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| The Family Research Council spins a bad distortion about the Army and transgender troop training/ |
Unbelievable.
Even on a day in which SCOTUS gives a part of their agenda (against women's health and right to abortions) a nod, the evangelical right has to push a distortion about the LGBTQ community.
According to a Washington Update from The Family Research Council, the United States Army is supposedly abandoning training about transgender troops:
Finally, the military is announcing a kind of transitioning we can support! For the first time since President Trump overturned Obama’s transgender military policy, the Army is shifting away from the focus on politically-correct topics like gender and back to the issues it should be concerned about -- like combat.
In a message no one could mistake, the memo makes it clear: “Transgender training is complete across the total Army.” From now on, sensitivity classes and lessons on gender transitions will be 100 percent optional. “The move, Army leaders argue, is designed to relieve stress on the overburdened troop training regimen and refocus on soldiers’ ability to fight in combat.” In a nod to the hundreds of wasted hours spent on ridiculous topics like “male pregnancies” and “off-duty drag” the chief of the Army’s training program explained, “It was all the other [training] requirements that we levied on ourselves, or we had levied from other places” that took away from military readiness.
Like a lot of commanders, he told the Washington Times that the trainings Obama handed down as part of the integration of people who identify as transgender “served as barriers to maximizing time… to build readiness and lethality.” Of course, this is the argument that experts like FRC’s Lt. General Jerry Boykin had been making all along. The military is a fighting force, not a gender clinic. “Talk to any service member today and you will find that a majority of them will express great frustration with the amount of time that they spend in these lectures at the expense of preparing for war,” he argues. “They spent all their training time in classrooms listening to lectures on diversity, tolerance, and inclusion instead of the Military Code of Conduct.”
That’s time our military can never get back. Every hour (and dollar) our troops waste on the social engineering of the last administration is time they could have been on the range or practicing combat maneuvers. “When do you train for battle when you’re bogged down with these politically-correct mandates?” General Boykin asked. “You don’t. You go out and crash ships or get captured by Iranians, because you were never prepared for war.”
Fortunately, the Army is putting an end to two years of this P.C. nonsense. “One of the things this [change has done] is reinforce to commanders out in the field that you have the authority and responsibility to ensure your units are as highly trained as humanly possible” to carry out combat operations,” Colonel John O’Grady said. And sexual politics aren’t the only thing getting the boot. Branch leaders are also paring down on other non-essential trainings. It’s about time, say most troops, who were overwhelmingly opposed to the idea anyway. With the growing number of global threats, we need our servicemen and women focused on what matters: making America safe again.
Hold your anger, shock, or disappointment for just a second. It should be no surprise to anyone who knows the modus operandi of the Family Research Council or has followed how this blog has called the group out for multiple distortions over the years that the entire story hasn't been told.
FRC took an article from The Washington Times and embellished many details to suit its lies against transgender troops. First of all, making something optional isn't the same as abandoning it, yet that is the title of FRC's Washington Update - Army Gives Trans Training the Boot.
The article FRC cited - and distorted - had the following title - Army training will now focus on actual battlefield skills, not social issues
The first paragraphs reads as follows:
Fighting will now take precedence over dealing with transitioning transgender troops, drug abuse and other issues as the Army seeks to overhaul its training regimen to hone its soldiers’ battlefield skills.
In a series of servicewide memorandums approved by Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and obtained by The Washington Times, service leaders are making optional previously mandatory training on issues such as transgender transition and drug abuse. The move, Army leaders argue, is designed to relieve stress on the overburdened troop training regimen and refocus on soldiers’ ability to fight in combat.
“The Army’s regulations and policies that deal with training were pretty settled, and there were not a lot of detractors to it. … It was all the other [training] requirements that we levied on ourselves, or we had levied from other places” that led to the increasingly cumbersome approach to combat readiness, said Col. John O’Grady, chief of the Army’s collective training division.
It gets even better. All of those ugly phrases and dehumanizing attacks on President Obama and trangender troops FRC uses are not even in the original article. Neither is the trash about "male pregnancies" or "off-duty drag."
But with regards to transgender troop training, the article said the following:
Eliminating mandatory training for transgender troops wades into the ongoing policy debate between the White House and federal courts over transgender troops in the ranks. Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington this month became the latest judge to block Mr. Trump’s ban on transgender troops in the military.
Army officials say the decision to eliminate mandatory training for transgender troops was not made for ideological reasons, but because the effort had already run its course.
“Transgender training is complete across the Total Army,” one of the service memorandums states.
The initial push for mandatory training on transgender troops was to educate older officers and senior noncommissioned officers unfamiliar or uncomfortable with transgender troops, an Army official said. Younger, junior officers and newly enlisted soldiers do not require the same level of education on transgender issues.
So all in all, the Army's policy doesn't come anywhere near being a slamming of the door on transgender troop training. Except for in the writings of the propaganda pushing folks at the Family Research Council.
There is a saying about how no matter how you attempt to dress trash up and make it pretty, it will always be trash. I think that's very apt with regards to the Family Research Council.
No matter how the organization presents itself as a "Christian" group. No matter how much undeserved credibility it and its president, Tony Perkins, receives. No matter how many White House meetings Donald Trump invites Perkins to or how many news programs interviews him. No matter how FRC is prettied up, gussied up, and made to look legitimate, it is still a hate group hiding its fraudulence under the glare of the cross. It is a factory of mental filth which markets lies and fears to exploit the religious beliefs of Americans.
Even on one of its best day - which some could debate that today was - it has to push distortions to get over.
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