FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—An Army chaplain is asking military authorities to expunge from his record a negative report stemming from an alleged “microaggression” against people who identify as LGBTQ.
Lt. Col. Joseph Lawhorn argued that the report, which he says contains errors, may have cost him a promotion to colonel earlier this year.
“Chaplain Lawhorn follows the directive of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and serves diligently as the spiritual and moral backbone of the soldiers under his care but now he has been wrongfully blacklisted for following orders,” Chris Motz, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, which is representing Lawhorn, said in a statement, first obtained by the Daily Signal. “Chaplains, the ‘shepherds of the soul’ for service members, should be encouraged, not shamed or cancelled.”
He gave a suicide prevention training on Dec. 15, 2020, titled, “Coming Out of the Closet: Straight-Talk about Depression and Suicidality,” drawing on his own diagnosed depression and his practice of retreating into a closet during his worst periods. An attendee, however, later claimed Lawhorn had used the title as a punchline at the expense of the LGBTQ community and described the presentation as a “microaggression.”
The record also highlights “a clarification the speaker made about himself: ‘don’t worry, I am not gay,’ or ‘it’s not what you think.'”
However, the record fails to identify a disparaging term used by Lawhorn in the training, according to his application to expunge the incident report. The woman who filed the initial complaint, a behavioral health provider, characterized Lawhorn’s presentation as a “microaggression,” a comment that unintentionally expresses prejudice. She added, “I do not suspect that Lawhorn was intentionally malicious.”
Lawhorn’s commanding officer reportedly told the chaplain that he would not approve the disciplinary action stemming from the complaint, yet in January, Lawhorn learned that a negative summary of the incident remained in his personnel file. In March, Lawhorn asked the promotion board to disregard the report, but when the Army announced promotions in June, he did not receive one.
The record found that Lawhorn “did not use ‘disparaging treatment’,” and it “identifies no epithet, slur, or characterization applied to any person or group.”
Lawhorn’s supervisor did not impose any penalties, but ranked the Army chaplain first among all the chaplains he ever commanded, and wrote, ‘Promote now to LTC.'”
The filing argues that the adverse-information summary in Lawhorn’s file contains multiple factual, procedural, and even chronological errors.
The record Lawhorn seeks to remove is dated Feb. 22, 2021, but it includes a commander’s comment on the summary, dated Dec. 14, 2020—before the chaplain even gave the suicide prevention briefing.
The form by which the findings were approved left the recommendations section blank and carries no signature in the authentication block.
The application argues that the Army regulation cited in the report applies only to disparaging conduct severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment, and that investigators never established those elements.
“Instead, it found that thirteen of twenty-two witnesses considered the title ‘inconsiderate,’ ‘uncomfortable,’ or ‘inappropriate,'” the application notes. “One hour of virtual training is not a series of acts; a single event cannot be pervasive; and nobody said any working condition changed.”
“A statement that the speaker is not a member of a group is not a disparaging term with respect to that group,” the application notes. “It says nothing about anyone else.”
The filing comes after Secretary Hegseth in March announced reforms to restore chaplains’ role as spiritual leaders and reduce political correctness and secularism in the corps.
“Chaplain Lawhorn should be praised and encouraged for sharing his own personal struggles to help soldiers who are at-risk to become another suicide statistic in the armed forces,” White said. “Instead, he was investigated and his promotion file was red-flagged, evidence that Secretary Hegseth’s called for reforms bolstering military chaplains are sorely needed.”
First Liberty and the law firm McGuireWoods LLP filed the application with the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, asking for the adverse report to be removed from Lawhorn’s file, for reconsideration of the promotion decision, and for the restoration of pay and benefits Lawhorn would have received had he been promoted.
The application notes that it isn’t asking the Army corrections board to “decide whether the remark was ill-judged. It need only observe that the regulation the Army invoked prohibits disparaging terms with respect to a person, and that the [record] identifies none.”
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
