GOP Lawmaker Suggests Drafting Transgender Men
Tennessee Republican congressman Tim Burchett proposed requiring transgender men to register for the Selective Service in an unsuccessful amendment to a military spending bill.
As envisioned by Burchett, the amendment would have required transgender men to register for the Selective Service "by defining 'male citizen of the United States' as including a 'transgender person who identifies as male," recounted Military.com.
In a statement to the military news outlet, Buchett declared, "If they want to be treated like men, then they need to do what other men do and register for the Selective Service and get called up like everybody else."
The congressman went on to claim, "This group of people is more protected than any other group, and it's not right" — an assertion that Military.com treated skeptically, noting that transgender Americans are "a group of people who have been the subject of more than 200 proposed state laws this year targeting their rights and are four times more likely to be victims of a violent crime than non-transgender people."
"Selective Services currently requires "individuals who are born male" to register for military conscription within 30 days of their eighteenth birthday," a requirement that includes "transgender women and non-binary people assigned male at birth," LGBTQ Nation noted, before adding that "People who are assigned female at birth cannot register for the draft."
In theory, men and individuals assigned male at birth "can be punished with prison and fines" if they do not register, though in reality the "real consequences are that many government benefits — like financial aid for college, citizenship, and future government employment — are tied to registering for Selective Service."
LGBTQ Nation pointed out that the current law "can create problems [for trans men] when applying for federal benefits like financial aid because they have to get a letter from the Selective Service System explaining that they are exempt and effectively outing them as trans."
Burchett may have been trying to embarrass Democratic lawmakers, the report added, but in fact, "Democrats have actually tried to open up Selective Service registration to everyone. Former Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) put forward such an amendment to the NDAA in 2017."
In any case, the report added, "The U.S. has not instituted the draft since 1973."
The bill that House Republicans ended up approving did not adopt that amendment, but the measure was stacked with other anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman provisions the GOP were keen on, including the stripping away of abortion access, gender affirmation treatment for transgender troops, and DEI initiatives in the military.
The bill passed by the House is unlikely to gain support from the Democratically-led Senate, which is preparing its own version. Meantime, Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat who leads the House's Armed Services Committee, condemned the GOP-approved bill, saying, "What was once an example of compromise and functioning government" — the bill as it was before the GOP's multiple amendments were added — "has become an ode to bigotry and ignorance."