When thinking about Donald Trump’s tweets about banning “transgender individuals” from military service, the first thing to keep in mind is that the primary purpose of the United States military—any military in fact—is to win wars. Or, as the Marines put it, to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver. Feel free to extrapolate to the service branch of your preference.

Ahhh, preference. When it comes to contemporary notions of how one establishes gender identity, there appears to be a spectrum of options running from the proposal that one has the freedom to self-select gender identity by autonomous fiat—and to do so any number of times—to the binary insistence that gender identity is something one can only discover. I’m no longer confident where to fit in my own apparently arcane notion that gender is a social expression of the reality of one’s sex, which is, itself, a biological reality whether we like it or not. That said, I do not question whether some individuals suffer psychological and emotional disconnects with their own bodies. I have known too many people who, as best as I can tell, honestly do. All of them, like everyone else, whether they know it or not, are bearers of the Divine image. Christ died for every one of them. God loves them. But all of them, like everyone else, whether they know it or not, are also victims of the fall of humanity.

One of the costs of this fall was death. In the Hebrew mind, death carries the connotation of separation. A host of rifts plagues humanity following the fall. We are separated from one another, from God, and even from ourselves. The human condition is marked by disease. It is not unloving to believe that gender dysphoria is a disease. As such, it is not to be celebrated or, in most ways, accommodated—even as we love and walk and live alongside those who suffer it.

Because of this, I am ready to agree with the President on his recent announcement, over Twitter:

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow … Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.

I say, “ready to agree” because, as is so often case, I don’t really know what the hell Trump is actually saying. The President’s ability to deliver a message well often competes in incompetency with the US Postal System—on an off day. Addressing the problem, Senator John McCain issued a statement pointing out that, in the first place, Twitter is an inappropriate medium through which to makes such an announcement. I assume many of the people who identify as transgender and want to serve in the military do so with no political ambitions greater than the act of service itself. So Trump’s roll-out on Twitter is unnecessarily heartless. There is no good reason to be flippantly dismissive of anyone’s sincere desire to serve our nation—even if one thinks the service certain Americans can best render to the nation is to not serve in the armed forces.

In the second place, as McCain continued:

The statement was unclear. The Department of Defense has already decided to allow currently-serving transgender individuals to stay in the military, and many are serving honorably today. Any American who meets current medical and readiness standards should be allowed to continue serving. There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military—regardless of their gender identity. We should all be guided by the principle that any American who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so—and should be treated as the patriots they are.

What McCain is signaling here is that the only standard for whether or not a loyal American should serve in our nation’s armed services is military fitness and readiness. These standards must not be susceptible to changes in deference to social experimentation, political correctness, or hurt feelings.

While people are to be evaluated individually, there are group characteristics that are relevant and with which we need to be cognizant. This is as true for asthmatics as for those suffering gender dysphoria. A pair of often unbearably grim reports (here and here) alerts us to several red flags regarding the possible military fitness of people who identify as transgender. Ryan Anderson, over at The Daily Signal, points to these and other reports when he writes:

Unfortunately, 41 percent of people who identify as transgender will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, compared to 4.6 percent of the general population. And people who have had transition surgery are 19 times more likely than average to die by suicide. People who identify as transgender suffer a host of mental health and social problems—including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse—at higher rates than the general population.

The high-stress environment of the military, to say nothing about combat deployments, will only exacerbate such symptoms. It is no act of love to place individuals with a greater susceptibility to depression and self-harm in a situation likely to push them beyond their capacity to endure.

Moreover, we must establish the fitness to serve of a particular individual who identifies as transgender—and to establish it based on the physical standards of their biological sex. Another consideration is transgender accommodations. On this point, it seems the choices are quite clear.

First, in deference to concerns including unnecessary spending and the right to privacy of all personnel, no special allowances should be made for quartering—including shower, bathroom, and barrack facilities—those who identify as transgender. They should be quartered according to their biological sex.

Second, as neatly summarized by Providence contributing editor Mac Owens, “Any person who enters the military has to leave it with the same ‘gender’ as when he/she joined. No transition. No surgery. No hormone treatment.” Not only does sex-reassignment surgery, recovery, and ongoing maintenance make hash out of a transitioning individual’s fitness, readiness, and ability to deploy, but it’s ridiculously expensive. Granted, not every individual who identifies as transgender will seek reassignment surgery, and while the costs associated with such treatments are contested, it should be clear that in an already stressed military budget, there are better ways to connect the spending of limited funds with the military’s task of locating, closing with, and destroying the enemy.

We must never belittle a loyal American’s honest desire to serve our nation—which is eminently worthy of such service. We must always treat one another with love. But love doesn’t always look the way we might want, and the best way to serve our nation sometimes includes respectfully declining the service of some.

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Marc LiVecche (PhD, University of Chicago) is managing editor of Providence

This essay first appeared as the Providence digital newsletter. For a free subscription, click here

image credit: US Army-Flickr