Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council said last Wednesday that the US armed forces should be shut down rather than allow transgender service members.

So we see the administration pushing forward without congressional input on integrating transgenders [sic] into our nation’s military. What else can this administration do to the military other than just disband it?

Perkins was commenting on the new Pentagon handbook issued in order to educate all service members on how to best incorporate transgender people into their units.

Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine who can best accomplish the mission. “We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer force to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified—and to retain them.

--Defense Secretary Ash Carter

I probably need to take it back when I said that the only thing worse the president could do would be to disband the military. Actually, that might even be better. We’re probably better off without a military that is not compromised because we think we have a military that’s defending our country and able to do that, but we have a military that in many ways is a hollowed-out shell.

--Perkins

Perkins was sitting next to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump last week when the candidate suggested that he would roll back the policy under his administration.

Perkins reacted to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell with similar hysteria, making a variety of predictions—such as the reinstatement of the draft—that did not come true.