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Monday, August 26, 2013

Bradley (Chelsea) Manning: Gender identity is not a defense to espionage



Last week, Bradley Manning was found guilty of espionage and given a 35-year prison sentence.  The length of the sentence shocked many.  The next day, it was widely reported  that Manning now wanted to be called Chelsea and to live as a woman – and have the military pay for gender reassignment hormones and surgery while in Levenworth Prison; good luck with that, seriously. I hope he does get what he needs, but doubt he will.

The world seemed shocked by the revelation that his defense to espionage was basically that he had gender identity disorder, and that would somehow preclude a conviction.  However, his lawyers had been putting on this defense for almost two years. (Daily Kos article from 2011) 

The problem with such a legal strategy is that it is not a good legal defense. It may literally be why Manning did it, why he leaked 700,000 pages of diplomatic cables, videos, and the like, but that doesn’t make it a good legal defense. Sometimes the truth is not a good legal defense. You shot your neighbor because you hated him – while maybe true – is not a good legal defense. 

The defense would also imply that gender identity disorder is a form of insanity, in order for it to be a justification for otherwise criminal behavior.  This may be doubly troubling to Manning’s supporters. He not only refused to come out and say that he had committed espionage (that’s what he did) to fight an unjust set of wars and expose war crimes – which he had, along as expose otherwise noncomplicit CIA agents, putting their lives in danger, and cause diplomatic rows with allies when State Department cables were leaked.  This was the defense that the Wikileaks crowd wanted most.  The defense of just cause, that Manning did what he did for a just cause, to fight power, unjust wars and war crimes. No, now his lawyers were also saying that gender identity disorder (being a pre-op transsexual) was legally basically a form of insanity.  That is deeply troubling to the gender-rights cause, and again, has no support in science or the law.  So, Manning’s lawyers pissed off his Wikileaks supporters by basically saying that he had never really believed in their cause, and pissed off the LGBT community by arguing that gender identity is a form of insanity. Now, he’s going to military prison for 35 years, longer than sentences for spies who traded government secrets for sex (heterosexual), money, or politics. (Forbes article for reference on sentence length)

That fact, the length of his sentence, was sort of dumbfounding, until the gender identity issue is considered.  The military judge was faced with the theft and dissemination of military and diplomatic secrets on an unprecedented scale, using technology that made it possible on an unprecedented scale, another guy who had just done the same thing (Snowden) and was hiding out in Russia, and a defense that made no sense logically.  Money or sex or politics make sense. This didn’t. So, deterrence was used in punishment.

It was a bad week for Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, and an overall sad state of affairs.

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