While the GLB population battles to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the transgender community is waging a war of its own against discriminations unique to transgender members of the armed services (see story page 34).

Transgender people, or intersex individuals as they’re referred to in a report commissioned by the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are barred from serving in the United States Army and the Marines. Recruiters for the Navy and the Air Force told a researcher with the TranScience Research Institute that “being a hermaphrodite was a medical disqualification.”

Closeted transgender servicemembers who come out during their time in the military face an administrative discharge and receive a mark on their permanent record that includes them with other people who are discharged for behavioral or personality disorders – which can include pedophilia and schizophrenia.

The ignorant use of the word “hermaphrodite” to describe transgender people, and the degrading nature of the administrative discharges of transgender servicemembers highlight the military’s fundamental misunderstanding of transgender issues, and further stigmatize the community. The pejorative language and the flawed policies prove that, while a 2008 election may bring promise for gay and lesbian servicemembers to serve openly, the transgender community’s fight is going to be lengthy and complex.

As the GLBT community prepares to honor every veteran during Veteran’s Day weekend, we’re reminded that the United States is more than 30 years behind the curve.

Our elected officials in the highest offices still want American citizens to believe that allowing GLBT servicemembers to serve openly “would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”

The reality is that the military’s hypermasculine climate of fear and hate is the “unacceptable risk” to morale, good order and discipline and unit cohesion.

The murders of Allen Schindler and Barry Winchell, servicemembers who faced taunts and violence for their sexual orientation, or perceived sexual orientation, were indicative of the blind-eye intolerance the military allows and promotes.

Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia and Israel are among 24 foreign armed services that have lifted their ban on gays and lesbians since the Dutch were the first to do so in 1974.

Further, Canada, Israel, the Czech Republic, Spain and Thailand are among a handful of foreign militaries that allow transgender people to serve openly – and yet, the United States will not allow the same freedoms to its willing GLBT servicemembers.

Under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” 11,082 military members have been discharged since 1994, according to reports by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and 365gay.com.

Polls by the Boston Globe, the Pew Research Center and CNN show that more than 60 percent, in some cases as much as 79 percent, of Americans believe GLBT people should be allowed to serve openly.

Although the public seems convinced that open GLBT servicemembers pose no threat to morale or good order, by and large, members of the military believe the opposite – despite the fact that even former President Bill Clinton, who signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law in 1993, and his wife Hillary, a Democratic candidate in the race for the White House, have said the policy has failed. An Army Times poll showed that less than 30 percent of soldiers believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly.

And so, the brave and willing GLBT servicemembers serve in silence, fearing repercussion should they choose to live their truths.

All the while, recruitment numbers drop and taxpayer dollars fund a failed DADT policy that discriminates against a segment of our population.

A February 2006 report by the University of California Blue Ribbon Commission estimated the financial impact of the policy at $363 million – an astronomical amount of money that is used to achieve nothing.