The U.S. Military has approved gender-reassignment hormone treatments for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the first in military history.
Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence on espionage charges related to WikiLeaks, says part of his crime was driven by the struggles he had living as a homosexual in the military.
“Indeed, as the Culture and Media Institute points out, Manning’s defense attorneys essentially argued that he leaked the critical intelligence because he was a gay soldier serving in the age of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and because he felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body,” Charisma‘s Jennifer LeClaire writes.
Col. Erica Nelson, commandant of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, approved the hormone treatments, saying they were medically necessary.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, tells USA Today that failing to treat Manning’s gender dismorphia would be “cruel and unusual punishment.”
