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A Virginia real-estate agent is facing potentially career-ending ethics charges over social-media posts advocating biblical marriage and male-free women’s sports.
Wilson Fauber, a 44-year veteran realtor and ordained minister in Staunton, Virginia, is a member of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) — hence his title. According to the Federalist, Fauber’s record as a realtor is above reproach, “with no professional complaints ever filed against him.”
Opposition Besmirch
That all changed, however, when Fauber decided to run for city council last year. An opposition group began combing through his Facebook posts in an effort to smear the man they dubbed “the Hater.”
What “hate” did they find among Fauber’s posts?
“In 2015, I posted Biblical quotes on my personal Facebook page,” Fauber told the Federalist. “Around the same time, Rev. Franklin Graham had created a post and I re-posted with some additions for emphasis.”
Those posts concerned the Bible’s definition of marriage, i.e., one man and one woman. That definition was, in fact, the law of the land at the time Fauber posted the verses. (Later that year, the Supreme Court would rule otherwise.)
“There were those who don’t like freedom of speech and freedom of religion and so they researched my Facebook accounts and found the post from 2015 and then a local reporter met with me to ask me if I still believed in the scripture I had posted,” said Fauber.
Fauber’s affirmative answer led the opposition to file an ethics complaint with the NAR in February. The NAR had amended its code of ethics in 2020. It now requires realtors to avoid “harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” Fauber’s allegedly hateful posts had occurred before the amendment was adopted. However, his 2023 reiteration of them, as printed in the newspaper, served as cause for the complaint. In addition, the complaint “cited a more recent post where Fauber had criticized how female athletes were being physically injured by male athletes claiming to be girls,” according to the Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center (FFLC), which is defending Fauber in his upcoming hearing before an NAR tribunal.
Hearing Impaired
In May, the NAR sent Fauber an email informing him of his hearing just days before it was originally scheduled to take place in June. Because of health issues, NAR postponed the hearing until December 4.
Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, of which the FFLC is a subsidiary, told the Federalist:
When somebody brought [Fauber] up on ethics charges, the board could have chosen to dismiss them, but they did not. We’re really in a situation where if someone’s personal faith posted on their personal Facebook [page] becomes hate speech in the minds of an employer or an association, we don’t live in a free America, [and] everyone should be concerned about that.
According to the FFLC, the consequences of a guilty verdict from the tribunal include “possible discipline, monetary penalties, or even the loss of his Realtor status altogether.” The FFLC would not outright prohibit Fauber from acting as a real-estate agent, but,
without the status of Realtor, a person’s ability to make a living as a real estate agent is dramatically diminished because, in most cases, a real estate agent must be a member of NAR to access the Multiple Listing Service [MLS] — a critical tool that real estate agents use when listing and showing properties to clients. So, for nearly all real estate agents, losing their Realtor status is a career-ending proposition.
“It’s pretty much impossible to do the real estate business without the MLS,” Fauber told the Federalist. “The MLS does more than allow a realtor to find a property, it includes when it’s sold, how many days it’s been on the market and other information, documents and restrictions.”
Rejecting Religious Realtors
Outside of Fauber, his attorneys, and the tribunal, no one may ever know exactly what transpires in next month’s hearing. The “NAR’s membership contract requires confidentiality for anything that is said or determined during or as a result of any ethics hearing,” wrote the FFLC. “Hence, if they discipline you in any way, you are gagged.” That’s why Fauber is getting his story out now, says FFLC. “He hopes to make others aware of what is happening to Christians like him in the real estate profession.”
Those Christians include Montana pastor and realtor Brandon Huber. His local NAR branch suspended him and fined him $5,000 for “expressing the church’s views on homosexuality and the LGBTQ community,” the Daily Montanan reported.
They also include Christian Realtor Hadassah Carter, whose religious views the Virginia Real Estate Board tried — and, fortunately, failed — to quash via discrimination charges.
Observed the FFLC:
Apparently quoting the truth of the Bible is now enough to trigger a formal ethics hearing that could ruin a real estate agent’s career. In reality, “hate speech” is nothing more than an Orwellian device used to silence others. Ironically, rules and regulations like these are put in place to hate and harm individuals with disfavored viewpoints.
Perhaps Fauber’s strong, public stand against these tactics will cause the NAR to rethink its woke speech code.
“If this can happen to Wilson it can happen to anyone,” said FFLC attorney Michael Sylvester. “If we don’t stand up alongside, we may not have anyone stand with us when it happens to us.”
