Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
on Thursday criticized the Pentagon's proposal to lift its ban on
transgender military service.
“The military is not a social
experiment,” Huckabee said during Thursday's prime time GOP debate.
“The purpose of the military is [to]
kill people and break things,” he said. “It is not to transform
the culture by trying out some ideas that some people think would
make us a different country and more diverse. The purpose is to
protect America. I'm not sure how paying for transgender surgery for
soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines makes our country safer.”
The Department of Defense (DOD) last
month announced that it is studying the option of ending the ban. An
estimated 15,000 transgender men and women currently serve in the
U.S. military, making the DOD the largest employer of transgender
people in the United States.
(Related: Mike
Huckabee wishes he'd posed as transgender to shower with girls.)