Military Transgender Order, Trump Moving The Military In A Good Direction: In today’s program we’re going to have General Jerry Boykin with us from Family Research Council. We’ll be talking about this new order from President Trump saying that we will no longer allow transgenders in the military. Many military folks have been very concerned with the Obama social experimentation over the last few years. We’ve lamented over the last few years over the horrible things that have been happening in the military to hurt our military readiness. The president is saying, “€œEnough of this. Let’s use some common sense.”€ Tune in now to learn more.

Air Date: 08/23/2017

Guests: General Boykin, David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast.  However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers.  Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times.  We apologize in advance.

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, this is WallBuilders Live! Where we”€™re talking about today”€™s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, all of it from a Biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

We’re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Also, Tim Barton, national speaker, pastor, and president of WallBuilders. And my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas state rep, national speaker, and author.

Check it out at WallBuildersLive.com. If you’d like to know more about the program, you can get archives of the program, you can even send in your questions to [email protected]. We’ll get to those on our Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs.

Then you get a lot of other great information at our other Website, WallBuilders.com. That’s where you get all kinds of great tools for your family, your Sunday school class, homeschool, your private school, just all kinds of great information on the Founding Fathers and the truth of the Foundation of America.

In today’s program, we’re going to have General Jerry Boykin with us later in the program. Amazing guy, we’ve had him on several times now with family research council. We’ll be talking about this new order from President Trump to say, “€œNo transgenders in the military, we’re not going to affect our military readiness in that way.”€

A lot of concern from military folks over what this has done, with the Obama social experimentation over the last few years. So David, Tim, this is actually a very encouraging sign. We’ve lamented over the last few years over the horrible things that have been happening in the military to hurt our military readiness. The president is saying, “€œEnough of this. Let’s use some common sense.”€

Transgender Surgeries Paid For By Taxpayers

David:

His executive order shuts down new people coming in military but it does not affect right now those are currently in the military. There’s a fairly sizable cadre of transgenders in the military. Obama opened that up, I guess it makes sense in some ways, but you have about 7,000 on active duty transgenders and military and about 4,000 reserves.

Transgenders as a group tend to be a very underinsured group. They’re underinsured, they have high poverty rates, and what you get in the military is you get good health care. By the way, what’s happening now, a lot of people are coming in the military claiming to be transgender and then they get the surgery in the military.

Rick:

Paid for by the taxpayer.

David:

Paid for by taxpayers, and that surgery can run from 50 to 100 thousand dollars and then you have your monthly hormones that you have to take. So, it’s a fairly expensive surgery and with them being underinsured and with them being high poverty levels, “€œLet’s get in the military so we can get some-“€ what they consider to be therapy etc.

Rick:

I”€™ve got to stop you for a second, David, because we’re talking about this like it’s normal because it’s just discussed so much lately. But even as we’re describing this I’m thinking, “€œWe’ve lost our minds.”€

Reasons You Are Not Allowed To Join The Military

David:

Listen to what will keep you out of military service. Going into surgery for $50,000 to $100,000, that’s not going to keep you out. By the way, we know that when that happens they are going to be out of service for months, literally. So, they’ve now been assigned to some unit, they’re part of some unit, and they’re relied on by their peers in that unit because every unit assigns, “€œIn this unit, you’re going to have two guys that do this. And two more men doing this”€ and whatever it is. Now you’re one of the ones that won’t be there so they have to bring somebody else to train to replace that or pull them out of different unit which makes that other unit weak.

It really has downstream effects because they build these units really tightly. So when you look at that this is not something to disqualify you from going in the military, but you know it will keep you from going in the military? The list I’m going to give you, this changes from time to time depends on how the recruitment is going.

If they need lots of people in then they lower the standards then if they don’t need lots of people then they raise the standards. But things that will keep you from going in, for example, in the Air Force if you’ve had a speeding ticket, “€œI’m sorry, you’re not available for Air Force.”€ A speeding ticket will keep you out of the Air Force.

Tim:

I’m pretty sure in the Air Force you fly pretty fast though. So I’m not sure speed is negative there.

Rick:

That’s why I couldn’t get in, no.

David:

Speeding tickets, transgender, yeah it”€™s kind of the same. Homeschoolers, there are times when homeschoolers or GED, if you did not graduate from high school and have a GED you’re not going in. Tattoos, body piercings, a lot of body piercings will keep you out, bad teeth, if you’re missing vaccinations, or if you have asthma, or if you have a bad credit score, you can’t go in.

I mean, these are the things that keep you out of the military. But not having a transformative surgery that will cost taxpayers at a huge rate, that will keep you from being in service literally for months, that will weaken the unit to which you’re- I mean, it’s just this is a social engineering aspect that they’ve been playing with in the military.

It makes no sense from a military perspective.

The Military Isn”€™t A Social Experiment

Rick:

Not to mention even just the psychological issues. And now you’re going to be put into these very intense situations and if you get somebody that’s struggling with this, according to the experts at John Hopkins and most medical experts prior to the political correctness in the last 10 years, is a psychological disorder that is going to create problems when they get in the heat of battle.

We’re talking about our military readiness, we’re talking about these guys being able to operate under extreme circumstances. It’s just crazy that we would weaken our military in that way.

Tim:

Yeah, a lot of veterans actually came out when Trump was getting attacked for saying, “€œWe’re not going to continue with the transgender movement in the military.”€ A lot of veterans came out and said, “€œLook, this is a good deal because if you’re talking about people that are potentially confused on their gender. It is a dangerous and mentally challenging enough place, emotionally challenging and traumatizing enough without adding in the complications of life.”€

And Rick, as you mentioned, up until very recently it was considered a psychological and mental disorder if you were transgender because you were genuinely confused about your body, about the way it functioned, about who you were.

That’s not the kind of people that generally you’re saying, “€œHey, let’s put you into this really physically, mentally, and emotionally, exhausting, a trying position. You’re going to thrive and you’re going to be our best hope and defend the nation.”€

The argument of course is, “€œWait a second, but what if they want to?”€ Well, there’s a lot of people with asthma that want to be in the military and they don’t get to. We forget what the military is about. And dad, as you mentioned, it really becomes a social engineering that we’re saying, “€œNo, let’s embrace every, we love everybody.”€ The military is not put there to love everybody. That’s not the purpose of the military.

Rick:

We want to get these people help, if they need help they need help. But the military is not where you go for that kind of help.

Tim:

Exactly.

David:

It’s also interesting that this is a politically correct thing. The DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that’s what is used in the field of psychology and insurance to actually know what is the condition. Is insurance going to cover this or not? Well, if you’re listed in that book, it”€™s a genuine medical condition.

Transgender has been listed as a disorder for years, and years, and years. Now they’re under political pressure to change that. So the new DSM is coming out, It will no longer say it’s a disorder it’s a dysphoria. It’s not a disorder anymore.

And by the way, the people who made that change said that it’s time to have a political change with this. Wait a minute, what happened to the medical side of this? What happened to the psychological side of this? We’ve seen this for a number of years. I mean, that’s why homosexuality came out, that’s why they’ve changed so many DSM things. But it is a politically correct thing to do now.

Therefore, we’re no longer going to go where medicine leads us or where psychology leads us or anything else. We’re going where our politically correct instincts latest. And that’s not the way to be running medical science nor is that the way to be run in the military.

Rick:

We’re going to take a quick break, General Jerry Boykin our special guest today. He’ll be with us right after the break. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Applauding The President’s Courage

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us. Our good friend Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin is with us from Family Research Council. General, always good to have you, brother.

General Boykin:

I’m delighted to be with you, Rick.

Rick:

It seems like so many times over the last few years we’ve had you on to talk about the insanity of what was going on in the military, today we get to talk about some good news. President Trump’s decision on transsexuals and the military, tell us what you think.

General Boykin:

I must tell you, I think it”€™s probably the boldest decision that I’ve seen him make while he’s been in office. Knowing the vicious nature of much of, not all of, but much of the LGBT community in terms of their rhetoric and even the shooting here in our building in 2012. They made a very bold decision to say we’re not going to have transgender serving in our military and I applaud the president for having the courage to do that.

Rick:

Yeah, definitely want to talk about the military perspective of why this was the right move, but you nailed it. He had to know and obviously does know that he would get all kinds of negative response and hateful response, not that he had already had a target on his back for so many other things. He had to have weighed what this meant to the military, he had to have been convinced this was that important for our military readiness to be willing to kick this hornet’s nest.

General Boykin:

Rick, that’s a great point. He did. He knew what the backlash was going to be. But I would offer to your listeners this perspective. Trump approaches things from a common sense perspective. Political correctness is not his strength and nor is it his focus.

He looks at things like the common man does, he looks at things like you and I do. And I think he looked at this and he said, “€œHow does this benefit our military? How does this make our military more capable of winning the nation’s wars?”€ And the answer that he came up with is, “€œIt doesn’t. There is nothing here that enhances the readiness of our military. So why are we doing this?”€

In fact, I think he had heard enough to know that it actually degrades the military because of all of the time that is spent training and briefing people on how to integrate transgenders and how to treat transgenders. And that contributes nothing to readiness. So I think Trump made a very common sense decision here and I applaud the president.

Now They Aren’t Getting The Proper Training

Rick:

It’s got to be a huge relief for a guy like you, 36 years in the army. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, original Delta Force, I mean, you’ve been through it all. To watch the social experimentation over the last eight or nine years. And also during Clinton’s years as well. The social experimentation that has been taking place has had to be driving you crazy. Maybe this is a sign that that’s at least not going to go any further and maybe can be peeled back some.

General Boykin:

You know, you’re right. Quite frankly, every time I talk to young people in the military as well as the older people that have been around for awhile, they tell me their single biggest frustration is the amount of time they spend sitting in a classroom with somebody lecturing them about how to integrate women into the infantry, or how to treat homosexuals in the military, or transgenders in the military.

All of these social programs eat up valuable training time and everybody needs to understand that any time you start a social program like this in the military there is a training package that goes with that. And It”€™s not a one-time thing, it’s something that you have to do repetitively.

If you are in the National Guard or the Reserves where you only get to drill one or two days per month, that’s one weekend per month, and then two weeks in the summer, and you spend an entire weekend, which is exactly what the Guard and Reserves are telling me, doing nothing but these social programs, you are doing a disservice to those men and women who may get called up and sent off to war and they haven’t spent the appropriate amount of time preparing to survive and to win that war. It’s not right.  Again, I think that’s the common sense aspect that our president looked to.

How Long Will It Take President Trump To Restructure This

Rick:

How long does it take for a president to begin to restructure the leadership in the military and get his generals in place that share that view point of the military’s purpose is not for all this social experimentation, it”€™s to keep the country safe.

He’s only six months in, I’m assuming you only do so much in six months. Is that going to be a couple of year process or maybe even a full term process for him to get to that point?

General Boykin:

That is just such a great question. It is important to remember that many of, I would even say most of the senior leaders in our military services today were chosen by the Obama administration at least in part because they were willing to support the Obama agenda.

What that means is that many really good warrior focused officers and noncommissioned officers left the service, either because they were told to, which is what they do with a general officer. They tell you it’s time for you to retire. That means go now and do not delay. They left the military because they were judged to be not willing to support the agenda or they got frustrated and just left on their own because they saw what was happening to our military. And an awful lot of good people left their military.

So how long does it take to restructure the leadership in our military? Yes. It will take Mr. Trump’s entire four years, and quite frankly, if he gets another term he’ll still be working on it at the end of eight years. I have said repeatedly, this is probably a decade long process. He can make a lot of progress in four years.

But if you want to get the ship righted it’s going to take a decade because you’ve lost so many really good warriors that are coming up. Now you’ve got to go way down. You’ve got to reach deep into the ranks to bring up those that are still warrior focused that understand the principle that the military is for winning wars.

Is This Reversible And Is There Hope

Rick:

Last thing before I let you go, General. That same kind of question with this next generation of young people that, unfortunately, a lot of our best have said, “€œI’m not going in while all this stuff is going on.”€ We”€™ve missed a lot of good folks that wanted to serve but chose not to because of these things.

Now, do you think this sign from Trump and some of the other things that he’s been doing as well will help to reverse that? And maybe with these younger folks that are 16 or 18 thinking about their next few years and possibly joining up that we’re going to be able to reach back into that good crop and get some of them?

General Boykin:

I do. I can’t begin to tell you how many moms and dads across America that I’ve spoken to when I was going around speaking at different events and sometimes even you know with David. They have told me, “€œI’m just not going to let my son or my daughter go into the military under the current commander in chief.”€ I think that’s reversible.

I think they see Trump as someone who cares about our military and someone who has their best interests at heart and someone who will be an effective commander in chief. And that’s what they’re looking for. They are looking for an opportunity to serve, but to serve under a Commander and Chief that respects them and will do the right thing. I think they see that now. Morale has improved. Recruiting is going to get better.

Rick:

That’s great news. That”€™s General Jerry Boykin, FRC.org is the Web site for Family Research Council. Be sure and check it out, get on their email list and support them to continue to do the things they are doing. General, always good to have you brother, let”€™s get you back again soon.

General Boykin:

Ok, Rick. It’s great being with you. God bless you.

Rick:

Stay with us folks, right back with David and Tim Barton.

Biographical Sketches

Hi, friends! This is Tim Barton of WallBuilders.This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. I know, often times as parents, we”€™re trying to find good content for our kids to read.

If you remember back in the Bible, the Book of Hebrews it has the Faith Hall of Fame, where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well.

I wanted to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called, “€œThe Courageous Leaders Collection“€ and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers.

There’s a second collection called, “€œHeroes of History“€ in this collection you read about people like Benjamin Franklin, Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, the list goes on and on.

This is a great collection for your young person to have and read. And it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at WallBuilders.com.

It Takes Mental, Emotional, And Physical Strength

Rick:

We’re back on WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us. Back with David and Tim Barton now. Guys, I thank the good Lord for Jerry Boykin. What a voice of reason. It’s gotta be tough on a guy like that to watch the degrading of the military over the last few years. He’s somebody that went through the whole thing. Delta Force, he’s a man’s man, he is a hero, and he’s had to watch this experimentation in his military.

David:

As everybody knows, the military is to kill people and break things. That’s why they exist. And it takes a special, not only type of training to be able to do that, but you have to deal with the psychological side of that.

We’ve talked before with other generals on this program about the PTSD side and how that so much of that is caused by moral injury. If you don’t have moral clarity, just having to do what the military requires you to do is going to create all sorts of confusion. That’s what leads to PTSD in so many cases.

We’ve talked about it. All the way back to the third century A.D. with Augustine in the military back there, people need to know that if you kill people in a time of war, in the right circumstances, you don’t need to feel guilty about that, God’s not going to hold you accountable for that. If you do it wrong, do like Saul did the Gibeonites in the Old Testament, yeah, you’re in trouble.

But if you do like David did with the Philistines then you’re not. And what’s the difference? So we should deal with it. So when you remove that moral clarity and you go to a moral ambiguity, you’ve got real problems. And what made it so much better for General Boykin, three-star general, was that for so many years, and actually generations and centuries before that, we created real moral clarity. In the last 8 to 10 years that has been undermined in a very, very, very significant way. So you’re right, Rick. For him to see that it’s tough.

But I thought he made several good points there. One really struck me he said, “€œKnowing the vicious nature of the LGBT movement.”€ And he’s right because he points out even people in their building were shot by that movement coming in to try to go after them because they support traditional marriage.

He said, “€œKnowing the vicious nature of that movement it really was boldness on the part of Trump to take that position knowing what’s going to happen to him publicly, and media, and everything else.

For Trump to take that position, that is a really, really, really big stand. And that’s a good stand for which you ought to be commended quite frankly, is bringing back some more clarity or trying to in the military.

We Need To Make Sure Our Military Gets The Training They Need

Rick:

Yeah, they definitely have been hammering him over it. But I’ve seen, I don’t follow a lot of the Twitter, the comments on Facebook, and whatnot, but I did look at one and it was a military guy getting on saying, “€œLet me describe to you the tough things we went through in Afghanistan, and the situations that we were in, and how these guys it went in that were “€˜normal and tough”€™ broke down in some of these situations because it was so hard on them. You’re living in close quarters.”€ And just all of that, he went through all the details. He’s like, “€œThis is a good thing that the president has done and it’s good for our military and good for our country.”€

David:

Even what Jerry was saying about talking to so many of the Reservists, now they only have a couple of days every month for training and now they’re spending those two days on all sorts of social engineering thing rather than on military training. And that really hurts those guys when you send them out in the field, you have to deploy them.

God forbid if something happens with Russia, or with North Korea, or anything else and we have to deploy high numbers like we did 10 years ago, man, now you have withheld from them the training that they need. You’ve been doing social engineering. And now that they’re out there defending their lives and our lives, they don’t have the training they need.

One of my kids did three active tours in Iraq. After the first tour, he was so ticked off at the under training that happened that he put extra time into beating his guys into shape. And if it was his great pride, in that deployment he brought all of his guys back, didn’t lose a single one.

But he watched so many of the guys having been lost because they hadn’t been trained properly for what they had to do. And so he was harder on his group than any other unit around there. But they all came back and that was his point. Jerry makes that same point, now we’re taking the training time away and doing social engineering and that’s not good for those guys and it”€™s sure not good for the country.

Your Service As A General Is Governed By The President

Rick:

No doubt. It’s going to be interesting to see how long it takes to reverse so many years of bad policies. We”€™ve still got bad policies from the Clinton years and eight years now of Obama.

David:

You had the question about “€œhow do you get the generals changed?”€ As Jerry answered, most of the senior leaders in the military today were chosen by Obama because his support of the Obama administration the reason Jerry is not an active duty, and it”€™s the same for any General, Generals do not get to serve at the pleasure of the military. They serve at the pleasure of the president.

So your promotion as a General and your service as a General is by the president and when the president says, “€œIt”€™s time for you to retire,”€ as Jerry said, that’s it. You retire. You don’t get to serve another three weeks or another three years, you’re out. It”€™s not your term in enlistment, your term is over when the president says it is.

So if Obama wants to get rid of guys like Jerry, which he did, and bring in a different set of guys than he can do that. I mean, that’s the president’s prerogative. So for Trump to be able to do that, as Jerry said, it’s going to take at least all of the first time to do that, because you”€™ve got to start replacing the other guys and promoting from underneath. But the guys that you’re promoting from underneath were they trained by the Obama generals that have been in for the last eight years or are they coming out of the military? And it just takes a while.

That’s why so many of the military guys- I was talking to the generals who were saying, “€œFor Trump to do the right thing, what he needs to do is he needs to not allow any general to serve who’s become a general in the last 10 years. They need to be gone.”€ And that was their view because they understand how political a generalship can be.

You certainly don’t want that in the military, which is why if you look at who Trump is shooting for generals there are older guys, they are guys that have been in for a while and haven’t been really active in recent stuff.

Tim:

I would also point out, guys that have seen combat, guys that have had those experiences. One of the things you saw under President Obama was he was promoting people at the Pentagon who had no military background, training, experience, whatsoever. And he’s putting them in positions of leadership when they’ve never done anything in the military.

This is kind of where our military began embracing this kind of cultural transgender social experiment was not by military guys who’d been in active combat, who had seen having many deployments downrange, but that’s where Trump is putting those guys around him who certainly have a lot more real life combat experience.

Military Transgender Order, Trump Moving The Military In A Good Direction

Rick:

Like you said, it’s going to take time to get it done. But we’ll probably start seeing the benefits fairly soon. You guys have brothers and sons in the in the military, have they seen a difference even in six months? At least with attitude, I mean people seem to be more positive.

David:

The morale is very different. There’s a real difference in morale. There are some differences starting to come down, like this Trump order on no more transgenders coming in the military. That is a morale booster for these guys because they talk about all the difficulties that even that one issue creates for them, all the way down and the NCO level.

So they’re seeing changes, the attitude change toward the way we’re handling ISIS has been a real good thing for them because now we’re approaching it more from a military standpoint than a political standpoint. In so many ways the morale has changed. But it will take awhile to get new leadership from top to bottom. No question about it.

Rick:

Special thanks to General Jerry Boykin for joining us today. Thank you for listening, you’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live!