There is an extensive history of LGBTQ+ invisibility in the United States military. For instance, although official regulations banning the enlistment of sexual minorities such as lesbian, gay, and bisexual people can be traced back to the 1920s (Bérubé, 2010), the more recent (and notorious) ‘don't ask, don't tell’ (DADT) policy was implemented in 1993 and later repealed in 2011 (Kerrigan, 2012; Proctor& Krusen, 2017). While the DADT policy prohibited the military from directly asking a service member about their sexual orientation, service personnel were still able to be discharged if their sexual orientation became known through credible information or voluntary disclosure (where credible information might include ambiguous references to sexuality on medical records; see Howe, 2018). Indeed, 1,046 service personnel were discharged in 1999 alone for ‘conduct unbecoming’ related to sexual orientation (Sobel et al., 2001), and more than 13,000 service members have been discharged as a result of the DADT policy (McDermott, 2016).

While the repeal of DADT has been heralded as a victory for LGBTQ+ rights, the policy did not apply to transgender service members (Kerrigan, 2012). Trans people were unable to enlist and serve in the armed forces until the Department of Defense lifted the ban in 2016 under the Obama administration, which would have allowed transgender military personnel not only to openly serve their country but also to receive gender-affirming surgery previously excluded by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) starting in January 2018 (Zucker, 2018, p. 329). However, this 2016 decision was reversed by the Trump administration in 2017 through a series of memorandums issued by President Trump, the second of which states that ‘transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria … are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances’, with the justification that the medical treatment for gender dysphoria is ‘substantial’, including medications and surgery (cited in Manuel, 2020, p. 82). In 2019, the Supreme Court ‘stayed the preliminary injunctions while the lower courts continued to hear arguments, allowing the transgender military ban to go into effect’ (Manuel, 2020, p. 88). This is not the same as the Supreme Court directly upholding these restrictions, for which there are still several lower court cases pending in multiple states at the time of writing this chapter (Manuel, 2020).