We seem to be in a season of judicial sanity. As Jeremy Tedesco, the lawyer who argued the case reports, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that vindicated the claims of Julea Ward.
Ward was a counseling grad student at Eastern Michigan University, and when she used the recommended procedures to refer a gay couple that she felt she could not counsel appropriately because of her Christian beliefs, she was summarily tried and executed by the faculty—in other words expelled from the program.
In a strongly worded opinion the Sixth Circuit reversed a lower court decision and reinstated Ward’s lawsuit. As the court put it: tolerance is a two-way street. Professors can’t insist that all values and life-style choices are equally valid, and then turn around and punish those who happen to be Christians.
Read the rest of Tedesco’s account here.
February 1st, 2012 | 8:11 am
“Professors can’t insist that all values and life-style choices are equally valid, and then turn around and punish those who happen to be Christians.”
Is this a bit of a straw man? How many professors really insist all values and life-style choices are equally valid? For example, are there any professors who insist slavery is a valid lifestyle choice? Or bank robbery? Or factory farming?
February 1st, 2012 | 9:30 am
Seems the cover of so called tolerance of many colleges & universities was blown.
Now they may have to walk the talk.
February 1st, 2012 | 9:48 am
“Tolerance is a two way street”. Wisdom from a bunch of lawyers, who’d a thunk it.
February 1st, 2012 | 9:57 am
[...] The only thing Julea Ward did wrong was to hold conservative religious beliefs to which the professoriat at her university objected. She didn’t even try to impose those beliefs on others — in fact, just the opposite. These liberal professors punished this woman because she believed the “wrong” things. Hooray for what Rusty Reno calls “a season of judicial sanity.” [...]
February 1st, 2012 | 2:39 pm
“the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that vindicated the claims of Julea Ward.”
Unfortunately, I find this a premature way to word it. They vindicated her right to pursue her claims, and yes, in a way, this require a certain level of vindication of her claims as an underpinning.
The battle for Ward to effectively vindicate her claims will be a long one, but hopefully, a court will finally vindicate her claims.
If we lived in Disneyland, not only would she win the case, but the judge would then assign this disgusting Michigan Social Work faculty to follow a remediation program regarding their intolerant and unprofessional belief system about sexuality, religion, and higher education.
A taste of their own medicine is what would be the best here.
Felapton: “Is this a bit of a straw man? How many professors really insist all values and life-style choices are equally valid? ”
That’s exactly why liberals are such hypocrites when they call others “intolerant” and “bigoted.” They are the greatest examples of intolerance and bigotry themselves, but they don’t want others to have a right in choosing their values and standards.
February 1st, 2012 | 3:48 pm
And if I may add another comment, to me, Julea Ward is our Rosa Parks. No, we will not sit in the back of the bus as liberals are shoving us relentlessly.
And the folks at ADF deserve all the laurels ever. Time after time they have valiantly stood up for the defense of a right of a conscience, belief, and speech.
I read Sutton’s opinion (very, very accessible, btw) and there is another remark to be made.
“While Keeton involved Augusta State’s across-the-board application of an ethical rule that prohibits counselors from imposing their values on
clients, today’s case reveals evidence that Eastern Michigan University selectively
enforced a no-referral policy against Ward.”
But this is not so, since not only Augusta but counselors systematically impose their values on clients. The very act of counseling falls apart if a counselor does not work and make a series of decisions and choices based on their values.
In any case, Sutton laid out a very convincing line of argument showing that EMU selectively
enforced a no-referral policy against Ward.
“Curriculum choices are a form of school speech, giving schools considerable
flexibility in designing courses and policies and in enforcing them so long as they
amount to reasonable means of furthering legitimate educational ends. The key problem
with the university’s position is not the adoption of this anti-discrimination policy, the
existence of the practicum class or even the values-affirming message the school wants
students to understand and practice.”
I disagree with Sutton. The Social Work Code of “Ethics” adopted by EMU does not further legitimate education ends. And so, IMO, although it appears this case it will be legally construed to hinge solely to assess if “EMU selectively enforced a no-referral policy against Ward,” there are many more problematic layers to the case, that is, there are multiple cases here to be tried.
This case (and Keeton’s) pose a quandary. What if a public school adopts a kind of accreditation that is anti-science and discriminatory for its programs?
The problem lies not in the school adopting an accreditation scheme, but in the harm that is produced if a particular accreditation scheme is problematic, which is the case, and in addition, is discriminatory.
February 2nd, 2012 | 5:48 pm
Is this a bit of a straw man? How many professors really insist all values and life-style choices are equally valid?
No, it is not a straw man: this is what they really claim to believe.
It is taken as self-evident that criminal behaviors are not included in this equality. But as long as something is legal, you have the right to do what you want, and you have the right to expect others to just deal with it.
Unfortunately, the model is incapable of handling the reality that sometimes what you want and what I want are incompatible. In such cases, they get around this by simply failing to recognize that what you want is valid; it is described as invalid, because it is not compatible with what someone else wants.
(Hence the rise of the latest iteration of the COEXIST bumper sticker: “COEXIST: it’s easier without religion!” – or, “we could all coexist if only you’d just stop believing things that are in conflict with what I believe”).
February 3rd, 2012 | 1:21 am
Being a homosexual is not a “lifestyle choice”. People are born in all different forms. Should it not be the Christian thing to do to accept each person for who they are, and further, as a Christian woman, should she not turn the other cheek rather than seeking money for being “wronged”? It seems prudent that a counseling student not willing to deal with all types of people should be dismissed, not for her beliefs, but because her intolerance is not compatible with the profession she was pursuing.
February 4th, 2012 | 6:05 am
Being a homosexual is not a “lifestyle choice”.
Having homosexual urges is not a “lifestyle choice”. But how you choose to deal with those urges is entirely “lifestyle choice”.
Furthermore, it’s one that is particularly associated with religion, since there is only one religion (humanism, aka Unitarian Universalism) that teaches what “gay rights” advocates claim “all” gays want.
All the major religion traditions have always been very clear that family-making sex is sacred, family ties are sacred, and there is a distinct difference in kind between the bond (and the sexual activity) that occurs between a mother and a father as opposed to the bonds (and sexual activities) that occur between people whose primary reason for coupling is their own pleasure, disassociated from familial and societal concerns.
Most gays throughout history did not want what today’s gay rights advocates claim “all” gays want. Even in places where homosexuality was openly condoned, such as ancient Greece, it was understood that same-sex pairings were about pleasure but you needed and wanted a member of the opposite sex to make a family with.
Until the Enlightenment brought us the philosophies that justify prioritizing one’s own pleasure over the well-being of one’s family and community, it would have been nonsensical and literally unthinkable to argue that a type of love that threatens biological families is in any way like the type of love that creates and stabilizes biological families.
Humanism has one set of beliefs about what it means to have sexual desires. It is from these philosophical assumptions – and only these – that makes it somehow coherent to argue that a “family” can be whatever you want it to be, even if that means passing around other peoples’ kids. The assumption has to break all ties with past and future generations, focus exclusively on not only “the now” but also prioritizing one family member’s “now” above all the other family members (little is said about the people who are reduced to breeding stock – ironic, given the humanist outrage at projections such as books like “The Handmaid’s Tale”).
If we accept that having homosexual impulses means you are not responsible for the choices you make (and are entitled to make whatever choices feel good, regardless of consequences), then why would homosexuals get such a dispensation, and not every other person who is afflicted by unwanted desires?
February 4th, 2012 | 6:06 am
as a Christian woman, should she not turn the other cheek rather than seeking money for being “wronged”?
Your assumption that she was motivated by a desire to hurt someone is incorrect.
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