White House issues rules for Pentagon's enactment of transgender military ban: report

Donald Trump's White House finally issued rules for the transgender military ban the president announced nearly a month ago.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House has sent a two-and-a-half page memo to the Pentagon directing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to enact the rules within six months.

Among the rules placed by the White House are a full stop on medical treatments for the disorder known as "gender dysphoria" that transgender individuals suffer, denial of admittance to new transgender enlistees and consideration of currently serving trans servicepeoples' "deployability."

Officials familiar with the memo told the Journal that "deployability" will be based on trans service members' "the ability to serve in a war zone, participate in exercises or live for months on a ship," and will be the prime consideration in whether or not to separate trans servicepeople from the military.

The "deployability" consideration, the report continues, is likely to be unpopular.

“Transgender people are just as deployable as other service members,” Sue Fulton, former president of the LGBT military organization Sparta, told the Journal. “Other service members may undergo procedures when they are at home base, just as other service members schedule shoulder surgery or gall bladder surgery.”

Discontinuing military spending on medical treatments related to gender dysphoria is a reversal of an Obama-era order that allowed for trans service people to receive dysphoria treatment through the military.