f you’re transgender, you can die for our country—but you cannot receive life-saving health care, access it for your transgender family members, or expect your family to be treated equally in schools run by the armed forces, should a new provision in the House NDAA become law.
This appears to be the politic of Democratic Representatives Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, of Texas; Donald G. Davis, of North Carolina; Shomari Figures and Terri A. Sewell, of Alabama. These lawmakers voted in favor of two proposals by South Carolina’s Nancy Mace, to amend the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). If passed in the Senate, Amendment 255 would gut gender-affirming care for uniformed service members, retirees, and their family members around the world. Amendment 256 would in turn ban transgender girls from women’s sports in K-12 schools run by the military.
Compulsory education always downplays or omits that “peaceful” protests don’t work without the threat of violent escalation. True for Black Rights, true for Queer Rights, true for Worker’s Rights.
The tragedy is that they are convinced otherwise, and will not change tactics.