‘The Ban Should Never Have Been Imposed’ – By Marcus Weisgerber (Defense One) / January 25 2021
Former Army Secretary Eric Fanning says it’s time for Congress to pass a law that protects transgender servicemembers.
Eric Fanning remembers the morning of July 26, 2017. In a series of three tweets, Donald Trump announced that transgender Americans could no longer serve in the U.S. military, reinstalling a ban that Fanning, as Army secretary, and other Obama administration officials had overturned 13 months earlier.
“When he tweeted that…it was like a gut punch,” Fanning recalled on Monday.
Fanning, who was the first openly gay service secretary, applauded President Joe Biden’s signing of an executive order that once again allows transgender troops to serve openly.
“The ban should never have been imposed,” he said. “Not in my lifetime, have we ever allowed someone to serve, and then reversed course on that.”
Now, Fanning — who helped overturn the ban during the Obama administration as chief of staff to then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter and as Army secretary — said it’s time for Congress to ensure that transgender servicemembers’ cannot again be disqualified from serving in the military with the stroke of a a presidential pen.
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