Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon told the Alabama Policy Institute’s annual dinner Thursday night that his company gave up more than 40% of its web traffic rather than delete a joke.

In his words, the lesson for Alabama’s conservatives is to stop counting what freedom – and common sense – costs.

“There is no price that we shouldn’t be willing to pay for freedom,” Dillon said. “We have to stop caring what it costs us.”

The dinner marked API’s 37th year. It opened with a toast to the founders the organization lost in 2026, recognized State Senate and House members as 2026 legislative champions, and gave the Warrior Award to Melea Stephens, the Alabama therapist whose testimony helped pass the App Store Accountability Act.

U.S. Senator and 2026 favorite in the Alabama governor’s race, Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn), U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover), Secretary of State Wes Allen, and many state legislators were among the officials present.

Before Dillon’s remarks, the night’s invocation asked God to give Alabama’s leaders “wisdom and discernment to know not only right from wrong, but to understand right from almost right.”

API President and CEO Stephanie Smith said the organization lost three board members in 2026, among them founding board chairman Tom Bradford, who fundamentally represented that essence.

Palmer, API’s founding president, said Bradford gave him his first job in Birmingham in 1978 and, in 1989, the challenge that started the institute.

“He said, ‘Well, I tell you what, if you can find 10 people who’ll give $10,000 and be on your board, I’ll give $10,000 and chair your board,’” Palmer said. “He thought that’d be the last time he saw me. Three months later, I was back in his office with the 10 people, and that’s how we got started.”

Palmer called Bradford and his wife, Mary Ann, “the first family of the Alabama Policy Institute” and raised a toast.

“We just thank God that He raises up people like Tom and Mary Ann Bradford … who would think more in terms of what they can do for good, what they can do for the kingdom of God, than they do for what they can do for themselves,” Palmer said.

Smith, introducing Dillon, called him “one of the nation’s most vocal defenders of free speech.” “When major tech platforms attempted to censor satire, he refused to back down, famously choosing to stand on principle over compliance,” Smith said.

Dillon, who took over the Bee in 2018 from founder Adam Ford, opened with the site’s Alabama headline, “Alabama Pastor Placed On Leave After Giving Sermon Without College Football Analogy,” and a joke he wrote about Tim Tebow, last year’s keynote, being suspended for performance-enhancing Bible verses, which Tebow shared. The Bee’s count of jokes that later became real headlines stands at 133, Dillon said.

In March 2022, the Bee named Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s assistant secretary for health, its “Man of the Year” after USA Today named Levine a woman of the year. Dillon said the staff knew the post would violate Twitter’s rules and debated whether to publish it.

“If it’s a joke that they don’t want us to tell because it touches on one of these sacred cows that they’re trying to protect, that’s the one that we must tell,” Dillon said. “There’s no way around it, even if it means that we get suspended. If we aren’t willing to do that, we’re derelict in our duty.”

Twitter locked the account and required the Bee to delete the post and check a box admitting to hateful conduct, Dillon said. The platform was driving more than 40% of the site’s traffic.

“The truth is not hate speech, and this is a joke. Comedy should be legal,” Dillon said. “What better hill is there to die on than reality itself? If we’re not willing to defend reality in the face of this madness, and we start to lose our grip on reality, where does that leave us?”

Elon Musk called days later and first advised deleting the joke, Dillon said. Dillon told him nothing would change until somebody refused to go along.

“He sat there quietly for a minute, and he said, ‘You know, you guys have integrity. Maybe I just need to buy Twitter,’” Dillon said.

The Bee spent eight months locked out before Musk closed the $44 billion deal and restored the account. Dillon told the crowd not to take Musk as the lesson.

“The lesson is not that you should be willing to do whatever, no matter what the cost, because the benevolent billionaire is going to bail you out. You can’t count on that, and we weren’t counting on that when we made the decisions that we made,” Dillon said. “We just simply trusted that doing the right thing would make a difference, and we trust in God’s plan.”

“There’s the hard censorship where they take down your content, and then there’s the soft censorship where we bite our own tongues and refuse to speak freely because we’re afraid of a consequence. And that is the far worse kind,” Dillon said. “You are doing the tyrant’s work for him when you censor yourself.”

Dillon closed with Solomon Asch’s conformity experiment, in which more than 70% of subjects agreed with a table of people coached to give the wrong answer, and fewer than 5% did once one person at the table gave the right one.

“You don’t have to be wildly successful or popular or wealthy like me or Elon Musk,” Dillon said. “You just have to be that person in your sphere of influence, at your table of 10, who’s willing to tell the truth. Come what may, you will embolden other people to join you, and that will make all the difference.”

Smith also presented the 2026 Warrior Award, established in 2019 for “public officials, business leaders and community figures who demonstrate extraordinary leadership and commitment,” to Stephens, a marriage and family therapist and board member of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

Stephens testified before the Legislature for the App Store Accountability Act, which requires app stores to verify ages and obtain parental consent before minors download apps. It passed both chambers unanimously and Governor Kay Ivey signed it in February.

“She speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves, and she speaks boldly,” Smith said. “She helped API take on big tech this year and win.”

Stephens said the award belonged to a team, and picked up Dillon’s line.

“When God calls you to stand up for the protection and the rights of innocent children, you need to be prepared to be on a battlefield, because there is truly a battle in the natural and the supernatural, especially when your opponents have a vested interest in having unchecked access to our children, and you’re going toe to toe with the pornography industry or aspects of big tech,” Stephens said.

“But thankfully, as you said, Seth, I was not at the table by myself.”

API’s 2026 legislative champions, recognized after Stephens, included State Senators Sam Givhan (R-Huntsville), Keith Kelley (R-Jacksonville), Wes Kitchens (R-Arab), Dan Roberts (R-Mountain Brook), Larry Stutts (R-Tuscumbia) and April Weaver (R-Brierfield), along with Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa), Tom Butler (R-Madison) and Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) – and State Reps. Carns (R-Vestavia Hills), Colvin (R-Albertville), Gidley (R-Hokes Bluff), Hammett (R-Dozier), Harrison (R-Elkmont), Kiel (R-Russellville), Mooney (R-Indian Springs), Stringer (R-Citronelle), Underwood (R-Tuscumbia), Yarbrough (R-Trinity).

Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.