Navy may boot chaplain for sexual 'intolerance'

A decorated Marine and Navy Chaplain says he feels betrayed and dishonored after he was removed from his unit and faces possible discharge over private consultations in which he was accused of not being tolerant enough of sexual immorality.

Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder was detached from his unit late last year and isolated at the chapel of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command base near Charleston, South Carolina.

In February, he was issued a "detachment for cause" letter indicating that "his conduct warrants his removal." He will soon be brought before an official board of inquiry.

In the latest move on Tuesday, the Navy denied Modder's request for a religious accommodation of his views.

The actions taken against Modder come from the commanding officer of the base, Capt. Jon Fahs Jr., after several sailors complained about the counseling they received from Modder on issues of sexual morality. Fahs accused Modder of "failing to show tolerance and respect" to the sailors who sought his advice. This came just weeks after Fahs gave Modder the highest possible rating for his job performance, calling him "a consummate professional" who was sought out for his "sage counsel."

The complaint against him alleges the following:

He told a student she was "shaming herself in the eyes of God" for having premarital sex.
He told another student homosexuality was wrong.
He told a student "the penis was meant for the vagina and not for the anus."
He implied he had the ability to save people from being "gay."
He asked a staff member about her sexual conduct and then told her that she should be in love with God and not her partner.
He chastised a pregnant student for becoming pregnant while not married.

The Liberty Institute, which is representing Modder, responded to the charges saying are "simply untrue or are gross mischaracterizations of what actually occurred."

Modder says he never initiated any conversation about marriage. On occasion, and only when asked, Modder says he did express his sincerely held religious belief that:

Sexual acts outside of marriage are contrary to biblical teaching.
Homosexual conduct is contrary to biblical teaching.
Homosexual orientation or temptation, as distinct from conduct, is NOT sin.

Can you be gay AND be Christian? Learn how to respond with love and truth to questions about homosexuality

'Shut up or leave'

WND previously reported that the complaints against Modder surfaced just a few weeks after his new assistant reported for duty. It was later disclosed that the assistant is in a homosexual "marriage" with another man.

The far-left website ThinkProgress.com reported that Modder "is rightfully being held accountable for the way he expressed his beliefs," and quoted Eugene Bell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, saying, "He was way out of line. For faith groups whose creed cannot be reconciled with the repeal of 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,' the chaplains have to make a choice. If they can’t resolve the conflict, they have to leave."

What the radical leftist ThinkProgress fails to point out is that U.S. military personnel have the option of "shopping" for a chaplain that is more in tune to their personal religious beliefs. If Modder was too conservative, the complaining sailors could have gone to another chaplain who was more accommodating, said Mike Berry, senior counsel and director of military affairs with Liberty Institute.

"Yes, they can absolutely go to another chaplain. Many people 'chaplain shop' in the same way that they 'lawyer shop,'" Berry told WND. "That's what makes this all the more suspicious. There is another chaplain at that unit that is from what most would characterize as a more progressive denomination. Those sailors absolutely could have sought her out for counseling. But they did not. They specifically sought out Chaplain Modder."

80,000 sign petitions to support chaplain

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who is now serving as executive vice president of the Family Research Council, sent out an urgent email alert to FRC members Tuesday asking them to sign an online petition in support of Modder. More than 79,000 Americans have signed the petition as of late Wednesday.

The petitions will be presented to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus calling for Modder to be reinstated and all charges against him to be dropped.

Go to the FRC website and sign the petition in favor of Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder.

"We will deliver your petition to them to show them that the American people will not stand for their military being whitewashed of faith," Boykin said in the email. "When a chaplain is not allowed to speak the tenets of his faith, what is left for him to speak?"

Modder is an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God, a major Pentecostal Christian denomination holding to traditional biblical views on marriage.

But the case may be even more egregious than even Boykins realizes when compared to the treatment of chaplains from other faiths.

Muslim chaplains treated differently?

Berry said Liberty Institute represents victims of religious discrimination regardless of their faith, and he is unaware of any similar active case in which a Muslim military chaplain has been disciplined for giving conservative views in line with the Quran or the hadiths, which call for harsh treatment of homosexuals and women accused of adultery. According to a Shariah-compliant mosque, such "offenses" against Allah can include stoning, flogging or even death. Female rape victims under Islamic law are often required to produce multiple male witnesses or they are considered by the imams to be guilty of adultery.

"No, we see no (similar) discrimination against Muslim chaplains," Berry said. "The only other faith group I'm aware of whose chaplains are facing some difficulty is the Orthodox Jewish faith, which is also considered very conservative.

"So, yeah, I think it is certainly easy to draw trends and patterns as far as who is being targeted most. So I do think it's pertinent that Chaplain Modder comes from a conservative Christian background and holds traditional views on marriage and that he's the one being targeted for discrimination."

Modder said in a videotaped interview on Liberty Institute's website that he is prepared to fight the charges to the bitter end.

"When I think that I was ministering to Navy sailors, and Marines and Seals, over time, and for the Navy to detach me, for cause, I feel betrayed," he said. "I feel dishonored for my 15 years, now almost 20 total, of my service to my country. I believe there is a calling for me to expose this."

Modder has served as a Marine recruiter and a sergeant with the military police, and he was deployed overseas in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia. He was called "the best of the best" by his colleagues, several of whom wrote letters of commendation on Modder's behalf.

Chaplain Wes Modder prays with troops in harm's way in one of his overseas deployments.

"For the Navy to be so willing to just crumple that up and throw it in the trash, just because a 19-year-old, a 20-year-old, didn't hear something that they wanted to hear, is just unbelievable," Berry said. "The reason why we have chaplains is to provide for the free exercise of religion in our military.

"And to see those very chaplains now to have their free exercise of religious practice taken away, then we've all lost," he continued. "If the Navy is permitted to punish and remove a chaplain under these circumstances, then everything that we know to be true about our Constitution, about our federal laws, about the military laws and regulations, about the military itself, that all becomes meaningless."

Berry said the issue at hand is whether the U.S. government has the authority to punish or censor a chaplain for conducting his religious duties in accordance with his faith.

"We have court cases that say the reason we have chaplains in the military is to provide for the free exercise of religion for our service members," he told WND. "Now the government is saying, 'well we get to control what those chaplains say and do.' There's been court cases fought over this and the government has lost."

In the case of Rigdon v. Perry, a Catholic priest, Father Rigdon was an Air Force chaplain in the mid-1990s and encouraged his fellow Catholics on base to support pro-life legislation.

"At that time, the partial-birth abortion idea was going through Congress and he was saying in his chapel sermons that we should support this ban on the basis of the words of the pope," Berry said. "They tried to stop him. He sued, and he won. The court said this activity, this speech, can't be regulated."

'Who we are as America' at stake

Modder said a lot is riding on his case, not just for him but others serving in the U.S. military.

"My hope and prayer is that truth will prevail, that religious liberty can be restored and what is taken away from us, my First Amendment rights, my freedom of speech, and for me to be able to operate, as a military chaplain, an ordained minister with my church to our military men and women," Modder said. "That has to be the outcome. It has to be the outcome because of who we are as America."

Berry said the Modder case has not gone to the level of a lawsuit yet.

"We are still working within the military channel. We're trying to obtain relief through the military by appealing the decision of Capt. Fahs and by seeking to have them not end chaplain Modder's career," he said.

Berry said Fahs has been "anything but cooperative," to date.

"I gave him every opportunity to do the right thing, to meet with me and see if this was just a misunderstanding, and he has not done so," Berry said.

In 2014, Congress passed HR 4310, a law guaranteeing free expression of religious practices for chaplains, but Fahs is operating under outdated, old regulations, Berry said.

"He's not only ignoring it but basically thumbing his nose at Congress and the secretary of defense," Berry said. "You can call him a rogue commander. I definitely think he's acting completely outside his legal authority. In his denial of our request for religious accommodation ... for a chaplain to engage in conduct they believe is in accordance with their sincerely held beliefs. This is a chaplain who happens to be a Christian minister who has had to ask permission to do his duties in accordance with his religious beliefs. And then the commanding officer says no, and he's relieved of his duties and transferred out of his unit."

Under U.S. law, the government has an obligation to provide opportunities for free exercise of religion where it's otherwise not available, such as on a military base. "Capt. Fahs is basically ignoring those decades of laws and court cases."

Liberty Institute highlights the following sections from military regulations:

"Navy chaplains are never required to compromise the standards of their Religious Organization…

"Delivery of care is informed, guided and shaped by the chaplain's unique pastoral identity and insight … (Read more)

"He gives regulations that support his decision and those regulations have all been made outdated and obsolete by the new rules and the new law passed by Congress. And what's worse, he cherry picks the regulations, leaving out the part that says a Navy chaplain is never to be required to compromise their religious beliefs. This is a Navy-wide rule."

Berry also said the complaining assistant officer may have committed a crime by making "false statements, taking what the chaplain said and twisting or misconstruing it, in an attempt to get the chaplain punished," Fox News reported.

"He abused the position he was placed in as a chaplain's assistant," Berry told Fox earlier this week.

Liberty Institute is the largest nonprofit legal organization in the nation dedicated solely to defending religious liberty in America. Liberty Institute protects freedom of religious expression in schools, churches, military and throughout the public arena.

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