Prior to President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order that racially integrated the nation’s armed services, one of the major arguments for keeping the military segregated was the idea that Black soldiers should not be allowed to sleep next to or use the same bathroom facilities as white soldiers. There were other arguments as well. One was that integration would somehow damage “unit cohesion, esprit de corps, and discipline” necessary for a fighting force, and that would negatively affect the combat readiness of the military. Another was the false and racist allegation, expressed in these exact words, that “Blacks can’t fight.”

Listen to this claptrap from Trump’s January 27 executive order banning transgender people from service in our military:

“The Armed Forces have been afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service like physical and mental health, selflessness, and unit cohesion.”

“A gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”

“Absent extraordinary operational necessity, the Armed Forces shall neither allow males to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for females, nor allow females to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for males.”

They can’t even come up with new words with which to express their prejudice. Substitute “Black” or “Negro” or “African American” for “gender identity” or “gender ideology” or “male” and “female” in the above statement, and what do you get? Flat out bigotry unadorned by anything even pretending to reason, because prejudice has no rationality.

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled in an order of less than a page that the Trump administration can continue to remove transgender members of the military from their service to this country and ban the service of transgender Americans who volunteer to serve while lawsuits seeking to overturn Trump’s executive order continue to make their way through the courts.

This means that in the future, even if the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of service by people who are transgender, those who have been discharged would have to reapply for admission to their previous ranks and positions in the military. They would have lost the intervening time they would have served, been denied time in service leading to retirement benefits, and in cases where service members reside in military housing, they would be ordered to vacate the places where they live.

How the Supreme Court could not read the plain language of Trump’s pathetic excuse for an executive order and see the prejudice dripping from its every syllable is yet another disgrace with which this country must contend. What about patriotism? Are we to read Trump’s executive order and the Supreme Court’s upholding of it, even if it turns out to be only temporary, as denying to people who are transgender the right to be patriotic and act upon it by serving their country in uniform?

Trump’s other executive order that there are “only two genders, male and female” denies the right of Americans to live openly as who they are. The order smacks of the time of segregation, when Black people were denied the right to live full lives, including in many states, the right to marry people of a different race from their own.

They always start somewhere. Today, it is transgender Americans. And tomorrow? Are we to return to a time of Americans being compelled to live half-lives? If transgender people can be denied the right to serve openly in the military, how long until they will be denied the right to be hired for a job in civilian life because of their gender identity? Will banks be allowed to “red-line” loans to transgender people, or even deny them bank accounts and credit cards because they are transgender?

Will transgender people be denied drivers’ licenses unless they reflect the name and gender on their birth certificates? What about the right to vote? Will registering to vote be denied to people who have changed their names and the sex on their drivers’ licenses?

What Trump’s transgender executive orders do is to subtract a group of people from citizenship guaranteed by the Constitution. Are we to have a future which mirrors our past, when Black people, because of the color of their skin, did not have the equal protection of our laws, including the right to vote, the right to attend schools of their choice, the right to employment, the right to eat at a restaurant or to check into a hotel or motel for the night? Will these rights be stripped from people because of their gender identity? If being transgender is effectively made to be illegal, how long before being gay or lesbian or bisexual is illegal?

It's not just patriotism that has no gender. It is citizenship. It is humanity. There isn’t liberal blood and conservative blood, or Republican blood and Democratic blood, or gay blood or trans blood and straight blood, or Black blood and white blood, or male blood and female blood. Cut us, and we all bleed red.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. He writes every day at luciantruscott.substack.com and you can follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.