Administrative Discharge Board

The Louisiana Army National Guard is finally holding the administrative discharge board to discharge me for being transgender, this coming Wednesday, February 5th, 2014.

I finally have a JAG lawyer to help defend me and I wish that I could say that we have high hopes, but we don't. It's pretty much an open and shut case. To them.

I, on the other hand will have the opportunity to address the board. This is what I'm going to say:

Have any of you lost a child while fighting a war? I have. Do you have any idea of how that affects a parent? I do.

Do you know of the bargaining with God that occurs when you get called into the tent and the Chaplain can only tell you that "one" of your sons has died and you have to call home to find out which?

Can you for just a second imagine that phone call? How do I accurately describe hearing my wife scream "Joel is dead"?

I remember my knees going weak, I remember my stomach so upset that I wanted to throw-up. I remember thinking about my wonderful wife and children and wondering how, a half a world away, how they were going to make it without me?

10 years ago this week, I lost my son while I was fighting for our country in Iraq as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crewchief and door gunner.

After spending three weeks at home with my family, I was told I had to return to war. Is three weeks at home enough?
 Not at all.
 I briefly toyed with the idea of simply not going back but staying at home with a family and a mother who so desperately needed me. Instead, I was told that my unit needed me when I requested an extension. I returned to Iraq and fought alongside the other members of my unit.

God forbid, but, would I do that again? Absolutely not, I would have stayed home and taken care of my precious family. Isn’t that what a husband and father is supposed to do.

What happened when I returned to Iraq has changed my life.

During my time in combat, I flew almost 250 hours and this while holding a full time job as the maintenance company’s network and ULLS-A administrator.

The Army places great pride in what’s call the Army Values.

They are known by the acronym: LDRSHIP Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage. I can think of nothing in this life that requires more honor or personal courage than to commit to being yourself. I embodied that to the best of my abilities.

These are the Army Values combined with examples of each that I exhibited these are:


Loyalty


Returning to Iraq to re-join my unit after the death of my son is a good indication of loyalty

Duty


18 years of loyal service, including a deployment and many hurricanes including Katrina and Rita

Respect


Rising from enlisted to the officer ranks has only increased my respect for my brothers-in-arms and what they experience. 


Selfless Service


Ask my family what they think about selfless service and my combat deployments and then more importantly the many hurricane deployments leaving them at home to fend for themselves.


Honor


The knowledge that the President and the U.S. Army had the full faith and confidence in my abilities to commission me an officer.


Integrity


My blemish free record speaks for itself


Personal Courage


The fact that I’m being open finally with such a private part of my life, a part that had been hidden for so long is very indicative of personal courage. It is but the most recent.

As you know, I have had 18 years of honorable service. I enlisted in 1983 as a private on active duty. I spent 4 years in the Field Artillery as a Lance Missile Crewman. After four years I ETSed and served two years in the Louisiana

National Guard’s C co, 769th Engineer Bn as a Heavy Equipment Operator. I got out after completing this tour honorably and spent 10 years as a civilian, building a life and family. I returned in 2000 to the Louisiana National Guard and the 1st Bn 244th AVN, where I spent 7 years as a Blackhawk crewchief. It was after these experiences that I realized that I couldn’t fly anymore because of the trauma and needed to reclassify to something that did not fly or was near airplanes.

My civilian occupation for the last 20 years has been as a computer specialist. Considering this background, I found that I could become a Warrant Officer and Signal Systems Technician; a position that I hold today and feel that I really can contribute too.

At the 10 year mark of my career, I made Staff Sergeant, I spent 4 years at this rank, then applied for and was accepted into Warrant Officer Candidate School. I went on to graduate both WOCS and then WOBC in 2009.

Additionally, I've received the

Air Medal


Army Commendation Medal

Army Achievement Medal (3 rd Award)

Army Good Conduct Medal

National Defense Service Medal (2 nd Award)

Global War On Terrorism Expeditionary Medal

Global War On Terrorism Service Medal

Armed Forces Reserve Medal W/M Device

Humanitarian Service Medal

Armed Forces Service Medal


Army Service Ribbon


Overseas Service Ribbon
Army Reserve Components

Overseas Training Ribbon Louisiana War Cross

Louisiana Emergency Service Ribbon


F. Edward Hebert Meritorious Unit Commendation


Combat Action Badge


Honorary Commission Saint Charles Parish Sheriff's Department


Four years membership in Louisiana National Guard's SRT team


32 Challenge Coins, the highest of which is the Secretary of the Navy


Twice represented 204th at Louisiana Army National Guard's Soldier of the Year competition.


NCIS Badge, pin and patch from appreciative NCIS agent.

The Armed Forces have always had transgender service members. Evidence is presented for a HyperMasculine phase of development that coincides with the age of enlistment in nearly all gender dysphoric cases involving the military. The psychodynamic underpinnings of the choice to enlist are discussed in this theory. Current military policies, in association with a proposed hypermasculine phase of transsexual development, may actually result in a higher prevalence of transsexualism in the military than in the civilian population. What this describes is a destination where both male to female and female to male transsexuals can go to find their male selves. The male to females go to the service in a bid to become real men and rid themselves of these feelings they or society doesn’t understand. The female to males join to become the men they know themselves to be. Many female to males go on to become productive members of the armed services. Some even are out as transitioned men with the full knowledge of their chains of command.

The Nebraska National Guard has a fully transitioned female to male in their ranks to name but one state.

I’m sure this board and the military personnel gathered can name a few successful transmen on their own. These servicemen serve discretely, because many identify as butch or lesbian to navigate a poorly written and now abdjectley wrong regulation the best they can.


Can you name a transwoman in the military? Outside of me? Probably not.

Why is that? Is it because the military considers violence as manly and that anyone who “voluntarily” gives up their masculinity must be mentally defective and that those who seek to embrace their masculine side are somehow more acceptable or better suited to close with and kill the enemy? We are aware that the services have ended DADT and are even considering women for combat MOSs. Why are genetic women beginning to be seen as capable of the combat MOSs and trans-women are shown the door? Australia, the UK and Canada all allow transgender service, why can’t the United States

I am as qualified and capable as any woman and most of the men. In fact more. If anything being a transwoman makes me better. I can’t get pregnant or have any of the other problems associated with being a genetic female, specifically, any of the 11 genetic female conditions described in AR 40-501, chapter 2-14a. (The very manual that this board is trying to discharge me under). This includes Endometriosis, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and a host of others.

Neither will I be susceptible to the 8 genetic male conditions that merit a discharge described in the same chapter. I am a better soldier for it.
 In my opinion, the DoD should not have Army or any DoD psychiatrists. Or, they should change the rules regarding what is reportable to the unit and why and what is not.
 I went to Dr. Gallagher for PTSD evaluations twice. Once in 2010 and again just about a year ago in March of 2013.

In 2009, the PTSD was bad enough to keep me from deploying the 2ndtime.

However, in Dr. Gallagher’s most recent evaluation last year, my PTSD was not bad enough to discharge me. In fact, it was his opinion voiced to me during this meeting that in his experience, PTSD doesn’t get worse, it only gets better. This directly contradicts 4 other independent psychiatrists. Two of them VA doctors who have made a career of treating PTSD.


Why didn’t Dr. Gallagher consider the opinions of the other doctors when he accessed my VA records electronically via his Army computer? Why doesn't the board demand an explanation regarding this discrepancy?


Is it because of a bias against the transgender and particularly the MTF? We might need to ask him. I met him for a PTSD evaluation, but while there it was evident that Dr. Gallagher had already made up his mind, having accessed read my VA medical records before my arrival, possibly ignoring the PTSD.

This biased and intrusive evaluation is why I feel that the military should not employ their own psychiatrists for these evaluations. One idea proposed is to use the VA for psychiatric evaluations to ease concerns of bias or incompetence.

Could my feelings of being a failure as a man because of the dysphoria and now, as a father because of the death of my son when I was deployed, been due to
 my insistence of implementing "Tough Love" by initiating the phone call that started the process that culminated with the death of Joel, my son; combined with my war experiences worked to exacerbate over time the PTSD symptoms that include: nightmares, night sweats, irritability, anger and

heightened alertness/response caused by these experiences brought on an unreconciled case of extreme gender dysphoria for which the only treatment is surgery? For that answer, just ask my children, ex-wife and two previous therapists what they think.

Please remember, I had dealt successfully with this for 42 years as evidenced by my marriage, family and a successful Army/National Guard career that includes medals, awards and commendations.

In conclusion, to discharge me for Gender Disorder is not only wrong
 because almost a year ago the psychiatric community; the civilian Psychiatric community because I'm excluding the Army doctor that examined me who has apparently not received the update, agreed that it is no longer a psychiatric disorder or mental condition and never was, but rather a medical illness with surgery as the only treatment sometimes. This means that not only am I being discharged for a condition that doesn't exist, but one that very well could have been exacerbated by the PTSD that occurred when my unit deployed. I am here to testify that the surgery successfully corrected the dysphoria. And at one year post- operatively, I am fully healed physically.

The PTSD remains however and it hasn't gotten better over time, but on the contrary only worsened.

For example on December 7, 2011, I was driving along at about 2330 through the backwoods of Louisiana going to drill and struck and killed a deer.

I didn't see the deer until it seemed my car was right next to the little thing. It was in the oncoming lane and at that moment I was alongside, it decided to leap in front of my car. I screamed and jerked the wheel to the left.

I almost missed it.

Now, I can't stop thinking about that deer. 
Unfortunately, It wasn’t long before I understood why the deer's death affected me so much.
However, I didn't expect what happened next.

December 17, 2011

It was a dream...no, a nightmare.
I woke up crying. It was the deer accident that was being replayed. The nightmare happened just as I described earlier.
To a point.
Here's the difference: After I hit the deer, I stopped and got out to check on the deer. I ran around the car and when I got to the front, I saw something that still terrifies me and leaves me a sweating, heaving mess.
It wasn't a deer on the side of the road....It looked like SGT Matthew Maupin. The Army soldier that I witnessed getting ambushed, kidnapped and eventually murdered while I was flying on a mission. This was an action that I wasn’t able to engage in support of these soldiers because of the VIPs that were on-board.
I have always felt that I failed him and his unit by not engaging in some way. By my inaction, I feel that 6 people died and 3 people were captured with only one surviving.
In this dream I run to him and hold him in my arms.
Only, when I take him in my arms, it is my son Joel who is begging me asking me why I left him and our family........


They continue to die in my arms to this day.


Or, let me tell you about Mosul and how the mortars fall continuously in my dreams, the fireworks that send me to dark rooms and closets, the smells that bring me back to Baghdad or as it has been primarily, nightmares of that phone call in the desert.

I realize that others have had horrific experiences, but we must also acknowledge that even though we share common experiences, the trauma is unique.

So, if we propose to base a policy of discharging soldiers who challenge the perception of gender on the promotion of good order, discipline and 
morale, we must prepare for a challenge on the grounds that there is no empirical evidence that transsexuals have an adverse impact on those values.

I've proven that my past history of being transsexual didn't keep me from holding and keeping the Army Values. Nor did it keep me from being tactically and technically proficient.

I’m a year post-operative and physically healed.

The real issue is the PTSD, just as it has been since 2004 and this needs to be treated and not ignored.

 I urge you to consider this when deciding my legacy.

Thank You