Well I will re-state that the ban is bad. But it isn't that severe compared to many cases of discrimination that are allowed to legally continue in the US. Why?
1) It affects a very, very small number of people.
2) It does not really prevent one from having a full life, getting a great education, a great job, etc. If the US was some militarized society where serving in the army gives you extra rights, and virtually every male serves in the military, that would be a different case. But as it stands, only a tiny fraction of people ever serve. If you look at the richest people in the US, at the most successful people in any field, how many actually served?
3) serving in the army is not some fundamental human right. As I already mentioned, many people are prevented from serving even though they really wanted it, due to conditions they were born with and which are not in anyway "their fault" (much like being trans). Some people who would make perfectly fine soldiers, or perfectly fine non-combatant officers are barred often due to some obsolete checkbox stating that people with X or Y meaningless condition cannot serve.
1. It's merely one aspect of transphobia, and one of the easiest and most recent to prove. The whole example came out of people demanding proof from a trans poster, in this thread.
2. Plenty of people better-informed than me on the American military's impact on someone's life have pointed out that this isn't actually the case. Being a member of the armed forces comes with a bunch of benefits, and people frequently enlist for those benefits.
3. I never claimed it was a fundamental right. That doesn't mean it's not discrimination. There are plenty of other things that aren't "fundamental human rights", like the ability to donate blood (that gay people are prevented from), but still are examples of discrimination in society.
I consider severity to not just be relevant to the scale and impact of a particular type of activity, but also the demographic it affects. A demographic that is arguably one of the worst off (like trans people frequently are, in various aspects of society) is more at threat from measures like these, which is why I class it as more severe, than, say, unfair medical rules that exempt people who want to serve. Despite being the same kind of thing, the demographic being unpunished is already worse-off, which makes the lack of support created by this ban more devastating to anyone who was considering it (or already serving!).
The most disturbing aspect of this, for me, is the fact it came from the federal government. I honestly thought this would be a good example for conservative, libertarian, or other anti "big-government" (sorry for the quotes, it's a bit different here in the UK to in the States) position that I know folks on CFC can hold.
Don't act like you're playing games then. The whole thing even started with you dismissing the question outright just because I happened to ask it in a thread where other people have been talking about the severity of saying mean things to people in hats, as if that's a remotely reasonable criterion to be using. Now you're saying you can't even understand the comparison, acting like you think I'm directly equating library book allowances to the topic at hand and getting all handbaggy about it, rather than just accepting that I was (obviously) using it as an abstract example to make a specific point. It's fairly typical of you and I've seen you do it with other people plenty of times too - creating this obfuscating smoke screen of asides, blind alleys, "misunderstanding/misinterpretation", goalpost shifting, etc etc.
Good old-fashioned behaviour from you here, so, whatever. Remember this the next time you're complaining at anyone on here for being unfairly maligned for what they presume your behaviour to be, because my good faith in your return is exhausted.
