The Glade 4.0

An Augusta State University counseling student has filed a lawsuit against her school claiming it violated her First Amendment rights when it told her to change her traditionalist Christian views on homosexuality or get out.

The Alliance Defense Fund filed suit Wednesday on behalf of Jennifer Keeton, 24, seeking to stop the school from expelling her from her master’s degree program.

“They made a cascading series of presumptions about the kind of a counselor she would be and have consequently … tried to force her to change her beliefs,” David French, the ADF attorney representing Keeting in the case, told The Daily Caller. “It’s symbolic of an educational system that has lost its way.”

The suit alleges the university retaliated against Keeton for stating her belief that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and not a “state of being,” and that gender is not a social construct subject to individual change. According to the suit, the school wants her to undergo a “thought reform” program intended to change her religious beliefs. She faces expulsion unless she complies, and the suit seeks to block the university from throwing her out for noncompliance.

“Is saying there is such a thing as a male and a female as distinct, and that gender isn’t merely a social construct … such a dangerous position that it has to be banned from a profession?” French asked.

According to court documents, one of Keeton’s professors, Dr. Mary Jane Anderson-Wiley, told her this past May she would have to undergo a remediation program intended to change her views on homosexuality.

The university’s Counseling Education Program handbook proscribes such programs for those whose conduct is “not satisfactory on interpersonal or professional criteria unrelated to academic performance.”

When Keeting received a copy of her program at a May 27 meeting, she saw the document questioned her ability to be a “multiculturally competent counselor” because she dissented from the prevailing view about homosexuality and tried to get others to see things her way.

It also warned her speech had violated various codes of ethics and her support for “conversion therapy for GLBTQ (Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender) populations” departed from accepted norms of “psychological research.”

The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), however, defends the practice Keeting advocated on its website and says many of the studies opponents of “conversion therapy” cite suffer from politically motivated biases and deliberately ignore contrary evidence.

The program also required her to attend at least three pro-gay sensitivity training courses by the end of this fall, read pro-gay peer-reviewed journals on GLBTQ issues, and participate in activities such as Augusta’s gay pride parade. She also was asked to familiarize herself with the Association of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Issues in Counseling webpage, which defines homosexual behavior as healthy and suggests gender is a matter of personal choice rather than biology.

The professors also required her to submit a “two-page reflection” each month of how her participation in pro-gay activities “has influenced her beliefs” and how future clients might benefit from her experiences.

“There is no question they are putting her through a kind of thought-reform program when you think about what they are doing,” French said. “It’s a re-education program pure and simple, and it’s … the state trying to invade the human heart and human mind to change her deepest beliefs.”

He continued by noting, “It’s unconscionable.”

Anderson-Wiley reportedly complained about Keeting’s Christian belief that homosexuality is sinful and demanded she choose between her faith and the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics.

“You couldn’t be a teacher, let alone a counselor, with those views,” court documents quoted Dr. Paulette Schenck, another of the university’s counseling professors, as having said in response to Keeting’s affirmation of her Christian beliefs.

And Anderson-Wiley subsequently told Keeting the faculty wanted her to “alter some of her beliefs,” court documents say.

According to e-mails between Keeting and the professors, the faculty does not expect her to change her personal beliefs and values, but rather wants her to not expect others to share her values or impose them during her counseling sessions.

“This is the unethical part — applying your own personal beliefs and values on other people and not truly accepting that others can have different beliefs and values that are as equally valid as your own,” court documents say Schenck wrote in an e-mail exchange with Keeting.

The ACA would not immediately comment on the facts of the case, but released a statement clarifying its standards.

“The ACA Code of Ethics serves to ensure that counselors and counselors-in-training conduct themselves in a way which is consistent with the ideals of the profession. As such, the core values of diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion are present throughout the code and are crucial to the ethical decision-making process,” Erin Martz, ACA’s manager of ethics and professional standards wrote in an e-mailed statement.

According to French, the university crossed the line by mandating Keeting hold a certain set of beliefs.

“This is not the role of the state to be supervising their students’ religious beliefs, must less mandating their religious beliefs,” French said. “They certainly believe the values they hold trump her religious beliefs and that she should change her religious beliefs to match their beliefs…[It’s] fundamentally coercive.”

The courts have defined “religion” as a deeply held worldview that holds the same place in a person’s life as a conventional religion such as Christianity or Islam; consequently, an effort to require students to adhere to a certain worldview could potentially violate the Establishment Clause.

As a result, French said the university’s effort likely violates the Establishment Clause as well as the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.

“The left has been extremely upset by the fact that you would even see a picture of the 10 Commandments, or hear a prayer, or see a nativity scene,” French said. “None of those things are coercive. Here they are actually coercing students, they are actually saying, ‘Your religious beliefs disqualify you from this program, and to stay in this program you must alter your beliefs.’”

He continued, “They are going beyond censoring speech and stampeding straight to trying to change her heart and mind on religious issues and religious beliefs.”

Augusta State University would had not comment on the case, but spokeswoman Tunisia Williams told TheDC that her school does not deny students admission to programs because of “their personal religious persuasions.”

The posted article doesn't go into the back story at all - other than when it states "she dissented from the prevailing view about homosexuality and tried to get others to see things her way" and that the college "wants her to not expect others to share her values or impose them during her counseling sessions".

Sounds like she went outside her job description. The article seems very one sided.

There's a time and a place, and it really seems she failed to recognize that.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

What qualifies as pro gay?

The state should not be in the business of handing out pedigrees to people that intend to discriminate or inflict their religious values on others via their profession.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a counsellor who does their job from their own moral viewpoint. The real problem here is that there is an "accepted norm" regarding gender identities and sexuality. If a person is going to a counselor whose views they find unacceptable, they can find another counsellor. Why shouldn't there be some counsellors that Evngelical Christians can go to who share their viewpoints? If a Christian went to a counsellor because, say, they are distraught over a friend or relative being gay, why should that counsellor necessarily be someone who is going to tell them that they are wrong in their moral evaluation of homosexuality?

While there does seem to be some bias in her favor in the article, and it's possible that she may have overstepped her bounds by pushing her views in counselling sessions rather than simply being frank about them when and if she was asked, the problem there is technique, not the unacceptability of her views. It should be just as unacceptable to push the view of "gay is perfectly okay and normal." Moreover, a lot of the sanctions against her, especially participating in a gay pride parade seem to be designed to humiliate her and force her to participate in things she doesn't agree with in hopes that she will change her views for fear of being shouted down by the people around her.

Regardless of your feelings on homosexuality, this is a problem of acceptance being confused with tolerance. People are entitled to tolerance; to be safe from other people harming them or attacking them, to be allowed to go about their own buisness. They are not entitled to acceptance; if you go to someone seeking their services wherein their views on a topic will be relevant to the service and might conflict with your own, it's your job to find someone else if you don't like that.

The only way the state should have any concern about her method of counselling is if they are actually employing her. Saying the state shouldn't give "pedigrees" to people who are "willfully ignorant" is essentially a smokescreen for "people with the wrong beliefs should be denied access to certain types of work and education."

Who else can we think of that pursued such a course of action in recent history? I know it will come to me...

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

So you think it would be perfectly acceptable for the state to certify a psychologist who is a Scientologist?

So you think it would be perfectly acceptable for the state to certify a psychologist who is a Scientologist?

That is not the same situation at all. In this case, the woman is only disagreeing with the established moral viewpoint on one very narrow aspect of counselling.

Her actual competance as a counsellor does not seem to be in question outside of that narrow area. If she were at fundamental disagreement with how to conduct counselling, or whether it worked at all, she would be highly unlikely to enter the program in the first place and would rapidly demonstrate incompetance and fail out.

In the same way, a Scientologist who rejects psychology itself is not a fair comparison to this. If the Scientologist were able to put aside his views on the basic principles of how the science works and demonstrate that he can competantly perform psychology, that would be perfectly fine even if he based some of his viewpoints on the individual problems he dealt with on his moral views as a Scientologist.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

To you it is a question of morality, to others it is a question of science.

Because colleges don't rubber-stamp people into degrees?

Again it is a question of one person's morality rejecting science.

Whether homosexuality is moral is not a question of science.

Whether homosexuality is moral is not a question of science. A scientific determination of cause might affect the moral question but no such determination has been made.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Is the morality of that question something college counselors should expect others to emulate or impose on others during counseling sessions?

I wouldn't want college counselors expecting or imposing any particular morality on my kids. Of course, it it were the RIGHT Morality™ I'd be OK with it, but there are so many that one can pick from that I'd just rather that they didn't go there.

If the subject comes up, the counsellor should not be enjoined from stating their personal stance on it. They should not be "imposing" it, but stating their belief is not imposing it.

I don't quite see how a college counsellor would normally be discussing sexual issues with students anyhow.

Then why did you bring it up?

I'm having a hard time understanding your quote tags, but the fact is that science has not established the answer to these questions, which in turn means it cannot be used to proclaim either a personal opinion on what one thinks is true, or a moral stance, out of bounds.

Even if science had shown a definite cause for homosexual orientation, it would still be a legitimate moral stance that homosexual acitivty is wrong, depending on one's moral system.

That's the problem with the professors' postition. They are trying to put an entire field of study off limits to those of a different moral framework. Her beliefs about the scientific status of gender and sexuality are merely opinion in the midst of lack of solid conclusions. She could still easily find homosexual activity immoral even if such orientation were found to be totally involuntary, and that's what they're really trying to force her to change: her moral position. Going to gay pride parades, writing papers on how she's changed her views and stuff have nothing to do with getting her to get on board with science; they're about giving her an ultimatum based on what the professors have decreed acceptable.

It also warned her speech had violated various codes of ethics and her support for “conversion therapy for GLBTQ (Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender) populations” departed from accepted norms of “psychological research.”

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin