(IntegrityPress.org) – The military may weaponize the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to cow compliance with neopronoun use and other radical forms of gender ideology among our servicemembers. A 2020 Equal Opportunity law changed the field such that individual commanders could bring charges against subordinates for refusing to use preferred pronouns over accurate ones for gender benders.
Capt. Thomas Wheatley teaches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He expressed his concerns about the matter to The Daily Caller. Wheatley said he believed Congress should pass a new law or amend the old one before service members are brought up on charges of “misgendering.”
He said that while the military has a responsibility to protect transgendered service members, it must provide the same level of protection to people who have religious or other deeply held convictions on the matter.
The current rules in the military do not prohibit “misgendering” or the supposed offense of using the biologically correct pronouns to refer to someone who presents as the opposite gender. However, current legal guidance on the issue could be interpreted to allege violation of the Military Equal Opportunity rules on harassment and discrimination. Those rules are enforced through the UCMJ.
Wheatley argued that someone could be court-martialed for “misgendering” due to the sweeping provisions of the law. He also explained that a left-leaning commander could prosecute a subordinate for “conduct unbecoming an officer.” That would put “misgendering” into the same category as child-abuse or other extremely deviant behavior.
Wheatley suggested that those behaviors aren’t equivalent and obviously so. He also highlighted how someone may have a deeply held religious conviction regarding one’s ability to gender-bend, and that indulging the deception would force them to violate their spiritual beliefs. That would prioritize the rights of one group over another, while violating the First Amendment.
Wheatley added that the situation requires redress by Congress because as it stands, the First Amendment rights of service members in practice are non-existent. While serving, the operational capacity of the unit is prioritized over individual self-expression due to the need to be combat effective and numerous precedents have affirmed the need of the military outweighs the rights of the individual when it comes to free speech.
Copyright 2024, IntegrityPress.org
