear transition process. Even after this process is ... (more)