Q Toon: The Eyes of Texas

Here I thought over the weekend, as I settled at my drawing board to work on this week's Q Syndicate cartoon, that I'd be able to get ahead of the news cycle by drawing about Texas's "Bathroom Bill," which was passed by the state Senate late Tuesday night, 21 to 20.

Well, thanks to the Twit in the White House, there's a much bigger LGBT issue dominating the news cycle.

In a series of three tweets, written in more formal language than we are accustomed to seeing from him, mercurial American President Donald "Bone Spur" Trump abruptly halted the Pentagon's progress toward welcoming transgender service men and women in the U.S. military.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow ... Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming ... victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you”

As others have pointed out, the "tremendous medical costs" of transgender service members are dwarfed by the medical cost in our military budget of boner pills. Since the estimates of the numbers of transgender service members vary widely, their "medical costs" to the military range widely as well -- but it's still only .001% of the Pentagon's overall budget.

By analyzing private health insurance data on gender transition-related expenditures, (such as hormone therapy or surgical treatment, for instance), researchers found that Military Health System costs could increase by $2.4 million and $8.4 million per year if it were extended to cover the estimated 1,320 to 6,630 transgender people in the military. This amount pales in comparison to the Department of Defense's $49.3 billion health care expenditures in 2014, for example, and would represent between 0.005% to 0.017% of the department's overall health care costs, according to the study.
Overall, the study estimated that only 29–129 service members would seek gender transition–related care per year, and 30 to 140 personnel would seek hormone therapy. Another 25 to 130 personnel would seek surgical treatment.

Perhaps Mr. Trump – or Mike Pence, or one of those hand-laying evangelicals from last week, or whoever had spoken to Donald Duce last – has his panties in a wad that once the U.S. military opens itself to transgender recruits, gender reassignment surgery will suddenly rocket in popularity from sea to shining sea.

Ahem. This blog post was supposed to be about the Texas Bathroom Bill, and I've practically ignored the topic altogether.

Another tweet, this one from comedian Mark Agee, brings the two topics back together:

"Sorry I was led to believe that trans people were so skilled in combat that I should fear being alone in a bathroom with them."

As the newsmedia cover Trump's ban, members of the Texas legislature might want to keep in mind that those manly guys being interviewed as representatives of transgender soldiers and veterans are the very men that Senate Bill 3 requires to use the ladies' room. Your womenfolk are not going to appreciate that.

The line for the ladies' room is long enough.