Inhofe said the Pentagon's plan to allow transgender troops to serve in the military “wouldn’t work.” DEFENSE Inhofe: Where will transgender troops go to the bathroom?

Sen. Jim Inhofe, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, opposes the plan announced last week by the Pentagon to allow transgender troops to serve in the military, saying “it wouldn’t work.”

Asked to explain his opposition, the socially conservative Oklahoma Republican told POLITICO: “I had a 10-year-old — not my son, but a friend of mine’s grandson — say, ‘All right, which bathroom would they use?’”


He indicated, though, that there would be no immediate effort to block the Pentagon’s plan. “Right now I’ve got a highway bill I’m doing,” he said. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter last week ordered a six-month review into the “policy and readiness implications” of allowing transgender troops to serve openly. The review, he said, will presume all jobs are open “except where objective, practical impediments are identified.”

There’s been little opposition in Congress to Carter’s plan. Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, who in 2010 was a chief opponent of the Obama administration’s efforts to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military, said he had no major objections.