“The Defense Department and the military need to avail ourselves of all talent possible…to remain what we are now – the finest fighting force the world has ever known.”

“We don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who can best accomplish the mission.”

We have reason to be proud today of what this will mean for our military — because it is the right thing to do.

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said all of this with regard to women who believe they are men, or men who feel like they are women. These were the reasons given as to why the ban on transgender service has been lifted.

It turns out, Secretary Carter said almost exactly the same thing in December, when US Army Specialist Kanwar Singh asked, in essence, why women could serve in combat and homosexuals could serve openly — but Sikhs can’t:

Secretary Carter implied he believed Sikhs should be able to serve, using the same language as above.  (The full video is here, and shows the context of Secretary Carter riffing off SPC Singh’s question and generalizing it, without specifically mentioning Sikhs.)

Yet over the past few years of Secretary Carter’s term, Sikhs have been left in the closet while the focus has been on welcoming those with “diverse” sexual preferences — occasionally to the detriment of military religious freedom, some would say. What are the priorities, particularly given that religious liberty is explicitly protected from government interference by the US Constitution — while sexual liberty is not?  For now, it seems erotic liberty has taken precedence over religious liberty.

Secretary Carter also said

The Defense Department must have access to 100 percent of America’s population for its all-volunteer force to be able to recruit from among the most highly qualified, and to retain them.

Despite being part of that 100%, Sikhs have now resorted to a lawsuit to obtain access to the same “equal treatment” afforded to people based on their sexual behaviors.

Until that is resolved, the US military seems to be ok with a man in a dress, but not a man in a turban.

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