The author’s views are hers alone and do not reflect those of any organization or institution with which she or her spouse is affiliated.
“Why would anyone want to kick your wife out of the military?”
I’ve heard that question repeatedly since 2017, the year transgender service members were barred from joining the military and those already in uniform faced the threat of expulsion.
If you knew my wife Jamie -- the stunning, brilliant woman who just put on senior master sergeant (E-8) at 13 years, who was personally recommended for her current prestigious fellowship program by a four-star general -- you’d probably ask me the same question.
The answer is simple but painful: Those supporting a purge of trans service members typically don’t know any trans individuals personally and have never worked with them. And it’s easy to judge or fear what you don’t know.
Fear can cause people to blame vulnerable, poorly understood groups that can’t easily defend themselves. Right now, transgender Americans are the ones in the culture war’s crosshairs.
It’s bewildering and painful when people who pride themselves on “supporting the troops” decide your family is the exception. To witness people celebrate the injustice that could soon devastate our lives, careers, financial well-being, reputation, health-care access and more. To ignore my spouse’s exceptional service record and humanity because of one characteristic that doesn’t define her or impact her ability to serve.
I was living in San Antonio when I met Jamie in 2016. She’d just moved there for the Air Force after being stationed in North Carolina and deployed to the United Arab Emirates to defeat ISIS. We hit it off immediately and became fast friends. As someone who grew up with very little exposure to the military, I loved learning about her world, especially as she spoke with such pride and passion about being an airman and her dedication to service.
I didn’t know about her identity at first; she shared this part of herself with me after serendipitously learning I’d supported an old friend through gender transition. She confided that after a lifetime of attempting to bury her feelings, she had recently accepted that she was a transgender woman.
I could relate to hiding a part of myself. I’d known I was bisexual since my teens, though I hardly told anyone. Despite being from a liberal family in a big city, I had fears of disappointing loved ones or making female friends uncomfortable. So I married my college boyfriend in my mid-20s before I really knew myself or what I wanted.
Jamie was a bright light, and as she embraced herself and gained inner peace, it gave me the courage to do the same. Between her newfound zest for life and the unexpected death of my beloved father months later, we found ourselves on parallel journeys, shedding the facades we’d both constructed to please everyone but ourselves. Later, when my marriage ended, she unexpectedly became my perfect match.
Jamie is a high achiever, with her shelves full of trophies, medals, coins and commendations. The integrity and ambition that serving her country instilled in her was evident. It was clear that transitioning would only make her a happier, more fulfilled version of herself.
As with everything she does, she met the challenge head-on. She found community and solidarity in SPARTA, an organization that advocates for trans service members. She came out to friends and family one by one, each offering acceptance; their relationship with her was too important to reject, even if they didn’t fully understand. The last stop was the military. There was just one problem: Despite the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” trans people couldn’t serve openly.
Jamie questioned whether she could only express herself fully when off duty and at home. While she clearly was capable of serving, would the emotional toll of a fractured life be too great? Considering the possibility of separating from the military devastated her.
Before she had to decide, President Barack Obama’s defense secretary Ash Carter’s working group confirmed in 2016 that trans people are capable of serving. It confirmed that their integration wouldn’t harm readiness, lethality or unit cohesion -- defying the same false accusations historically used against people of color, women, and gays and lesbians.
My wife was one of the first to come out in the Air Force, and despite her fears, her colleagues embraced her with open arms, saying it changed nothing. She even helped Air Force leaders develop processes to implement the new policy more smoothly.
It’s hard to hide some early transition steps, so her embracing of her identity was an act of vulnerability. This had an unexpected positive impact on those around her, as colleagues and friends showed her vulnerability and trust in return, sometimes sharing things they’d never told anyone else.
She was tapped to facilitate trainings to inform airmen of the new policy and what it meant to be trans. Each time, many people stepped forward afterward, saying she changed their hearts and minds.
But military families can never be complacent. One morning a few months after President Donald Trump took office during his first term, he made a surprise announcement via tweet that he was banning trans people from the military, falsely claiming he’d consulted top military leaders.
It was a total gut punch. Only a year prior, the government said trans people could serve openly. Now that troops like my wife had identified themselves, the new administration planned to weaponize their disclosure to discharge them.
Our lives became a roller coaster with a daily undercurrent of uncertainty. Once the administration finally released a policy, it was challenged in court and stopped by multiple injunctions. Close to two years after the tweets, the Supreme Court approved a less harsh iteration, allowing people such as my wife -- those already serving and already transitioned -- to remain. Those who hoped to transition in the future couldn’t, and no trans people could join the military. My wife became part of a finite cohort, indefinitely serving for those who could not.
The timing was cruelly ironic; my wife learned of the Supreme Court decision just after she finished briefing a general at the Pentagon. He’d personally requested her to TDY from San Antonio to present her Air Force-wide study of the jet refueling process. He was so impressed, he coined her and requested a follow-up. Her transgender identity didn’t come up once.
We held our breath as our permanent change-of-station (PCS) orders to England were scrutinized. She pushed back and got approved, our move delayed only a month. Our three years there were some of the best of our lives, even considering long, intense COVID lockdowns. Jamie deployed to Germany for six months and was capable and ready to forward deploy to an African base. After each milestone, we exhaled; despite the exemption clause, we knew some trans service members who were ousted on technicalities such as changing career fields.
After President Joe Biden’s inauguration, he rescinded the trans ban within a week, and our daily looming uncertainty lifted. My wife was hand-picked for an assignment at the Pentagon, working long but rewarding hours in a SCIF on war-planning and global force management. She earned the respect of hard-to-please senior leaders and more awards. The high ops tempo meant little time for small talk, so she was unsure whether her colleagues knew she was trans, but it didn’t matter. For those who did, it was a non-issue. Her work spoke for itself.
When Trump ran again, some in our community were certain that if victorious, he’d implement another trans ban and go further. I couldn’t let myself believe it. After years of legal battles, he wasn’t even successful obtaining a full ban -- and we just had another four years of open trans service without issue. Why waste time and resources relitigating?
I felt scared as I watched the election results and inauguration and broken and betrayed by the endless signing of executive orders that chipped away at our nation’s promises and my family’s rights.
It only took a week before the new administration released an executive order renewing a trans military ban, this time cloaked as “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” I was shocked to read the White House’s language claiming that being trans “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
When its full policy dropped a month later, it was far more devastating than we feared. Unlike before, it didn’t exempt already-serving trans people. It was an indiscriminate purge of all trans people, from the armed forces, academies, military colleges and recruiting offices, with rapid plans to start separating them within two months.
We’ve frantically tried to learn the ins and outs of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to keep up with impacts of current lawsuits. After months of listening to hearings, reading court filings and conferring with our community, my wife and I joke we should receive honorary law degrees.
In the policy and subsequent legal arguments, the government said it wasn’t banning trans people from serving, but rather anyone who has, did have or “exhibits symptoms consistent with” gender dysphoria, claiming it’s not in the best interest of the military or national security – a false argument used in the past against LGBTQ+ people.
Technically a medical condition, gender dysphoria is a psychological distress some experience from incongruence between their sex assigned at birth and gender identity. While not all trans people experience gender dysphoria, the only people who do are trans. More importantly, it’s highly treatable by allowing a trans person to exist as a trans person.
Legal teams representing trans troops -- from fighter pilots to combat medics to rocket scientists -- presented endless evidence and testimony from leaders showing their stellar service records and lack of issues from the nearly 10 years they’ve served openly. Yet the policy deems them “incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.” It insults their dignity and reputation by falsely claiming they lack “lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.” One federal judge called the policy so unusually derogatory that it was “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.”
How would you feel if your spouse, whom you’ve proudly watched dedicate nearly 14 years of their life to serving the country -- missing weddings and funerals, loading missiles on fighter jets in a foreign desert -- faced these cruel accusations and insults by their own government?
Unlike former policies, there’s no pause to study costs or evaluate impacts of separating thousands of service members at once, losing millions of dollars of specialized training and disrupting commands and missions worldwide. The Pentagon claims there’s a waiver, but it’s not one any trans person could actually qualify for.
Despite the policy directing no separation steps for a month, preemptive compliance was rampant; we know trans troops pulled from combat deployments and leadership schools. One day, with a few hours’ notice, my wife was put on administrative absence, a discretionary move allowed by the new policy. She was sent home, barred from working or participating in her fellowship.
We waited with extreme anxiety. With the government presenting no basis for its discriminatory policy, we celebrated when both federal judges -- at the 11th hour -- deemed it likely unconstitutional and granted preliminary injunctions to block its effect.
After a month and three legal victories, Jamie went back to work, her colleagues celebrating her return. (At the time of writing, the other case’s injunction is on administrative stay while that circuit court decides.)
On May 6, the Supreme Court sucker-punched us by unexpectedly lifting the injunction, dropping the one protection that allowed folks to keep serving as legal battles continue. Their shocking, brief emergency decision gave no reason for diverging from the three lower courts or choosing to unleash chaos on military families on a legal technicality. There was no opportunity for argument or evidence; no way to know why the Roberts Court broke character with their recent rulings, which typically deferred to unanimous lower courts or intervened when someone risked imminent harm.
The same day, in an official speech, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “No more dudes in dresses, we’re done with that sh-t.” Two days later, he posted a video celebrating the return of his policy and providing a new and quick timeframe for separations. His caption: “After a SCOTUS victory for POTUS, TRANS is out at the DOD.” It was never about gender dysphoria.
And now we wait, distraught and numb, wondering whether one of the last-minute Hail Marys will come through on either case before Jamie receives separation papers. Here we are again: feeling abandoned by the institutions we’ve dedicated to serve, our lives upended. Many friends who refused to give up the fight over the years have begun singing their swan songs, posting farewells to the military as they grieve and stare down a future full of question marks. When all they want to do is to continue serving in our all-volunteer force -- one that desperately needs capable people who want to be there, like them.
We toss and turn amid sleepless nights again. We panic as we see the administration continue a full-scale attack against trans people, despite a recent Gallup poll that found more than 9% of all Americans self-identify as LGBTQ+ -- and nearly 23% among Generation Z adults.
What message do policies such as this send to Americans about trans people? And when their country prematurely forces them to leave service, what message does it send trans troops about the value of their sacrifice and dignity? What does it say to them when the health care they were promised after service might inflict further harm, given recently rescinded LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections?
Amid these months of chaos and heartbreak, we’ve been fortunate to experience a massive outpouring of love and support from friends, family and strangers that we can’t keep up with. Those who served with Jamie, past and present -- including top senior military leaders -- recognize her capabilities and this injustice. We have yet to encounter someone who both knows us and supports the ban.
I hope there is still truth in the wise words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I hope that eventually this small but mighty population no longer has to choose between existing as their full selves or continuing their beloved military careers.
I hope that one day, just like any other military family, we can wake up with the certainty that Jamie can continue serving the country and its ideals that we value and cherish.
Emily Starbuck Gerson is a military spouse, award-winning journalist, advocate for military families and the LGBTQ+ community and editor of Modern Military Magazine, a publication by the nonprofit Modern Military Association of America. She and her wife are currently stationed in the Washington, D.C., area with their two rescue dogs.
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