Clinton judge rules US military can't say no to HIV-compromised enlistees



A Clinton-appointed federal judge has ruled that the U.S. military cannot bar HIV-positive individuals from enlisting if they've temporarily rendered their viral loads undetectable through the use of costly antiretroviral drugs, which usually require daily use.

Judge Leonie Brikema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia previously handled two consequential cases in which she ruled against certain military service restrictions on HIV-compromised individuals — persons who if left unmedicated could possibly succumb to opportunistic infections and/or infect their comrades.

Citing her own opinions in those cases, Brikema asserted in her Aug. 20 ruling that the Pentagon's "policies prohibiting the accession of asymptomatic HIV-positive individuals with undetectable viral loads into the military are irrational, arbitrary, and capricious."

"Even worse, they contribute to the ongoing stigma surrounding HIV-positive individuals while actively hampering the military's own recruitment goals," continued Brikema.

'HIV is an infectious, incurable, bloodborne disease with several possible ways in which the disease could be transmitted to other service members.'

The lawsuit that precipitated Brikema's ruling was brought on behalf of three HIV-positive individuals and a leftist advocacy group.

The first, Isaiah Wilkins, is an HIV-positive 24-year-old homosexual who receives HIV-related health care from the VA Medical Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He has to take pills to suppress his viral load. Wilkins seeks to enlist in the Army.

According to a 2023 Congressional Research report, the Pentagon's Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division estimated that between January 2017 and June 2022, 1,581 service members were newly diagnosed with HIV.

The second plaintiff is Carol Coe, a 33-year-old transvestite living in Washington, D.C. He contracted HIV while serving in the military, then left the military in 2013 to get a sex change. Coe attempted to re-enlist in 2022 but was unsuccessful on account of his infectious disorder.

The third plaintiff is Natalie Noe, an Australian now living as a permanent resident in California. She was similarly told that her HIV positivity was a negative where recruiters were concerned. To manage her HIV, Noe takes pills daily and is injected with an antiretroviral therapeutic every three to six months.

The trio were joined in their action by Minority Veterans of America — a leftist advocacy group committed to "social and structural change" that has worked to guarantee access to "abortion and contraception, and gender confirmation surgery through VA for veterans."

'We are pleased the court has eliminated the last discriminatory policy that barred people living with HIV from seeking enlistment or appointment to the military.'

The suit was filed against the Department of Defense in November 2022.

According to the original complaint, medical advances in HIV treatments "should have led to an overhaul of military policies related to people living with HIV. Instead, the Department of Defense and the Army — and all military departments — have maintained the bar to enlistment and appointment of people living with HIV."

The suit claimed that policies barring HIV-positive prospects from enlisting violated the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Court documents indicate that the Pentagon argued that:

the military's HIV policies are rationally related to promoting the health and readiness of the armed forces. For example, defendants continue to argue that asymptomatic HIV-positive individuals with undetectable viral loads may not take their daily medications properly, which would result in their viral loads rising; that HIV is an infectious, incurable, bloodborne disease with several possible ways in which the disease could be transmitted to other service members, such as through battlefield blood spatter or transfusions; and that HIV is associated with various comorbidities and side effects that could harm a service member's health.

The Pentagon further suggested that:

  • the science is clear about the meaningful risk of infection that comes with blood-to-blood transmission "even for individuals with an undetectable viral load";
  • restrictions on HIV-positive enlistees is "rationally related to the goal of ensuring that safe blood supplies are available for use in combat medical care";
  • "'deployment may make it more likely that' HIV-positive individuals 'could experience viral rebound' due to the 'increase[d] ... risk that [they] will not maintain strict adherence to their' HIV medications";
  • "recruiting HIV-compromised individuals would impose disproportionately higher financial costs on the military compared to individuals without HIV," given antiretroviral therapy costs between $1,800 and $4,500 monthly; and that
  • it is rational to preclude incurable disease-compromised persons from joining to "ensur[e] a healthy military."

Brikema, evidently unpersuaded by these arguments, has enjoined the Pentagon from barring HIV-compromised individuals with undetectable viral loads from joining the military.

"We are pleased the court has eliminated the last discriminatory policy that barred people living with HIV from seeking enlistment or appointment to the military," stated Gregory Nevons, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, an outfit that helped file the case. "Americans living with HIV no longer face categorical barriers to service careers — discharge, bans on commissioning, bans on deployment and finally bans on enlisting."

"This is a victory not only for me but for other people living with HIV who want to serve," said plaintiff Isaiah Wilkins.

The Military Times indicated that the Pentagon declined to comment on the ruling.

While HIV-compromised candidates have been given the green light to enlist, the Pentagon still has prohibitions on the recruitment or retention of persons with certain maladies, such as Crohn's disease, kidney abnormalities, asthma, anemia, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, various sleep disorders, and excessive sweating.

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Army officials puzzle over significant drop in white recruits



Military officials and leftists in Washington have long bemoaned the overwhelming presence of white people in the U.S. military. Now that race obsessives have gotten their way and far fewer recruits from the disfavored group are enlisting, officials are beginning to fret.

According to Military.com, the U.S. Army fell 10,000 short of its 65,000 enlistment target in 2023. This drop was largely driven by a significant drop in the number of white recruits.

In 2018, 44,042 new Army recruits — 56.4% of the total — were white. Over the years, that number has plummeted, hitting 25,070 or 44% of the overall recruits in 2023, down 6% from the previous year. This demographic group has seen a uniquely dramatic decline when compared to other racial groups.

Overall recruiting totals have remained relatively flat for black and Hispanic recruits, but as white recruits have turned out in smaller numbers, the proportions of black and Hispanic recruits in the pool have increased from 20% to 24% and from 17% to 24%, respectively.

Military.com indicated it encountered even more damning data speaking to a dramatic "shift in demographics" but that Army officials wrote it off as a "system coding error."

Army officials told Military.com that there is not one single cause for this decline but indicated obesity and the poor quality of the public education system might have been factors. While these factors might explain a drop in recruitment across the board, they wouldn't explain a racially specific drop in proportion of 12.4 points over a five-year period.

An Army official suggested the decline may have also been political, driven by conservatives' critiques of the Biden administration and its politicization of the military. The official, paraphrased by Military.com, credited conservative lawmakers and right-wing media in particular with souring their "overwhelmingly white audience" against the military over its identity politics and with prompting would-be recruits in the mix to "abando[n] their warfighting priorities."

"There's a level of prestige in parts of conservative America with service that has degraded. Now, you can say you don't want to join, for whatever reason, or bad-mouth the service without any cultural guilt associated for the first time in those areas," said the official.

Besides taking issue with the Pentagon's radical LGBT activism, abortion promotion, and its sweeping accusations of extremism, the erosion of such guilt among white people and conservatives might also have something to do with the military's apparent animus toward them.

A 2011 report ordered by Congress claimed the military was too white and too male.

The Pentagon released a manual blasting "healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian" men for having "unearned advantages of social privilege."

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, complained in 2021 that the military was not diverse enough, stressing, "We must get better." He also defended the Pentagon's embrace of critical race theory, stating, "I want to understand white rage."

A battalion commander reportedly stressed in 2021, "If you're a white male, you are part of the problem."

It appears that in remedying a perceived problem, the Army created a real problem at a time of great international instability.

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