Come on. Marital status? This is an attack on queer vets bar none. They just gave them blanket permission to deny someone based on “whether they have a wife or not,” which is complete nonsense.

It’s clearly just easier to do this and allow the VA to deny benefits to anyone and everyone who isnt straight than to outright say “you can deny care to gay and trans vets” and maybe miss out on harming lesbian vets by accident.

Marital status covers any non-traditional relationship, and allows complete discretion to the fascist who controls your health to determine whether you meet the standards. Horrific. I’m glad you pointed it out.

Edit: and shame on me for not reading the article first

In making the changes, VA officials cite the president’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.

So yeah, explicitly to harm queer vets almost exclusively