Colorado Springs woman glad for transgender military ruling

Reaction continues to pour into our newsroom amid a federal judge’s ruling to allow openly transgender people to enlist in the military.

The Department of Justice appealed the decision citing an “extraordinary burden on our armed forces,” so we looked into the reported concerns from the perspective of a transgender soldier.

Joel Rael was stationed at Fort Irwin at the National Training Center in 1998, working as a mechanic for four years.

“I did everything that a male solider did, but inside I still knew I didn’t feel right,” Rael said.

Rael didn’t come out as a trans woman until 2009. She said she knew what would happen if she did it while enlisted.

“Right away I would be ostracized from everybody and then kicked out,” she said.

Nearly 20 years later, she knows mindsets are starting to change. Just this week — Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that openly transgender people can enlist in the U.S. military.

“I’m glad to see that,” Rael said. “We’ve always been there but now we don’t have to hide it.”

But many question what this will mean for our military operations. Here are some of the questions asked by our viewers on Facebook.

Several viewers asked if the military will have to pick up extra costs for gender-transition hormone treatments. The Rand Corporation, a non-profit research firm, estimates the tab for active-duty soldiers seeking the treatment to range between $2 and $8 million a year.

Another big question: are these transgender men and women deployable?

Rael says yes.

“It’s no different than any other solider, we all sign on the dotted line and we know that if the country calls, we would go to service and do what we were trained to do,” she said.

However, Rael did point out, in some respect, it could affect ‘unit cohesion.’

“There’s going to be people that will find it hard to adjust and maybe they can’t,” said Rael.