Military Purge Leaves Chaplain’s Family Without a Home

Joe Biden’s Department of Defense has rendered homeless a Navy chaplain and his family—including his seven-month pregnant wife—who are living in a hotel at their own expense. Last Friday evening, Judge Steven Merryday issued a powerful order in our Navy SEAL 1 case, and we will soon get an order regarding the entire class of military members. Read on to learn the lengths the Biden administration is going to do in order to “punish” military members who seek religious accommodation—and what Liberty Counsel is doing about it. —Mat Staver

Gabe* is Navy Chaplain 2 in our class-action lawsuit against the Biden administration. Gabe has served in the military for most of his adult life. Upon receiving a degree in ministry, he changed positions within the service, spending the last eight years as a chaplain.

In September 2021, the Navy sent Gabe to a three-month training program, after which he was to be given new orders to be stationed wherever he was needed. Gabe and his wife packed up their household goods and moved across the country to finish his training and await new orders.

But then Biden’s DOD and military services began denying all religious accommodation requests, including those submitted by chaplains—and Gabe and his family were stuck.

The three months of training are long over, but Biden’s DOD refuses to allow Chaplain Gabe to move forward to his next billet or even to return to his last duty station. Neither will the Navy give him and his family a place to live or even the standard housing allowance paid to military members who are not living on base.

Chaplain Gabe and his family, including his seven-month pregnant wife, are stuck living in a small hotel room that they must pay for out of their own pockets.

This is just another example of the myriad intimidation tactics, bullying and pressure the Biden administration is placing on any service member who dares to claim their lawful religious accommodation requests, as mandated by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

And Chaplain Gabe is not the only service member, nor is his family the only military family, being left homeless. The Biden administration has even threatened to leave unvaccinated military members and their families stranded overseas!

But Judge Merryday has challenged Biden’s unlawful abuses.

In granting our temporary injunction February 4, Judge Merryday stated that Biden’s DOD has so far failed to prove its case, writing:

The military faces a trivial, if any, prospect of material injury as a result of permitting the service members continued service under the same terms and conditions and with the same privileges and emoluments as currently prevail, especially because the military permits a large group of unvaccinated persons to serve without adverse consequence.

Finally, the military is most likely unable to establish, and certainly has not established, that permitting the relatively small number of RFRA objectors, even if every request for exemption (much less the two at issue in this motion) were sincere and successful, to serve without adverse consequences to their standing and the terms and conditions of their service will adversely affect the public’s interest in the maintenance and readiness of the nation’s military forces.

At the end of that hearing, Judge Merryday ordered the DOD to submit still more paperwork and granted one last opportunity for them to prove Biden’s DOD is behaving responsibly and legally in their determination of religious accommodation requests.

Joe Biden does not want committed Christians in the military—including those in the chaplain corps!

The documents filed by the DOD late last Wednesday evening show they continue to deny the 24,818 military religious accommodation requests, using a standard template form letter. Biden’s DOD even went as far as to override religious accommodation requests approved by the military member’s chaplains, commanders and chains of command. And, of course, the military has denied the RARs of even the chaplains themselves, as they did with Chaplain Gabe.

And while the DOD claims it has approved RARs, this is also a sham. Of the 24,818 RARs submitted throughout all five branches of the military, only 11 have been granted. And those 11 religious accommodation requests all went to soldiers who were already in the process of retiring and were already scheduled to leave the military by June of this year.

Friday evening, Judge Merryday issued a stinging rebuke to the military for violating the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act by denying the RARs of service members. I encourage you to read the order at lc.org. The judge will soon issue a decision regarding the entire class of military plaintiffs. I will give more details soon!

Please also be in prayer for all the military members like Chaplain Gabe who continue to be abused by this lawless administration.

“Blessed are you when others revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matt. 5:11). {eoa}

This article originally appeared at lc.org.

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