Family Research Council exposes own lie about cost worries in latest attack on trans soldiers

Don't be fooled. When it comes to Trump's attempt to ban transgender men and women from serving in the military, groups like the Family Research Council will say their support of this ban has to do with caring about costs. But it's actually about bigotry.

It's amazing how FRC continues to push the lie that the amount of money devoted by the military to trans health care is extreme:

Already, as of February 1, the Pentagon has forked over $7,943,906.75 to gender reassignment surgeries, hormones, and psychotherapy. That’s millions of dollars it could have spent equipment, salaries, and training. Instead, we’re blowing through taxpayer dollars so that troubled service members can use the military as their free ticket to elective surgery. Not a penny of that is going to the DOD’s real mission: fighting and winning wars. 

As usual when it spins an anti-LGBTQ narrative, FRC omits certain facts. From PBS News Hour:

According to new data from the Defense Department provided to the House Armed Services Committee ahead of the hearing, the military has spent about $8 million on transgender care since 2016 out of its $50 billion overall health care budget. The Associated Press obtained the data Wednesday.

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg calls Mike Pence 'cheerleader for porn star presidency'

Pete Buttigieg 

Openly gay Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg may be a long shot for the White House but at Sunday's CNN Town Hall meeting he nailed a hole-in-one when it comes to calling out the hypocrisy of VP Mike Pence in supporting Donald Trump. It only took him 59 seconds to state what so many Christians should be stating with regards to not only Pence but also other evangelical conservative Christian support of Trump. Like I said, sometimes it takes a gay man to state the obvious. Two snaps up and rewind!

Pete Buttigieg on Pence's support of Trump: "How could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn star presidency. Is it that he stopped believing in scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump?" Via CNN pic.twitter.com/qH1WnXUHrj

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 11, 2019

Don't forget what Mike Pence and the religious right are doing to transgender soldiers

With a recent ruling on Trump's ban of transgender troops in the military throwing everything into bizarre chaos (the ban will be implemented sometime unannounced or may be it won't), it's easy to forget that that mess we are presently in is because of Mike Pence's anti-LGBTQ prejudice and those who helped him subvert fairness and accuracy.

But we won't forget. We will never forget and we will bring it up until no one will ever forget it:

From ThinkProgress, March 25, 2018:

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reported Friday night that, according to multiple sources, Pence played “a leading role” in creating the report, along with Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, which has been dubbed “Trump’s favorite think tank,” and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC), an anti-LGBTQ hate group. Both Heritage and FRC praised the report Friday. According to Stern’s reporting, it was true that Mattis favored allowing transgender military service, but Pence “effectively overruled” him. 

A separate source independently confirmed to ThinkProgress Saturday that Pence was involved, characterizing him as forming his own ad hoc “working group,” including Anderson and Perkins, separate from the panel of experts Mattis had assembled. Though it bears Mattis’ signature, the report released Friday appears to reflect the findings of Pence’s working group and not the committee report that Mattis submitted to Trump last month. Mattis’ original document was not currently publicly available at the time of the recommendation, but it was widely reported that Mattis favored an inclusive approach that resembled what had originally been proposed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter under President Obama in 2016. His February recommendation, also released Friday, jibes with the new report, contradicting reports at the time. 

How exactly Pence overruled Mattis’ recommendation over the past month the source did not know. But his working group’s influence is apparent. In particular, the report features numerous anti-trans talking points that FRC and other anti-LGBTQ groups have used in various campaigns favoring discrimination against transgender people. It also attempts to distort the research on transgender health in ways that directly parallel Anderson’s recently released book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. Anderson likewise argued in his book against supporting trans people in their gender transitions, and the recommendations in the report rely on a strikingly similar framing.

Watchdog site Media Matters had this to say about Pence's "experts" on the same day

Family Research Council has a history of pushing anti-trans misinformation to justify harmful and discriminatory policies. When the transgender military ban was first announced in July 2017, FRC senior fellow Peter Sprigg published a report with the false claim that over the next ten years, allowing transgender people to serve in the military could cost “as much as $1.9 to $3.7 billion,” an estimate significantly higher than those from the Pentagon-commissioned Rand Corp study and research from the Palm Center. In the past, FRC and its representatives have also spread misinformation about transgender-inclusive restrooms, promoted conversion therapy, claimed that LGBTQ youth suicide rates would drop if the teenagers were “discourage[d] from self-identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual,” and suggested that being transgender is a “cultural phenomenon.”  

 In July, FRC president Tony Perkins admitted that FRC worked with the White House on the transgender military ban, and in August, Foreign Policy reported that FRC was lobbying Congress to keep the Pentagon from using government funds to “provide medical treatment related to gender transition.”  

 Another of Trump’s “experts,” anti-trans extremist Ryan T. Anderson, has repeatedly used biased and junk science to justify bigotry against the transgender community. In February, he published When Harry Became Sally, an entire book dedicated to discrediting the transgender experience. The book falsely argues that transgender people are mentally ill and would have better outcomes if they did not transition.

Men and women fighting to defend out freedoms don't deserve to have their careers and livelihoods stolen because of other people's bigotry and the lies they tell. The truth will come out and those who have lied will have to defend what they have done.

Related post - Let Us Serve: These Brave Transgender Troops Just Made History in Congress

Anti-LGBTQ hate group possibly gains foothold in judiciary

Former Alliance Defending Freedom intern Allison Jones Rushing just became a federal judge.  As the chart below shows, the LGBTQ community cannot ignore this group nor what it is attempting to do to the country's judiciary or our equality.

The news that Allison Jones Rushing, a lawyer affiliated with anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom, was just appointed a federal circuit judge should open the door for more scrutiny about the group and its former behind-the-scenes exploits against the LGBTQ community. The following news briefs should be your guide. As some show, Rushing isn't the only lawyer affiliated with ADF invading our courts and federal government. This is not to predict that Rushing would be a biased justice. But based upon who she has chosen to associate herself with in the successful advancement of her career, the LGBTQ community should keep an eye on her and ADF in general:

The extremism of anti-LGBTQ powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom - This is the definitive guide to the group. From how it worked to criminalize homosexuality, to its advocating sterilizing trans men and women in foreign countries, to its legislative attacks on the LGBTQ community - specifically trans youth, to its false linking of homosexuality and pedophilia. It's all here.

No Gays Allowed - A webpage set up to educate about ADF


ADF and friends: Hate group Alliance Defending Freedom is at the center of an anti-LGBTQ industry 

Alliance Defending Freedom Through The Years

Masterpiece Cakeshop was just the beginning. ADF is pushing several other license-to-discriminate cases through the courts.

These anti-LGBTQ group alumni work in federal agencies that will interpret potential anti-trans definition of gender

Here are 300 of extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom's reported 3,300 allied attorneys

We stop ADF by making it and its exploits public. Groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom operate expertly in the shadows. They don't like spotlight. So we should give them as much spotlight as we can.

'Pentagon accused of deceiving Congress to justify Trump's trans military ban' & other Thur midday news briefs

Former military chiefs accuse Pentagon of deceiving Congress about transgender troops -

The former military leaders say Department of Defense officials ignored internal data to make the claim that medical treatment for trans troops keeps them out of service for longer than other personnel. “In seeking to justify President Trump’s wrong-headed ban on transgender service members at a congressional hearing last week, Defense Department officials made misleading claims,” Deborah Lee James, Ray Mabus and Eric Fanning, who ran the Air Force, Navy, and Army respectively, said in a statement.

‘Religious freedom’ arguments kill Nebraska’s LGBTQ employment protections bill - Religion used as a weapon to justify discrimination.

LGBTQ conversion therapy bill is dead in the Utah State Legislature - Well shit. 

New U of L Scholarship Will Serve Catholic LGBTQ Students - Some good news to end the day.

Randy Rainbow puts explanation point on failure of Trump's North Korea Summit

It's basically agreed all around that Trump's latest attempt at a Nobel Peace Prize  . . . I mean his latest summit meeting with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un was a huge failure.  However, let's leave it to Randy Rainbow to put an explanation point on it. Sometimes, "it simply takes a queen."

'Lawyer affiliated with anti-LGBTQ hate group becomes federal court judge' & other Wed midday news briefs

Allison Jones Rushing just became a federal judge. 

Republicans are about to make a hate group’s lawyer a federal appeals court judge - Makes the job of attaining our equality difficult, but not impossible. The thing we can do now is tell folks and make the noise.

The Senate confirms Allison Rushing, a judicial nominee who once interned for a hate group - More details.

Duck! "Ex-gay" uncovers a vast conspiracy - There they go again. 

An LGBTQ-friendly church covered up ‘United Methodist’ in its sign in protest of anti-LGBTQ ban - Good for them! 

Nebraska bill to ban LGBT job discrimination stalls - bruuutherr!