Discharged During Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a Soldier Confronts Trump’s Trans Ban
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender individuals from the U.S. military. In the order, Trump declared that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” — a transgender troop’s mere existence, he added, “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” The order went on to direct Trump’s incoming Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to overhaul the Pentagon’s policy governing trans service members.
The broad strokes of that new policy were outlined in a memo written by Hegseth and made public on Monday banning transgender people from enlisting or reenlisting in the armed forces, and imposing a prohibition on gender-affirming medical care for existing service members. “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused,” Hegseth wrote. “All unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused.”
He added, rather disingenuously in the view of those targeted by the policy, “Individuals with gender dysphoria have volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect.”
Lawson Marcewicz is a doctor employed by the government who also serves in the National Guard. “You can’t issue an executive order that on the one hand says transgender individuals are living falsehoods and therefore are dishonorable human beings, and then, on the other hand, say: But we’ll treat you with dignity and respect,” Marcewicz says.
Marcewicz first joined the Navy straight out of high school, as a Navy Nuke, the name for people who operate the nuclear reactors that power the Navy’s submarines and aircraft carriers. At the time, the Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was in effect, which prohibited service members like Marcewicz, then a lesbian, from sharing details of their sexual orientation.
The policy was torture for Marcewicz, who had fallen into deep depression after a relationship ended. “I couldn’t openly seek counseling or help for the depression that came from [a condition that] seemed to be situationally-related to the fact of my sexual identity,” he recalls today.
Eventually, it became too much to bear. A roomate, in what Marcewicz still considers an act of mercy, reported Marcewicz. And to their credit, Marcewicz says, “the response from the leaders was pretty great.” They were empathetic, but the report set in motion a series of events that would lead to a discharge from the Navy. Marcewicz, who came out to friends and family in high school, was at peace with the result: “I didn’t want to go back into the closet… I remember much later in my life somebody said, ‘Nothing grows in a closet,’ and that, I think, was the truth of the situation.”
After discharge, Marcewicz went on to become a doctor, and re-enlisted in the military in 2018 — this time with a medical unit in the National Guard — before beginning his gender transition.
He still remembers sharing the news with his commanding officer. “The word transition is also used in the military when somebody is getting out of the military, like when they’re retiring, or moving from one branch to the other,” he says. “I remember telling him, ‘I have some serious news. I’m gonna transition.’ He sort of looked at me and didn’t miss a beat, and he was, like, ‘Transition to what?’” When Marcewicz explained what he meant, his boss only had one question: “‘Well, are you still going to be the same Marcewicz that you’ve always been?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ He said, “Alright, well, that’s all I care about.’”
The irony of Trump’s order is that, over the course of a decade of service, in two separate branches of the Armed Forces, Marcewicz has never felt disrespected or discriminated against because of his sexuality or gender orientation by anyone he has served with.
“The last drill, there was a urine test that had to be observed. I’m walking with the guy — this guy, by the way, has a bumper sticker on his car that says, I lubricate my AR-15 with liberal tears — and I looked at him and I go, ‘You know I don’t have a penis, right?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, no problem,’” Marcewicz recalls. “It’s just not an issue.”
It was not an issue, at least, until Trump made it one. Now, the administration’s bigotry represents a real threat — to Marcewicz, and to an estimated 14,700 other trans service members.
Hegseth’s vague memo has uncorked a torrent of confusion on the ground. Marcewicz is aware of at least one trans soldier who was moved from the barracks of their gender identity to the barracks of their sex-assigned-at-birth, then moved back. There are important details missing from the single-page order: Does the ban apply to an enlistee poised to be promoted to officer? What about a cadet at West Point, or someone waiting to go to boot camp? And how far does the ban on gender-affirming care go — does it also apply, for instance, to hormone-replacement therapy?
If HRT is included in the ban, the policy change, which the Trump administration insists is necessary to ensure the “lethality, readiness, and warfighting capability” of the military, would quite literally weaken those soldiers who have already had their sex organs removed. Hormones are critical to maintaining bone density; without them, a person is much more susceptible to fractures and breaks.
To Marcewicz, a doctor employed by the government who serves in the National Guard, it’s not an idle question. “I don’t have either ovary so, for me and for people in my situation not getting HRT is going to shorten our lives. It’s going to lead to osteoporosis. It’s going to lead to frailty. I’m 45, I would age prematurely,” Marcewicz says.
The new ban will be challenged in court, as a similar ban Trump sought to implement in his first term was. Lambda Legal, which led one of the challenges to the original ban, announced after Trump’s executive order that it would sue to stop the ban from going into effect.
“We have been here before and seven years ago successfully blocked the earlier administration’s effort to prevent patriotic, talented Americans from serving their country,” Lambda Legal Counsel Sasha Buchert said in a statement the day Trump signed the executive order. “Thousands of current service members are transgender, and many have been serving openly, courageously, and successfully in the U.S. military for more than eight years — not to mention the previous decades when many were forced to serve in silence.”
For Marcewicz, at least, there is one major distinction between the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, when, as Buchert says, service members were forced to serve in silence and this new period.
“One thing I didn’t have when I was 18 years old in the Navy, was any kind of appreciation that I wasn’t alone,” Marcewicz says. “Now, at 45, I am well aware that we have always been here.”
Responding to the idea espoused by one prominent conservative pundit that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life,” Marcewicz says, ”It’s not going to happen. You cannot do that. The Jews didn’t get erased from history, despite best efforts. We are not going to be erased. We are a fact.”
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