I enlisted in the United States Army in 2006 and have been an officer since 2013, serving in a variety of leadership positions. I am proud of my service and I care deeply about the Army. But this month I began the process of resigning in protest of President Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from the military.
The president issued the order in January and the Supreme Court last month allowed the administration to start enforcing it. The order may be legally sound, but it is neither moral nor ethical. I believe that it is my duty as an officer to dissent when faced with such an order.
I may not be the sort of person you would expect to oppose a ban on transgender troops. I am a conservative evangelical Christian and a Republican. Though I have deep compassion for people who feel they are in the wrong body, I do not think that transitioning — as opposed to learning to love and accept the body God gave you — is the right thing to do in that predicament. But my views are irrelevant to the issue of transgender troops.
Having served under several presidential administrations, I understand that new leadership often entails changes to military policy. Some changes, such as the repeal in 2011 of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I have disagreed with. But I have never before concluded that I need to resign.
This situation is different. The ban on transgender troops is blatantly discriminatory. It has nothing to do with the policy’s stated justification of military readiness. The Department of Defense, when imposing the ban in February, claimed that the “medical, surgical and mental health constraints” on transgender people “are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
This is untrue, and the department should know it. A study from 2016 conducted by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Defense found that military policies in other countries that permit transgender people to serve openly have “no significant effect on cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.” The American Psychological Association noted in 2018 that “substantial psychological research” demonstrates that gender dysphoria does not itself prevent people from working at a high level, “including in military service.” Indeed, since 2016, when the Pentagon announced that transgender Americans could serve openly, transgender troops have been deployed to combat zones, provided vital support to combat operations and filled critical roles in the armed forces.
The executive order barring transgender troops is a legal command that provides cover for bigotry. It delivers hate in the guise of a national security issue, dressed up in medicalized language.
The meek compliance of military leadership with the ban sends a chilling message to all service members — namely, that our ranks are open only to those who fit a specific ideological mold, regardless of their ability to serve. Equally concerning is the message that military compliance sends to policymakers. If officers accept this kind of unethical order, where does it end? I fear that the White House will ask members of the military to perform increasingly loathsome tasks.
I have been speaking with my superior officers about my concerns since January. While they are allowing me to take the steps needed to resign, they have ordered me not to publish anything on this topic, arguing that doing so would be damaging to good order and discipline. Disobeying an order from a superior officer is punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by dismissal, loss of pay and confinement. But this issue is too important to me. I cannot remain quiet while the Army that I love ignores lessons that it should have learned long ago.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that, while never explicitly instructing the military to incarcerate Japanese Americans, was understood correctly by military leaders to have precisely that intention. The military acted on it, and more than 70,000 American citizens of Japanese descent spent the war in internment camps on U.S. soil.
Some Japanese Americans nonetheless managed to serve in World War II, demonstrating their resolve and courage on the battlefield, even as so many of their fellow Japanese Americans were being persecuted. Transgender troops today have demonstrated the same resolve and courage through their service.
I am just one officer in a large military organization. I do not expect my resignation to persuade the president or the secretary of defense to reconsider the policy. I do hope, however, that my actions will prompt some reflection among military leaders about what it would take for them to disobey a lawful but unethical order. Most important, when my children grow up and look back at this moment in history, I want them to see an example of someone who chose the harder right over the easier wrong.
Anthony Guerrero is an active duty officer in the U.S. Army currently serving as an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This essay was written in his personal capacity and does not represent the official views of the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.
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