15 Comments

Blake
December 6th, 2011 | 11:22 am


After putting her on probation, school administrators required Keeton to complete a remediation plan that included going to gay pride events, attending sensitivity training and writing monthly reflection papers. Keeton declined to participate in the plan, and the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit on her behalf in July 2010.

The state does not have the right to tell people what to think or what to believe.

If we are going to decide that clients visiting therapists and counselors have a right to not have a counselor that might “hurt” them through having the “wrong” beliefs, such guarantees should apply to all clients.

For all that gays claim they would be harmed if they are exposed to a counselor who rejects the tenets of humanist faith, the same is also true in reverse: I have seen firsthand children harmed because humanist counselors have inappropriately rejected the parent or guardian’s ethics, based on their humanist belief.

If not being harmed by your counselor is a basic right, then all counselors should have to be identified by their faith, and Christians should be guaranteed the right to be spared having to deal with counselors professing a humanist faith just as humanists should be guaranteed the right to be spared non-humanist counselors.

David Nickol
December 6th, 2011 | 11:34 am

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has heard arguments in a religious liberty case that could determine whether a college has the right to require students to profess certain beliefs about homosexuality in order to get a degree.


There are two issues in the Jennifer Keeton matter. The first is her personal beliefs about homosexuality. The second is what she would do as a therapist. No school has any right to require a student to “affirm homosexuality.” However, if a school is going to oversee Ms. Keeton counseling middle school and high school students as part of her degree program, it has the right to decide what is and what is not appropriate counseling.

If a student working toward a degree in counseling let it be known that he or she regarded religion in general, or some particular religion, to be detrimental to people’s mental health, and declared he or she would seek to counsel patients to help them get over their delusional beliefs in the supernatural, the school would very rightly insist that as a counselor acting under school supervision, discouraging patients’ religious beliefs out of the question. However, the school could not put an atheist student through a program of religious indoctrination to try to change his or her (non)religious beliefs.

David Nickol
December 6th, 2011 | 11:44 am

The state does not have the right to tell people what to think or what to believe.

Blake,

I agree, but the state (or anyone else supervising a counselor in training) has the right and the responsibility to tell that counselor how he or she may and may not conduct therapy. Ms. Keeton is a student, not a certified counselor. While she is a student, she is under the authority of her teachers and supervisors. If she completes the requirements for whatever kind of counselor she intends to become and obtains a license, then she can make a decision about how she wants to conduct therapy. But while she is in school and under supervision, she is not free to do whatever she wants. She is, however, free to believe whatever she wants, so attempts to “reeducate” her are misguided.

David Nickol
December 6th, 2011 | 11:50 am

If we are going to decide that clients visiting therapists and counselors have a right to not have a counselor that might “hurt” them through having the “wrong” beliefs, such guarantees should apply to all clients.

In general, people seeking therapy choose their own therapists. If you are a gay person who wants conversion therapy (reparative therapy), you have a right to seek it out. If you don’t want it, you have a right to discuss the matter with a potential therapist, find out where he or she stands on the matter, and seek another therapist if you are not satisfied.

Patrick
December 6th, 2011 | 8:46 pm

David, I agree that a student has to conform to the norms of the profession that she seeks to obtain qualification in, and therefore cannot, for example, diagnose homosexuals as having a psychological disorder in a clinical setting. However, it does not appear from this article that she did that: “she acknowledged in private conversations and during class that she disagreed with homosexuality” — but did she ever say she would apply her personal opinion in a clinical setting, apart from “saying she wanted to work with conversion therapy [...] after graduation”? The article is not really clear exactly how strident she was about that.

Continuing your analogy to religious beliefs, I think it would, and should, be allowed that an atheist can acknowledge in private conversations and during class that she disagrees with Christianity, as long as she is also willing to acknowledge that Christianity should not be considered a disorder as far as her clinical practice is concerned.

Now, it’s not clear that this student was willing to admit that the medical community does not consider homosexuality a disorder, and that she was willing to defer to their judgment until she graduated. While I have some sympathy for her position, it’s also clear that she has (willfully or not) put the school’s administration in a bind. They can’t selectively enforce professional standards among students, any more than she as a student can. That would open the gates to all sorts of mischief.

Harriet
December 7th, 2011 | 2:50 am

Nickol: “However, if a school is going to oversee Ms. Keeton counseling middle school and high school students as part of her degree program, it has the right to decide what is and what is not appropriate counseling. ”

The issue here is that their decision about what is appropriate counseling is based on ignorance and, therefore, that’s where their problem starts.

A medical school can decide only to award degrees if their medical students agree with performing lobotomy on certain patients, independently of a student’s personal views on the matter. Sure, that can be done.

Any school can stipulate anything.

Does the state have the right to enforce ignorance and make everyone irresponsible if they want a degree is the question at hand.

Does the state have the right to enforce a lie (that “people are born homosexual”), contested by multiple sources, including research?

Harriet
December 7th, 2011 | 3:00 am

Patrick: David, I agree that a student has to conform to the norms of the profession that she seeks to obtain qualification in, and therefore cannot, for example, diagnose homosexuals as having a psychological disorder in a clinical setting.

No counselor would be able to say if any person who has developed a homosexual culture and psychology has developed this because it was a disordered development unless they could know why the individual developed it in the first place.

Liberals want to enforce ignorance as the basis for psychology and that is the crux of the problem here.

Furthermore, research and psychology practice have shown that many different types of homosexuality are disordered personality/cultural/psycho-sexual developments. Liberals are just being dogmatically negligent and harmful, and now they want to have the state enforce their harm and ignorance.

Harriet
December 7th, 2011 | 3:02 am

Patrick: David, I agree that a student has to conform to the norms of the profession that she seeks to obtain qualification in, and therefore cannot, for example, diagnose homosexuals as having a psychological disorder in a clinical setting.

No counselor would be able to say if any person who has developed a homosexual culture and psychology has developed this because it was a disordered development unless they could know why the individual developed it in the first place.

Liberals want to enforce ignorance as the basis for psychology and that is the crux of the problem here.

Furthermore, research and psychology practice have shown that many different types of homosexualities are disordered personality/cultural/psycho-sexual developments. Liberals are just being dogmatically negligent and harmful, and now they want to have the state enforce their harm and ignorance.

HarrietJ
December 7th, 2011 | 3:27 am

Nickol: “However, if a school is going to oversee Ms. Keeton counseling middle school and high school students as part of her degree program, it has the right to decide what is and what is not appropriate counseling. ”

The issue here is that their decision about what is appropriate counseling is based on ignorance and, therefore, that’s where their problem starts.

A medical school can decide only to award degrees if their medical students agree with performing lobotomy on certain patients, independently of a student’s personal views on the matter. Sure, that can be done.

Any school can stipulate anything.

Does the state have the right to enforce ignorance and make everyone irresponsible if they want a degree is the question at hand.

Does the state have the right to enforce a lie (that “people are born homosexual”), contested by multiple sources, including research?

Patrick: David, I agree that a student has to conform to the norms of the profession that she seeks to obtain qualification in, and therefore cannot, for example, diagnose homosexuals as having a psychological disorder in a clinical setting.

No counselor would be able to say if any person who has developed a homosexual culture and psychology has developed this because it was a disordered development unless they could know why the individual developed it in the first place.

Liberals want to enforce ignorance as the basis for psychology and that is the crux of the problem here.

Furthermore, research and psychology practice have shown that many different types of homosexualities are disordered personality/cultural/psycho-sexual developments. Liberals are just being dogmatically negligent and harmful, and now they want to have the state enforce their harm and ignorance.

Patrick
December 7th, 2011 | 10:57 am

Harriet, I agree, but for practical purposes the student might just try being a little more low-key until she graduates. I’m just saying she does need to have a certain amount of respect for the mainstream opinion of the profession she wishes to enter. They don’t, of course, have the authority to impose moral choices, simply to verify that she understands the reasons for current medical practice.

HarrietJ
December 8th, 2011 | 2:43 am

(my previous comments first didn’t show up at all, that’s why I tried posting them more than once! It wasn’t my intention)

Patrick,

Another terrible consequence resulting from the tawdry actions of these schools is that it encourages any and all students (future counselors!) to lie about anything and everything.

There’s another similar case moving through the legal system concerning Julea Ward, who was expelled from the EMU counseling program for not affirming homosexuality.

Ms Ward was ethical in every respect of her conduct, but most of all, as it pertains to being truthful and transparent. And what was the result?

Ward has taken upon herself to challenge institutionalized ignorance, bias and injustice in an entity that was fundamentally conceived to serve the citizenry.

I think we need more Julea Wards.

The EMU faculty, because it is following the ACA, is a disgrace.

“Dr. Callaway later informed plaintiff that she would not be assigned any more clients, and that she, Callaway, would be requesting an informal review before herself and plaintiff’s advisor, Professor Dugger, as to whether Ward had violated University and ACA policies prohibiting an “inability to tolerate different points of view,”

From the people who would rather expel any and all students rather than tolerate different points of view…

HarrietJ
December 8th, 2011 | 3:09 am

A larger problem refers to the claims by EMU faculty/lawyers that counselors should not use, much less impose their personal values within the counseling context.

This very concept is seriously flawed, mostly because it is impossible, and yet it is being argued as if it were. The basis for one of EMU’s legal arguments is nothing but one fat lie.

“The ACA Code of Ethics provides that a counselor’s primary responsibility . . . is to respect the dignity and to promote the welfare of clients.”

however

“Your job is not to judge clients’ values, but to help them explore and clarify their beliefs and apply their values to solving their own problems”

In other words, if the client wants to do something unethical, dysfunctional, detrimental, destructive, but which is coherent with the client’s larger (unethical) value system, by the ACA Code of “Ethics,” the counselor is prohibited to discuss responsible values with the client, because that is “judgmental” and it’s imposing a different value system on the client.

It is every citizen’s job to assess and evaluate values, so that we can decide what is best, what is coherent, and fundamentally what is “welfare.” A definition of “welfare” that is not based on values is impossible, illogical.

Any and all definitions of a person’s welfare require values as integral components and value-based decisions.

Otherwise, what exactly is a counselor for?

HarrietJ
December 8th, 2011 | 3:21 am

correction:

This very concept is seriously flawed, mostly because it is impossible, and yet it is being argued as if it were NOT.

Blake
December 8th, 2011 | 4:45 pm

I agree, but the state (or anyone else supervising a counselor in training) has the right and the responsibility to tell that counselor how he or she may and may not conduct therapy.

Not when it amounts to the establishment of a religion.

There is only ONE faith in America that believes in the values at question here. That faith is the one based on the assumptions of the Enlightenment.

Christians (excepting Christianty-humanist hybrid groups), Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, and Hindu teachings all recognize the sanctity of family, and do not support the ideas that uphold the humanist teachings on homosexuality.

It is fair to make her label herself a Christian therapist, but it is not fair to say that humanism is the only valid set of beliefs, and that anyone who isn’t a humanist can’t be a therapist. This is not only religious discrimination against her, it’s also religious discrimination against me, and against every other person who would seek out a Christian instead of a humanist if we needed or wanted counseling.

Or, to say the same thing in fewer words, your argument fails because it confuses “fact” with “values” – we all share the same set of facts, but we are not all required to share the same set of values, and what is the “correct” attitude toward homosexuality is a value, not a fact.

Blake
December 8th, 2011 | 4:51 pm

A larger problem refers to the claims by EMU faculty/lawyers that counselors should not use, much less impose their personal values within the counseling context.

Counselors impose their personal values all the time.

I have had temporary custody of kids who had to go see counselors. One situation involved a girl below the age of consent who had an abusive older boyfriend. This girl was from a home where there had been issues of domestic violence and issues of blurred sexual boundaries. The counselor prioritized the usual left wing “pro promiscuity” agenda over what was really best for this girl. Is this a fact situation or a values situation? What is the real definition of “empowerment” – for a girl to have the “power” to choose sex, or for a girl to have the “power” to say no?

Humanist counselors have failed, by the way. They do not do good work. They do not fix people. They promise healing, but if they actually were held accountable to the same standard that real medical practitioners are held accountable, their malpractice rates would have put them out of business years ago.

It’s also worth noting that Christianity has a much better track record when it comes to people fixing broken lives.