Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed

[Manul]

A graduate student in Georgia is suing her university after she was told she must undergo a remediation program due to her beliefs on homosexuality and transgendered persons.

The student, Jennifer Keeton, 24, has been pursuing a master's degree in school counseling at Augusta State University since 2009, but school officials have informed her that she'll be dismissed from the program unless she alters her "central religious beliefs on human nature and conduct," according to a civil complaint filed last week.



Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/27/georgia-university-tells-student-lose-religion-lawsuit-claims/)

From the article:

"The Counselor Education Program is grounded in the core principles of the American Counseling Association and the American School Counselor Association, which defines the roles and responsibilities of professional counselors in its code of ethics," the statement read. "The code is included in the curriculum of the counseling education program, which states that counselors in training have the same responsibility as professional counselors to understand and follow the ACA Code of Ethics."

The Code of Ethics prohibits counselors from discriminating based on a number of factors, including gender identity and sexual orientation. "Counselors do not discriminate against clients, students, employees, supervisees, or research participants in a manner that has a negative impact on these persons," the code says.



Sounds to me that she's not qualified.

[Corkey]

Yep not qualified, personal bias has no place in clinical situations.

[dreadgeek]

Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/27/georgia-university-tells-student-lose-religion-lawsuit-claims/)

From the article:



Sounds to me that she's not qualified.

I expect to see more and more of these kinds of lawsuits in the coming years. It'll continue to happen because it's a great strategy. It works like this:

Take someone who is, say, a graduate student in biology. They write their dissertation or thesis on some interesting gene sequence or another and utterly fail to mention the adaptive significance for the trait. The reviewing committee, quite reasonably, asks the prospect why they have managed to write N pages and completely avoid the subject of selection, fitness, or adaptation. They then reply along the general lines that Darwinian theory isn't true. So the review committee rejects the paper. The person then goes off butt-hurt (to use my wife's phrasing) to the Thomas Moore center (a conservative legal advocacy outfit) claiming that they are being discriminated against because they are a Christian. The problem, of course, is not their religion but that they are not meeting the minimal standards of competency in the field.

This is what I think is happening here. As a prospective counselor her ethical obligation is to *not* go in there and start preaching about what her god thinks about homosexuality or what the Bible has to say on the subject. If she has stated that she will not abide by that ethical standard then it is absolutely appropriate for her to undergo censure or something like it.

The other reason this will become increasingly common is two-fold; it reinforces the pre-existing narrative that fundamentalist Christians already have running which is that the they are the victims and 'The World' is the oppressor. So, in the gay rights battle they believe--quite honestly--that they are the victims and that any laws protecting us from discrimination are, in fact, laws against Christianity (yes, they really, honestly, genuinely, believe this). The second reason is that Americans try to be fair-minded to a fault. We *want* to be on the side of the underdogs and we love the story of the plucky person going up against the big bully.

I'm already aware of a physicist who, in Ben Stein's movie "Expelled", claimed he was fired from the astronomy department at a university in Iowa because he's a Christian. However, that's not the case. The problem was that he had the combination of very bad student evals and he hadn't published any work in 10 years. He wasn't tenured and they determined that he just wasn't cutting the mustard.

Cheers
Aj

[Medusa]

I remember the news article about that Physicist and I seem to remember that there were seveal more lawsuits on behalf of nurses who had been fired for refusing to perform abortions and Pharmacists who had refused to fill birth control prescriptions.

Im beginning to think more and more that the "3-headed beasts falling from the sky" and "Christian Oppression" narrative will be much more about crazy Fundi's with guns trying to "protect their religion" by starting riots and chaos than it will be about some dude with a beard coming down and swooping up his "chosen people".

[imperfect_cupcake]

which of course just makes me want to pick up their fish and slap them with it.

I happen to like mythos and ritual and spirituality even though I'm -for lack of a better word but it's the best descriptor - atheist. But stupid get what stupid asks for ffs.

[Isadora]

So do they agree with NOM who believes and promotes that the best way to end gay marriage is to hang people?

[Manul]

Here's another similar case:

Lawyers for a national religious liberty group said they plan to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a former Eastern Michigan University graduate student who said she was kicked out of a master’s program because she refused on religious grounds to counsel a homosexual client.

“There are aspects of the decision that present appealable issues and we disagree with the court on his conclusions,” David French, a lawyer for Alliance Defense Fund said today.

EMU said it was pleased.

“Eastern has a responsibility to the public to exercise careful and deliberate judgment about who should be permitted to graduate from our professional schools and practice in the education and health professions,” said Walter Kraft, EMU vice president of communications. He said the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld such decisions by public universities because courts “should show great respect for the faculty’s professional judgment."

Anti-gay EMU social-work student loses appeal (http://www.freep.com/article/20100727/NEWS06/100727038/1320/Anti-gay-EMU-social-work-student-loses-appeal)

So it doesn't look favorable for Ms. Keeton.