{"id":108412,"date":"2017-07-27T01:20:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T05:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=108412"},"modified":"2017-07-27T01:20:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T05:20:13","slug":"protesters-gather-against-trump-ban-on-transgender-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/07\/27\/protesters-gather-against-trump-ban-on-transgender-troops\/","title":{"rendered":"Protesters gather against Trump ban on transgender troops"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Several<\/a>
Several hundred demonstrators gathered later Wednesday in San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Plaza. (Photo<\/a> by Strange de Jim\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Demonstrators flocked to a military recruiting station in New York City and gathered at a plaza named for a San Francisco gay-rights icon on Wednesday to protest President Donald Trump’s abrupt ban on transgender troops in the military.<\/p>\n

A crowd of at least a few hundred people gathered around the U.S. Armed Forces recruiting station in Times Square. They held signs saying \u201cResist!\u201d and listened to speakers who denounced the ban, which Trump announced on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Demonstrator Yael Leberman says transgender people \u201care completely adequate to serve\u201d and combat is \u201cnot about physical, it’s about mental\u201d abilities. She says it’s unsurprising from the Republican president to say what he said or to see the pushback from a place as diverse as New York City.<\/p>\n

It’s unclear what the ban will mean for currently serving transgender soldiers.<\/p>\n

Several hundred demonstrators gathered later Wednesday in San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Plaza. They waved pink and blue flags, held signs reading \u201cTrans lives are not a burden\u201d and chanted \u201cStand up! Fight back!\u201d<\/p>\n

A transgender woman who identified herself only as Layla told the crowd she’s tired of being told who she can or cannot be, and asked for others in the LGBT\u00a0community<\/em>\u00a0to support trans people as they fight for respect.<\/p>\n

Doug Thorogood and Nick Rondoletto, a couple from San Francisco, waved a rainbow flag and held a sign that read \u201cThe only reason transgenders are being banned from the military is for bigotry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHaven’t transgender people gone through enough? I’m over it!\u201d Thorogood said, as they marched with the crowd from the Castro neighbourhood to City Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen (Trump) goes for the people with the least rights, I just can’t sit back and let that happen,\u201d Rondoletto added.<\/p>\n

At a smaller gathering at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in Hollywood, U.S. Army Reserve member and transgender man Rudy Akbarian, 27, said at first he thought the\u00a0news<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>of the President’s order was a joke. The five-year military veteran said he was \u201cheartbroken\u201d to learn it was real.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people who are retiring in the military, there are people who’ve done 18, 19 years and are about to retire and now it’s all taken away from them,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it’s not over,\u201d he said. \u201cI know we’re not going to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Demonstrators flocked to a military recruiting station in New York City and gathered at a plaza named …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":108424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,17],"tags":[5051,9869,4293,14024,12299],"class_list":["post-108412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-w","tag-ban","tag-donald-trump","tag-lgbt","tag-protesters","tag-u-s-military","mauthors-olga-r-rodriguez","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}