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“I did not seek out this fight, but my faith forbids me from quietly assenting to what I know to be false. As a Christian I will not live by lies, even if it means I am no longer allowed to serve in uniform the country that I love…”
–JACE YARBROUGH
First Liberty Institute, the law firm Winston & Strawn, and the Ave Maria School of Law Veterans and Servicemembers Law Clinic have filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Space Force reservist who was disciplined by the military for making comments about truth and courage and quoting Soviet dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, while criticizing transgender ideology.
The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against the U.S. Space Force, U.S. Air Force, and the Department of Defense (DoD).
Jace Yarbrough served four years active duty in the Air Force and has served as a reservist since late 2015. Yarbrough, who is now a major, serves on active duty for roughly five weeks per year.
In June 2021, Yarbrough was asked by his “dear friend,” Senior Master Sgt. Duane Fish, to deliver remarks at Fish’s retirement ceremony. Yarbrough, who was not on active duty and considered a private citizen at the time, agreed, and he and his family traveled to Hawaii for the ceremony. First Liberty claims that all details of the trip and all expenditures were planned and paid by Yarbrough, who is an attorney, and no orders were given by the Air Force and no expenses were reimbursed.
While delivering his speech, Yarbrough spoke about Fish’s courage and competence. As part of that discussion, Yarbrough expressed his concerns that the military was no longer instilling its servicemembers with these attributes, but rather incompetence and cowardice.
As examples of this, Yarbrough elaborated on the problem of servicemembers being afraid to say “intuitive, basic facts about the world” that “until yesterday, were matters of basic common sense and wisdom,” such as “‘men can’t birth babies’ and ‘boys should not be allowed in the girls locker room.’”
He stated that this training was being pushed on airmen and other military personnel by the Department of Defense.
Yarbrough’s response was to tell the story of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and quote from the Soviet dissident’s play “A Candle in the Wind,” which reads,
“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail. You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”
Due to COVID regulations only 25 people, most of them like-minded family and friends, attended the ceremony, but one member of the Navy who was present was offended and reported Yarbrough’s comments. The military responded by giving Yarbrough a Letter of Admonishment, a disciplinary action.
His lawsuit claims that the military cannot punish him for expressing his religious and philosophical beliefs on a public issue delivered as a private citizen.
Danielle Runyan, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, said in a statement,
“We’ve entered dangerous territory if the Air Force thinks it can punish Jace for his private religious exercise and private speech while acting as a private citizen in a private venue. In his purely civilian capacity, Jace had permission to speak freely and exercise his U.S. Constitutional and federally protected rights as an American citizen. The Air Force’s punishment of Jace is a perfect example of the very cancel culture he warned about in his speech.”
Yarbrough also provided a public statement for his reasons for filing the suit, a move that could jeopardize his military career. He said,
“As the totalizing claims of radical progressivism devour more and more of our common life and institutions, even prosaic, obvious, and natural truths are vilified as harmful and extreme. I did not seek out this fight, but my faith forbids me from quietly assenting to what I know to be false. As a Christian I will not live by lies, even if it means I am no longer allowed to serve in uniform the country that I love, which has been one of the singular privileges of my life.
Ironically, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn didn’t start out as a dissident. He too was a loyal officer in his nation’s military, and a celebrated one at that. But he was suddenly canceled in the form of arrest and imprisonment after criticizing the Soviet leadership in private letters to a friend.
So canceling a military officer for talking about cancel culture is not a good look for the U.S. military, which is tasked with defending not just America but American values, including, and especially, the right to free speech.
When the military is so worried about offending transgender activists that no one is allowed to state the simplest truths, such as “men can’t have babies” or “there are only two genders,” we have a problem. How can our Armed Forces effectively train and fight wars and keep servicemembers physically safe if it’s worried most about protecting the feelings of a class of people who will find something, anything, to be offended and upset about?
This is an example of a plague on our nation: the frailty of a populace that has somehow conflated speech with harm.
Students, activists, politicians, and other woke progressives want people to be silenced and punished for espousing views they don’t like. Their sense of self is so delicate that any disagreement shakes the foundation of who they are and ignites a rage that can only be temporarily subdued by the offender being harmed in some way. If you are so insecure in your beliefs that someone disagreeing with you causes you to demand that they be silenced and punished, you should reevaluate your beliefs.
Free speech is one of the pillars of America’s constitutional republic. Men and women have died protecting our right to it, and without it, none of us are really free. We must defend the right to speak our minds without fear of punishment. Yarbrough’s speech championed integrity, a value of the Air Force. He should be applauded, not punished, and the Air Force should be following his example, not furthering a lie to make some people feel better about themselves.
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