Everyone knows that the military is one of the largest institutions in America. They are everywhere, domestically and internationally. Several thousands of those who are serving in the military have endured some hardships, because they had some backward policies that basically shut down certain groups of people from joining. For some people, serving in the military is a high form of honor—they feel like they need to with the sense of patriotism. Especially those coming from a military family, they feel obligated, and want to serve to continue the family legacy. Point is that the military is something that hundreds and thousands of people want to join but with their current policies, sometimes it's impossible to join.

Although recently with new leadership and more awareness, the military—who has been known for booting people out if they don't fit in their cookie cut picture of what a military personnel looks like—has been changing slowly. A few years back, the military has repealed DADT, a popular acronym for the policy "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which basically means if someone were to find out if you were gay, lesbian, bi or any other sexual orientation involving the same gender, they would kick you out and consider you mentally ill. Which obviously isn't true, because sexual orientation doesn't have anything to do with your mental state. This allowed people of all kinds of sexual orientation to serve openly as who they are which is ideal, because if you are able to be yourself in that kind of environment, you would almost always do better work and perform better. Sexual orientation does not hinder performance.

Now up until a couple days ago, people who are transgender was not able to serve in the military openly. They would've had to serve under their assigned gender at birth. Transmen would be serving as a women, and transwomen would be serving as men. Depending on what they do and who commanding officers and leaders were, some would just kick them out if they catch whiff that they were trans. Basically a hardworking person can be discharged from the military for trying to be true to their gender identity. Recently with the current awareness of transgender people, a lot of leaders have come to realize that being trans—like sexual orientation—has nothing to do with performance.

On July 1, the Pentagon is ready to announce a lift on the ban of transgender people openly serving in the military.

After U.S. Army Secretary, Eric Fanning, the first openly gay man to take office, as one of the top civilian officials. He helped advocate and push for the military to start looking into the high number of transgender people serving under them. Reports says it will take at least a year, to implement changes within the military to accommodate trans people, regarding the bathroom, clothes, medical, and rooming policies. Just to make sure that people are really in the military with the intent to serve.

This is a step forward within the Pentagon to include everyone and offer them the same opportunity to serve our country. Accepting and allowing people to serve as who they are truly will increase their performance, thus giving the military the kind of people that will help their forces. Soon the U.S. will be among the other 18 countries that allows trans people to openly serve their country, a big step in human rights.