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Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee thinks LGBTQ+ soldiers harm the military
December 12 2024, 08:15

Pete Hegseth – a former Fox News host and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense – believes said out LGBTQ+ soldiers “erode” the U.S military’s effectiveness in a recently un-earthed 2015 Fox News clip. He also believes that women in the military shouldn’t serve in combat roles, though he has tried to downplay those views to help his chance of winning Senate confirmation.

“What you’re seeing is a military right now that is more interested in social engineering led by this president than they are in war fighting. So, as a result, through ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ [DADT] and women in the military and these standards, they’re going to inevitably start to erode standards because they want that one female special operator, that one female Green Beret, that one female Army Ranger, that one female Navy Seal, so they can put them on a recruiting poster and feel good about themselves and has nothing to do with national security,” Hegseth told Fox News, according to Joe.My.God.

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Hegseth made his comment nearly five years after the repeal of DADT, a law that banned gay and bi people from serving openly in the military.

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While DADT was instituted in 1992 by President Bill Clinton as a “compromise” to let LGB people serve in the military as their authentic selves, it more than doubled the number of LGB people dishonorably discharged from the military. It also led to LGB servicemembers having to lie and stay closeted while they risked being blackmailed, interrogated, and threatened with violence from fellow servicemembers. It was repealed in December 2010.

These days, an estimated 6.1% of current military personnel identify as LGBTQ+, according to a 2022 study, a percentage that accounts for approximately 126,827 current servicemembers. If Hegseth is confirmed by the Senate, he will be partially responsible for re-instating Trump’s ban on out trans military service members, a policy that could result in the discharge of anywhere from 2,150 to 10,790 trans military members.

Hegseth also thinks women make the military less effective and less lethal, according to his comment in a November 7 installment of The Shawn Ryan Show podcast. He tried to backtrack his views against female soldiers, however, in a recent episode of the Fox News talk program Hannity.

“Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women who serve, raise their right hand to defend this country and love our nation, want to defend that flag, and they do it every single day around the globe,” Hegseth said, adding, “I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military.”

Hegseth’s views against LGBTQ+ soldiers shouldn’t be surprising seeing as he spent his college days at Princeton campaigning against LGBTQ+ rights.

As publisher of the conservative magazine The Princeton Tory in the early 2000s, he oversaw a team that railed against the “homosexual lifestyle,” and in one 2002 issue, argued that “The movement to legitimize the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriages is strong and must be vigorously opposed… their lifestyle deserves absolutely no special legal status.” 

In that same issue, Hegseth wrote in his “Notes from the Publisher” that the “glorification of diversity” is “a problem that plagues most of American academia today.” He said Western ideas “deserve priority over other areas of study” because the fact that the United States is a global superpower “demonstrates the[ir] enduring strength.”

Another slammed the New York Times for its decision to start covering same-sex marriage announcements, calling it “dangerous” because it could inspire people to want to marry siblings, children, or dogs.

The October 2002 issue criticized LGBTQ+ rights protests, declaring that “boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.”

A 2021 report commissioned by the heads of the U.S. military found that allowing LGB soldiers to serve while out had no negative impact on military readiness, effectiveness, or unit cohesion, despite worries to the contrary.

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