Hilzoy:

The Army’s unwillingness to accept openly gay soldiers has always struck me as not just bigoted, but incredibly dumb. Placing heterosexism ahead of national security looks even dumber than ever at a time when the Army is having a lot of trouble recruiting and retaining people. But it’s not just gays the Army doesn’t want. It’s not even gays and transgendered people. If you actually read the Army’s Standards of Medical Fitness (pdf), you’ll discover that the Army seems to have a truly bizarre devotion to the idea that only men and women with absolutely, completely normal genitalia and reproductive systems can possibly defend us in time of war. Among the people who do not meet its standards:

• Women who experience unusually heavy menstrual bleeding, or bleeding at irregular intervals, or no periods at all.
• Women born without a uterus.
• In men, “Current absence of one or both testicles, either congenital (752.89) or undescended (752.51) is disqualifying.”…