I have been a lifelong conservative, an evangelical Christian, and a career Naval Officer. I can tell you that this policy of exclusion has shocked me to my core!

It is astounding to me how quickly some of my fellow citizens have worked to completely abrogate the rights of their neighbors. Transgender Americans represent less than 1% of the population but they are being used as a chimera for all that ails us as a nation. It is with no sense of exaggeration that I equate the period we are in right now to 1930s Germany where millions of ordinary citizens, propelled by fear of the “other” among them, took incremental steps to seclude and isolate that “other” from political and social life. This proposed policy is one step in the incremental process. Persecutions rarely start with physical violence. The social violence, the slow erosion of the “others” rights, comes first and makes it so much easier to dehumanize the “other” when it appears they are not fading from public view fast enough.

We’ve seen that this year. The political calls restricting the rights of trans minors have quickly morphed in many states to restrictions on trans adults including the right to get necessary and life-saving gender affirming care. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom, which I am deeply ashamed to have supported in the past, seek to completely obliterate transgender Americans from the public sphere. Make no mistake about it, that is their goal. They are, in my mind, the worst form of patriots because their motto is “Freedom for me, but not freedom for thee.” This policy, taken straight from their playbook, is part of a coordinated and pernicious assault on our fellow citizens not borne out of some true concern for public safety or health but rather one of extreme religious and social prejudice. They truly hate transgender people and would love for them to disappear from the public sphere.  

The idea that this policy is required to protect women seems absurd for a host of reasons. First off, how many confirmed cases in the entire nation have there been of trans women sexually assaulting a cisgender women in a restroom? I dare you to find the answer to that as it will probably be zero or very close to it. But wait, 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted in their lives so if it’s not trans women in restrooms, from where does the threat to women come? It comes from cisgender men!

For centuries women have been molested and assaulted by fathers, grandfathers, uncles, family friends, ministers, coaches, etc. A google search of that demographic will give you far different results than the supposed menace of transgender women using the bathroom as a shield for deviance. I know many women that have been sexually assaulted or molested. Every last one of them was the victim of a cisgender man. Where, may I ask, were these now stalwart defenders of women over the last centuries? When sex scandal after sex scandal has rocked their religious denominations, including my own, how quick were they to enact change? I have seen many of these men and women sweep sexual assault under the rug especially if it involved their darling boy. Undoubtedly almost every adult American has seen a similar story. Stripping the rights of others in the name of protecting the people you’ve helped brutalize is a particularly nefarious form of politics. It is shameful and it is not what I spent my life defending. If you really want to protect girls then keep them away from adult and teenage cisgender men…the data is very clear on where the threat comes. 

Additionally, the whole debate on this issue is flawed because it views transgender people, trans women in particular, as some subclass of sexual deviants. That is very far from the truth. I know many trans men and women and they talk about their privates far less than the zealots trying to pass this bill. They are completely normal people and like everything from knitting and gardening to video games and hiking. They are doctors, engineers, software developers, etc. When they use the bathroom, they just want to use the bathroom. They want to use the bathroom without having to answer a detailed medical history questionnaire with every stranger they meet ; a questionnaire that could lead to them being violently assaulted. Oh, and by the way, there are no bouncers at bathrooms. Anybody that wants to assault somebody in a bathroom can just walk right in. The little figure on the door is not a force field. 

Transgender women simply don’t want to attack women. The statistics are clear that they are FAR more likely to be attacked. Do you want to know why you never hear about transgender crime waves? Because there are none. Nobody goes through the pain of social and medical transition for the purpose of crime. People do not transition and lose their parents, spouses, faith groups, friends, jobs, etc for the fun of it or because they just cannot wait to finally sneak into a bathroom. Being the person they are has cost many transgender people almost everything. They’ve lost so much for the crime of existing. Where, I ask, is your empathy? Where, I ask, is your decency?

Why are we so afraid of a class of people that live most of their lives with a perpetual fear that they will be attacked just for being themselves? They should be rightfully afraid of us and not us of them. We definitely shouldn’t use our majority to make their lives even worse.

Imagine, for a moment, you woke up every day afraid to go outside because being yourself meant people would hate you. Imagine if people hated you for no other reason than existing. I want you to truly imagine that, imagine that people hated you to the point of physical violence. Can you truly imagine that? And then, in the midst of that fear, imagine further that your government seeks to extinguish the few rights that keep you safe and protected. This proposed policy does not represent the commonwealth I want for my children. This is not the world I want for my children. 

Transgender people, as a class, just want to be left alone to live their lives. Why is that so hard for us? I’ve spent my entire adult life in defense of this nation. I wake up everyday asking what I can do for my shipmates, my family, the Republic. I love to help people, support people, defend people. I have never once woken up and said, “Whose rights can I steal today? Whose rights can I take? Which of my fellow citizens can I make suffer?”

Why are some of you asking those questions? What does that say about your view of freedom? What does that say about the state of the Republic?

Undoubtedly some of you think persecutions only happen in an entirely evil population. That is far from the case. In the 1930s, the evangelical Protestants and many Catholic Christians were swayed by a party saying that their leader was God’s anointed figure to save the nation from the evil actors within. He promised, after all, to protect the church. That is absolutely happening right now. Nobody thinks they are a persecutor or would persecute. History tells us how easy it is for good people to participate in evil when done incrementally against the “other.” 

Martin Niemöller was a leader in the evangelical Christian church in 1930s Germany. He would end up spending over seven years in a concentration camp. His words are forever etched in my mind. They are also etched in the stone of the National Holocaust Museum: 

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Will you not speak out now? Will you not take a stand now? Will you not say we are a nation of freedom?

If transgender Americans can be erased legally and socially then so can you. Who will speak for you when the time comes?

I urge you to cast this policy into the trash can of history. It is a policy motivated by animus and hate without any basis in science or statistics.

We should not afraid of diversity in this nation whether that diversity be religion, ethnicity, gender, etc. Ultimately, I ask that you safeguard the marginalized among us rather than make the last 20 years of my military service a lie.