Regardless of your opinion on trans people, Kansas’ attack on them hurts you | Opinion
The U.S. Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment is straightforward. You swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. You swear to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. What the oath does not tell you is why you are swearing it. That part is yours. The Marine Corps gave me a framework for that drive: honor, courage and commitment as an operating philosophy.
That is why I was asked to become Incident Commander of Operation Lifeboat.
When I left the military, I did not leave those values behind. I have carried them into a career in humanitarian relief and disaster response. I have spent more than a decade running toward crises with other like-minded individuals while others were running away. Hurricanes. Floods. I have never once asked someone their politics before pulling them out of a crisis. The Corps did not make me someone who looks away when people are in danger. It made me someone who is constitutionally incapable of it.
Operation Lifeboat exists to meet transgender Kansans where they are. Some need to leave. Some need legal support to stay. Every situation is different, and every decision belongs to the person living it. Our job is to make sure the resources exist to support them.
I want to be clear about something: You do not have to have any specific personal opinion about transgender individuals in order to be alarmed by this. On Feb. 18, the Kansas Legislature enacted Senate Bill 244, the most sweeping anti-transgender legislation in American history. The law retroactively invalidates lawfully issued driver’s licenses and birth certificates, authorizes private citizens to sue transgender individuals for simply existing in a shared space and imposes criminal penalties for restroom use in public buildings. As of Feb. 25, the Kansas Department of Revenue began mailing identification invalidation notices directly to affected residents. Transgender Kansans cannot legally drive themselves to work, to the DMV or out of state.
Again, being alarmed by this does not require you to hold a specific opinion about transgender individuals. You must, however, have an opinion about your government retroactively stripping lawfully issued documents from its own citizens and criminalizing their presence in public space. I am asking you to have an opinion about state-sanctioned harm. Because if the government can do this to them, the question worth sitting with is simple: Who will they do it to next?
Kansas is not an isolated incident. Legislation like S.B. 244 is moving through statehouses across this country right now. What happened in Kansas did not appear overnight, and it will not stop at the border. If you are waiting for this to become your problem before you pay attention, you are already behind.
Know what is moving through your legislature. Show up. Be informed. Talk to your neighbors, your representatives, your community. This is how democracy is supposed to work, and democracy does not work in darkness and isolation — it works in the light and that light shines both ways. If you believe that legislation that can without warning or public comment strip citizens of lawfully issued documents is wrong, say so loudly and do not sit on your hands. If you believe it is right, then own it. Show up and defend it.
Rights, freedoms and basic human dignity mean something only if we all have them equally. Not if only some of us have them, and only when it is convenient. Honor. Courage. Commitment. Those are not Marine values. They are American values. And right now, transgender Kansans need someone to act like it.
Semper Fidelis.
Brandon Callahan is a Marine veteran and disaster response professional with more than 15 years of experience managing large-scale humanitarian operations across the country. He holds a master of science from the American University School of Public Affairs, and has worked at the intersection of government, nonprofit, and emergency management throughout his career. He is incident commander of Operation Lifeboat, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit humanitarian response operation providing relocation and support services to transgender Kansans affected by S.B. 244.
The views expressed in this piece are solely his own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense, the United States Marine Corps or any other government agency or organization.
