Texas 2019 - 86th Regular

Texas House Bill HCR156 Compare Versions

Only one version of the bill is available at this time.

Old	New	Differences
1	1	86R25848 BPG-D
2	2	By: Reynolds H.C.R. No. 156
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5	5	CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
6	6	WHEREAS, Transgender service members have served openly in
7	7	the U.S. military since 2016, bravely defending our nation, but the
8	8	Trump administration is implementing a new de facto ban on
9	9	transgender troops; and
10	10	WHEREAS, Years of research and consideration by the Pentagon
11	11	and the secretary of defense guided the decision to officially
12	12	allow transgender people to serve in the military, and today, our
13	13	armed forces include nearly 15,000 transgender troops around the
14	14	world, in all occupational specialties; in 2018, all four service
15	15	chiefs, as well as the incoming commandant of the Coast Guard,
16	16	testified to the U.S. Congress that transgender service members do
17	17	not impair the cohesion of military units and that they had not seen
18	18	any discipline, morale, or unit readiness problems; and
19	19	WHEREAS, Previously, 56 retired generals and admirals
20	20	released a statement warning that the ban "would cause significant
21	21	disruptions, deprive the military of mission-critical talent, and
22	22	compromise the integrity of transgender troops who would be forced
23	23	to live a lie, as well as non-transgender peers who would be forced
24	24	to choose between reporting their comrades or disobeying policy";
25	25	and
26	26	WHEREAS, Six former United States surgeons general issued a
27	27	statement to "underscore that transgender troops are as medically
28	28	fit as their non-transgender peers and that there is no medically
29	29	valid reason, including a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, to exclude
30	30	them from military service or to limit their access to medically
31	31	necessary care"; the American Medical Association, the American
32	32	Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric
33	33	Association have all expressed opposition to the ban, which is
34	34	based on flawed scientific and medical assertions; and
35	35	WHEREAS, A 2016 RAND study concluded that allowing
36	36	transgender people to serve would have "minimal impact" on Pentagon
37	37	readiness and health care costs and "little or no impact on unit
38	38	cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness"; and
39	39	WHEREAS, Historians relate that transgender soldiers fought
40	40	in the American Revolution and the Civil War, among them hundreds of
41	41	individuals assigned female gender at birth who enlisted and served
42	42	in the military as men; one well-known example, Union Army soldier
43	43	Albert Cashier, fought in the siege of Vicksburg and other battles
44	44	and continued to live as a transgender man after the war; and
45	45	WHEREAS, The ban on transgender troops is a policy dictated
46	46	by prejudice rather than sound, considered analysis of the needs of
47	47	our military and its personnel, and in an era when recruitment is a
48	48	challenge, it is particularly reprehensible to bar and eject
49	49	qualified individuals who want to serve our country; now,
50	50	therefore, be it
51	51	RESOLVED, That the 86th Legislature of the State of Texas
52	52	hereby respectfully urge the United States Congress to oppose the
53	53	transgender military ban; and, be it further
54	54	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
55	55	copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
56	56	the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
57	57	Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
58	58	members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
59	59	this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
60	60	memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.