Tennessee state Senator Mark Green,
President Donald Trump's nominee to become secretary of the Army,
once called transgender people “evil.”
Green, who is popular among
conservative Republicans, has introduced and backed several anti-LGBT
bills, including one that would prohibit transgender students from
using the bathroom of their choice.
According to GLAAD, Green last year
called transgender people “evil.”
“The government exists to honor those
people who live honorable, who do good things – to reward people
who behave well and to crush evil. So that means as a state senator,
my responsibility very clearly in Romans 13 is to create an
environment where people who do right are rewarded and the people who
do wrong are crushed. Evil is crushed. So I’m going to protect
women in their bathrooms, and I’m going to protect our state
against potential infiltration from the Syrian ISIS people in the
refugee program. And whoever wants to stand up and take me on that,
I’m ready to fight,” Green said during an interview on The
Hotwash with CJ and Alex radio show.
Last year, Green called being
transgender “a disease.”
“If you poll the psychiatrists,
they're going to tell you that transgender is a disease,” Green
told an audience in September. “It is a part of the DSM-6, I think
it is, the book of diagnostic psychological procedures or diagnoses.”
The
Huffington Post points out that the American Psychiatric
Association stopped listing “gender identity disorder” as a
disease in its DSM-5 and notes that there is no DSM-6.
If confirmed by the Senate, Green would
succeed Eric Fanning, who made history during the Obama era as the
first openly gay person to head the Army.
On the campaign trail, President Donald
Trump suggested he does not support open transgender service in the
military.
(Related: Donald
Trump on open transgender military service: We'll do away with
political correctness.)