It’s really absurd on so many levels.

Beyond the obvious mentioned by others, a lot of these people are skilled in specific fields that are particularly hard to find replacements for. Like, the military has serious issues with retention of specialists (I mean the general term, not the rank) as of late, so to be intentionally kicking out a significant cohort of specialists on arbitrary grounds is just going to make the issue worse.

Not to mention that they’re setting an example that this could happen to any number of potentially targeted groups, who will probably avoid joining, or committing to a long term career if they do join, shrinking the pool of applicants for specialist positions even further.

It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Uh…so they’re giving people years of weapons and hand to hand combat training and then fucking up their ability to retire in a quiet dignified way?

That is… Not how I would have handled that situation.

Edit: I’m just… processing that people can make stupider choices than I thought possible.

This feels like the “poking a sleeping bear for no clear reason” special kind of stupid.

These days in the USA it’s no longer ‘who you are & what you do’ that determines your social status, it’s ‘what you are’, the details of your personhood, which used to be governed by the First Amendment, among other legal assurances at the federal level & elsewhere. Now, the GOP-dominated federal government says every day in as many ways as are possible, “Bye bye E Pluribus Unum!”

Multiple service members had already been approved for early retirement, but those approvals were rescinded, advocates say. An air force spokesperson said a subset of applications were “prematurely approved”.

”It’s devastating,” said Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. “This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members.“