President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that he planned to ban all transgender people from serving in the military. Trump claimed the military should not “be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” Trump might be alluding to projections from some folks, largely right-wing politicians, that predicted massive medical…
Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources
Bottom line: Nobody is arguing rationally on this issue. The issue is all about “feelings” not facts.
The FACT is that “negligible” is an undefined term. Notice that numbers tend to be given “over 10 years.” $1.3 BILLION is a BIG number. But divide it by ten and it is a rounding error in the multi-trillion dollar federal budget. ONE transgender surgery is a BIG number, but it is just a small one-time expense.
But consider all the other issues involved.
Does anybody remember life BEFORE the ADA mandated handicap accessible restrooms? Quick, can you tell me when it was passed without looking it up. (I did, and I was surprised that is was more recent than I thought.)
Since its passage, I personally cannot recall EVER being in a bathroom with someone in a wheelchair! And quite frankly I go to the bathroom quite often in public places because of a couple of medical issues. While one anecdote isn’t a definitive reason for any action, neither is the opposite – that ALL businesses should have NOT one but TWO handicap restrooms. We won’t even get into the wheelchair accessible bathrooms in multi-floor walk-ups.
So, if the military is going to accommodate those 6,600 out of 2.1 MILLION service personnel (active and reserve) then they have to accommodate them AT EVERY US MILITARY BASE AROUND THE WORLD AND ON EVERY SHIP OTHERWISE THEY WOULD BE DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM! That means that any accommodation has to be replicated at hundreds of bases (I tried to find out how many bases the US has, but after 10 minutes of searches could only find that there are 800 OVERSEAS bases. I could not find a number for those in the territorial US.) Granted those accommodations are probably one-time costs in most instances, but doing one thing that costs $1,000 two-thousand times adds up quickly. And I’m sure that there will be numerous recurring costs as well.
Here’s another example of why the costs can quickly add up. Consider your local post office or grocery store. Most of them have more check out stations than they normally use, but if they need to make an “upgrade” to better serve (accommodate) their customers they have to upgrade ALL of their check out stations AND train ALL of their employees to use the new equipment. Train as in take those employees out of active duty and pay them for the time it takes to train them and then monitor them to make sure that they are using the new equipment correctly. At even just $50 an employee for the training that adds up to millions of dollars in the case of an organization with two million “employees.”
So, I rate your “false” rating of the arguments FALSE, simply because nobody really has a clue what the hard costs are, not even Trump.
The entire gender argument is about “feelings” not facts. Remember, yesterday’s “facts” can be proven wrong with just ONE exception. I can remember when dinosaurs were grey, and people believed in right and wrong.
You’ve never been in a bathroom at the same time as someone in a wheelchair? Really? Where TF do you live?