Long ago, way back to when I was a new second lieutenant and brand new to the Air Force, I showed up at then Vandenberg Air Force Base to start my career and to attend what was called “missile school” for short, a very intense sixteen-week course that took students from zero knowledge of the nuclear missile force to being trained and tested to sit nuclear alert at the various ICBM bases around the American west. I was destined to serve my tour at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, located next to Cheyenne, Wyoming after my initial training.

One thing you might notice, had you been in the school room with me back in 1981, was how everyone in the room was male. Women at that point were not allowed into various combat or otherwise “dangerous” job categories. The missile business was considered a combat assignment, and properly so, as we represented the greatest deterrence power in the American arsenal. So, no women allowed in 1981.

Frankly, there was no good reason a woman could not do the missile job, and not too long after I left the ICBM business, en route to the AF Academy faculty, women were finally allowed to become missileers. Even though women were technically integrated into the military by President Harry Truman in 1948, it was a long slog before the last barrier, prohibiting direct ground combat roles, was lifted in 2013. Heck, before 1976, women were not allowed to attend the military’s service academies.

And you know what the result was of increased female military membership in terms of good order and discipline that the old heads had worried about?

Nada.

Outside of a few diehards, the full introduction of women into the military caused not a ripple in the military’s ability to fight and defend the U.S. Sure, there were a few “old school” men who fought against the integration, but it turns out the vast majority of the military just didn’t mind women being included.

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And then came a certain draft-evading (I guess his bone spurs don’t hurt anymore) president who initiated a vast purge of the government, and especially the military, against people who, frankly, didn’t look like him.

Well, him without his trademark fake face tan. His utterly unqualified Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has been on a campaign to rid the military of things they claim detract from military readiness. Apparently, much of that criterion is a person’s race or gender. He fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown, claiming General Brown only got the job because he is Black. That’s bigoted nonsense of course, as anyone who has served significant time in the military would understand. Brown was, heck is¸ an exceptional leader. He also fired the women at the top of the military. This purge included Vice Admiral (three-star) Shoshana Chatfield, who was the U.S. military representative to NATO, and was a former pilot and had once headed the Naval War College. I taught with Sho when she was a lieutenant commander, on an officer exchange program to the U.S. Air Force Academy, and I can tell you she was then, and remains today, a truly exceptional officer and leader, and our national security is diminished by her departure.

And now this mob has turned its sights to transgender military members, and the now fully partisan U.S. Supreme Court has jumped on board the intolerance train, to go after trans members of the military, allowing the purge to continue while a challenge to the policy works its way through the courts.

We are talking about 1% of the military here, which is made up of less than 1% of the U.S. population. Roughly 1,000 folks who, up until now, had been serving their country in uniform, something 99% of our citizenry cannot claim.

As noted in a recent Colorado Politics story, these are real people doing real jobs. The story notes one of the people to be purged, Sgt. Mason Benavides, is stationed at Fort Carson, just outside Colorado Springs. Benavides is a trans member of the Army, and he is a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear specialist. He has high ratings from his superiors, and he has already invested six years in national service.

The Trump team claims soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines like Benavides are a drain on resources (as they may have some medical needs associated with be a trans person). OK, sure. But there are lots of military members, to say nothing of veterans like me, who draw on military lots of medical resources. How expensive can 1% of the force truly be?

And frankly, given increasing world tensions, I’d rather keep experts in, say, nuclear warfare, around, just in case India and Pakistan, for example, escalate their current conflicts.

I’ve never understood the core GOP’s obsession with issues of sex and gender. And the hypocrisy we often see in so-called “family values” conservatives who then show up in police reports and other venues for violating their own supposed values, is appalling though it is so common now as to not be too surprising.

Back in 2008, near the end of my quixotic run for Congress, my Republican opponent agreed to a single debate with me a couple of days before the election. I recall after one of his tirades I responded the Republicans say they want a smaller government, but not so small it can’t peek in people’s windows at night to make sure they are not sleeping with the “wrong” kind of person.

That obsession with sex and sexuality has only grown stronger in the current political climate. I don’t blame President Trump for the specific policies directly, as I don’t think he has any moral center or core values. He’ll say or do anything to get and keep power, so he’ll go along with purges urged by his deeply flawed any hypocritical extreme-right buddies.

I’m quite sure, based on my own 25-plus years of active-duty military service, if you took a poll of military members and asked them if they minded serving with trans service members, they would mostly just yawn and say no. Today’s military accepts, for example, women in leadership roles, having seen flag officers (generals and admirals) rise and serve effectively. Trans members are no different, and if allowed to serve would continue to do so with honor and dignity. Yet Hegseth and his ilk seem to think these military volunteers are somehow a threat. That is pathetic on Hegseth’s part, and tragic for our trans members serving honorably, and, frankly, for the United States.

We are less safe, less prepared and less capable as a military if trans members, minority members, women and others targeted by the Trump cabal are involuntarily expelled from our military. And that’s a bad thing. Will it continue? Who will they go after next? Will they decide Democrats are a threat to good order and discipline?

We’ll see.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.