Anti-Trans Legislation Is Becoming a National Security Issue

Anti-Trans Legislation Is Becoming a National Security Issue


There are few experiences as quintessentially American—at least in the Friday Night Lights sense—as marrying your military-bound high school sweetheart. That is the story of Lindsey Lee’s life. She met her husband in high school and they married shortly thereafter. When he decided to attend the Air Force Academy, they moved to Colorado as a team, and later had two children. In the past 20 years, the family has moved almost a dozen times, crisscrossing the country for military assignments they could not predict nor control. “I’m proud of us,” Lee says with a gentle laugh as she recalls the experience of uprooting their small family again and again.


That has always been a basic function of military living. Certain states specialize in different military needs: naval ship-building on the coast of Florida or space policy in Colorado. Soldiers are “assigned” to states where their skills are needed, ensuring that the military has the right people in the right place at the right time in preparation for an attack.

However, members of the military and their families are being forced to refuse assignments in certain states by laws that limit access to bathrooms, sports teams, and gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary children. As a result, many of these families are seeking compassionate reassignment, which enables them to relocate for a year, or making the life-changing decision to leave the military altogether.

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