As the world burns, the US military could soon court martial troops for 'misgendering' other service members

WASHINGTON, DC - Amidst the current political landscape, the Pentagon's focus on ensuring service members use “preferred pronouns” is a significant development, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. With tensions high around the world and our college campuses resembling the mayhem of the 1960s, the decision to focus on pronouns rather than serious issues should prove disturbing to any right-thinking American.

The outlet reports that the military is looking to punish those service members who refuse to use another service member’s preferred pronouns, military experts say. 

Under a 2020 Equal Opportunity law, commanders may now subject anyone who refuses to “affirm” a transgender servicemember’s “gender identity” to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for alleged “harassment,” according to Captain Thomas Wheatley, an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

While any such move would be an apparent infringement of a servicemember’s constitutional right to express their closely held religious beliefs, there are other more “subtle” ways the military could punish members for the politically incorrect sin of misappropriating pronouns. 

Military insiders told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Congress must step in and handle this nonsense before it is too late. The military is already facing a recruiting crisis, and focusing on such an absurd issue appears self-defeating. 

Military.com reported that in 2023, only the Marine Corps and Space Force met recruiting goals. The Army was 10,000 recruits short of its goal of 65,000 active-duty enlisted soldiers, the Air Force recruited only 24,100 of the 26,877 goal, and the Navy recruited 30,236 active-duty sailors out of its 37,000 sailor goal. 

Also, according to Military.com, in 2018, the Reagan Foundation found that 70% of Americans would recommend joining the military when there was relative peace around the world. By last November, a similar survey showed that number had plummeted to 51%, perhaps driven by the Biden administration’s feckless foreign policy, which has seen conflicts spring up in Ukraine and the Middle East and which has China saber-rattling in the Pacific.

Now would hardly seem to be the time to punish active duty members for the ridiculous “crime” of misgendering someone. Even military families are discouraging their children from signing up:

Wheatley conceded that the military “is right to want to protect the rights and welfare of its transgender service members. But it owes the same protection to those with a different perspective on the issue, especially when that perspective is a deep-seated expression of personal conscience.” 

While none of the military’s rules explicitly say “misgendering” is a violation of the UCMJ, however guidance “implies that using pronouns rejected by another person violates Military Equal Opportunity (MEO) regulations against sex-based harassment and discrimination,” the Daily Caller wrote. Those regulations are enforced under the UCMJ. 

Wheatley told the Daily Caller that service members could technically be court-martialed for “refusing to use another person’s self-identified pronouns, even when their refusal stems from principled religious conviction,” he said. 

“This law applies to service members at all times and in all locations, even when they’re off duty and in the privacy of their off-post residence.” 

Wheatley continued that Article 133 under the UCMJ prohibits “conduct unbecoming of an officer,” while Article 134 addresses bringing discredit to the military institution. That same section is used to prosecute child pornographers and acts of sexual deviance, he said. 

“Is it now ‘unbecoming’ and incompatible with service as a commissioned officer to openly hold sincere religious convictions surrounding the act of creation and the nature of human sex?” Wheatley asked rhetorically. 

Wheatley became interested in the topic when the Army updated its MEO policy, stating that “violations of MEO and Harassment Prevention and Response policies may result in disciplinary action under the UCMJ.” 

Wheatley noted that the Supreme Court ruling in a case called Bostock v. Clayton County grew his interest. In that case, the high court ruled in favor of gay and transgender plaintiffs, where they alleged they were fired based on their self-reported sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Dissenting conservative justices warned at the time that the case could have “far-reaching consequences” for organizations that operated based on religious beliefs and the free exercise of religion in the workplace. 

“I knew, given the cultural gap between the civilian world and the military, the issue would be overlooked as it concerned service members. So I got to work,” Wheatley told the Daily Caller. 

Wheatley wrote in a peer-reviewed article published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics that he didn’t believe Articles 133 and 134 of the UCMJ are applicable to be able to prosecute service members for refusing to use preferred pronouns. 

However, despite a legal doctrine that “obligates the military courts to avoid interpreting the UCMJ in a way that brings it into conflict with the Constitution if possible, that would normally be the end of the analysis,” Wheatley wrote. However, he noted that national security imperatives within the military can justify circumventing a servicemember’s constitutional rights. 

Wheatley wrote that the military's special mission can assist with judicial analysis; however, it does not require a separate standard. 

“A court that applies a standard lower than strict scrutiny would be placing not just a thumb on the scale in the government’s favor, but an anvil–one which virtually guarantees victory for the government in every case where a service member asserts his or her First Amendment rights,” he wrote. He said it would be “tough” for the military to show it had a strong enough mission-related argument to mandate gender pronoun usage. 

While some arguments, such as preserving esprit de corps and harmony within the military while protecting transgender troops’ well-being, are valid, they rely “too heavily on the vicissitudes of individual interpretation to survive judicial review.” The latter argument, he wrote, “does not take into account the health of the servicemember seeking to live out their religious convictions.” 

“Preserving unit cohesion and safeguarding the mental and emotional health of transgender service members, though compelling government interests, do not justify the sweeping prior restraints on speech,” contained in the Army policy, Wheatley wrote. 

Wheatley also examined cases of public employment law that governed speech, an area where free speech has been more frequently challenged than in the military. He said there was no strong case that mandated pronoun use. 

Wheatley wrote, “The use of one pronoun over another reflects the speaker’s private views on human sex and gender” isn’t conditioned on the person’s employment.” 

The Daily Caller News Foundation contacted the various military branches for comment; however, none responded by the publication deadline. 

Under the Biden administration, the military has removed focus from its mission of protecting the homeland and turned it into a woke experimentation lab. 

For example, Pentagon leaders have been pushing diversity and inclusion, claiming it is “an indispensable component of warfighting effectiveness, the Daily Caller wrote. Conversely, opponents of the Pentagon’s woke focus say it has taken the military’s focus off more important issues while unfairly privileging minorities. They note that DEI priorities have “overtaken matters of conscience in multiple domains.” 

The military’s focus on wokeness and borderline discrimination against objectors to the COVID-19 vaccine began after Biden took office. Many service members have filed lawsuits over the Pentagon’s slow-walking of religious waiver requests from the COVID-19 vaccine, where they issued blanket denials instead of making individual decisions on each request, as the law requires. 

“The military policy and legal infrastructure clearly exist to wage war on Americans with deeply-held traditional beliefs about man and woman,” William Thibeau, director of the Claremont Institute’s American Military Project, told the Daily Caller. He said Wheatley’s article “should be a red flag to policymakers and elected officials to end this tyranny of liberalism before it is formally levied against American soldiers preferring to live in reality.” 

The experts spoke to said they were unaware of any incidents in which service members have been punished for using preferred pronouns. However, that doesn’t mean they cannot do so if they wish. 

As Wheatley mentioned, service members can be disciplined in subtle ways, short of a full court martial. He said such methods can be quickly resolved, have a lower burden of proof than a full court-martial, and “are almost always shielded from public scrutiny.” 

In a one-pager from the Claremont Institute, they suggest Congress intervene by forcing the military to establish a servicemember’s “unqualified” right to use pronouns consistent with their religious convictions. Furthermore, they suggested certain MEO violations be decriminalized and narrow their scope so that they only apply to servicemember’s activity performed during normal duty hours or which contribute to an official military mission. 

Claremont also advocated for Congress to develop a public record of incidents where religious freedom was threatened and for the military to “conduct regular training on the importance of religious freedom throughout the armed forces, while also exploring “ways to strengthen protections on service members’ religious expression.” 

Finally, Claremont suggested military leaders consider any demand for a servicemember to speak in violation of their religious beliefs as harassment.