In December 2010, Barack Obama signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Pentagon policy (signed by Bill Clinton) prohibiting open homosexuals from serving in the military. Stay tuned, because the next victory for the Rainbow Mafia will be the end of the ban on transsexuals among the ranks of America’s Armed Forces.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter released a statement on the policy Monday, saying, “The Defense Department’s current regulations regarding transgender service members are outdated and are causing uncertainty that distracts commanders from our core missions. At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they’re able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite. Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit.”

Not to paint with too broad a brush, but is that how Carter explains the traitorous actions of Pfc. Bradley Manning? He was convicted of espionage and is serving a 35-year sentence — as a “woman.”

According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, the military is full of transsexuals. Color us skeptical. Carter has ordered a review of the ban with the almost sure aim of eliminating it after six months, because, as he said, “[W]e must ensure that everyone who’s able and willing to serve has the full and equal opportunity to do so, and we must treat all our people with the dignity and respect they deserve.”

We certainly agree that all humans have inherent, God-given dignity and should be treated with respect, but that doesn’t mean celebration of such mental illness and sin. And make no mistake: This debate isn’t about dignity, and it’s most certainly not about what makes our military a more effective fighting force. It’s about making the normalization of homosexuality a matter of law in regard to Defense Department personnel, practices and policy.

Leftists are pushing hard to normalize dysfunction, not just in the military but all over.

Consider the case of Bruce Jenner, the former decathlon champion who decided he was really a woman trapped in a man’s body. Worse is the growing number of children whose parents enable rather than treat gender dysphoria — they help their children live the lie.

One of the primary jobs of parents is to mold their children into responsible members of society and to help them through personal struggles, not to encourage them to turn every fantasy into reality. Yet here we are, about to witness a “reality” show on TLC about Jazz Jennings, a 14-year-old Florida boy who has been “living as a female” since he wore a rainbow swimming suit at his five-year-old birthday party. Jennings was named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential teenagers last year.

“Jazz may be known as an author and activist,” cooed TLC general manager Nancy Daniels, “but she’s first and foremost a teenage girl with a big, brave heart, living a remarkable life.” Does “she” have biological girl parts? No, but he plans to disfigure his body at age 18 and has been taking hormone blockers since age 11 to prevent nature from taking its course. Is TLC — not to mention his parents — aiding and abetting a serious mental disorder? Yes.

But he’s not alone in being a child victim. In June, NBC ran an exclusive interview with Liam, a 10-year-old boy who lives as a girl. His parents have already legally changed his name to Lia, and he will soon begin taking hormone blockers as Jazz does.

Also in June, The New York Times profiled Caden Boone, who underwent reassignment surgery in April and now goes by Kat, or Katherine, all because he was troubled and found “answers” on the Internet. The Times informs us that his “new vagina needs constant care or it will close off like a wound.” A wound indeed. How tragic.

In fact, tragic might undersell the trouble transgendered people face. In the same article, the Times also reports, “A large-scale Swedish study at the Karolinska Institute found that starting about a decade after gender reassignment surgery, transgender people were still more than 19 times as likely to die by suicide as the general population.”

If such statistics applied to guns, the Left would be pushing even harder for an outright ban. Instead, Oregon is allowing children as young as 15 to receive taxpayer-subsidized sex-change operations — without parental notification.

As we asked recently, how many children will end up making the worst decision of their entire lives because they have been marinated in a toxic environment at an age when they are utterly incapable of defending themselves against their progressive indoctrinators?

“At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered,” writes Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is a civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

McHugh also says Bruce Jenner is one thing, but in these other cases “we’re talking about children with a future ahead of them.” One might call it child abuse.

This is the generation being raised to perhaps one day serve in the U.S. Armed Forces, which the Left has decided must be a reflection of our dysfunctional culture, not a capable protector of our Liberty. Indeed, no institution is safe from the Left’s social engineering.