OK, this doesn’t make the first bit of sense to me:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/27/georgia-university-tells-student-lose-religion-lawsuit-claims/
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.
This news story has been popping up all over the blogosphere for a few days, elicitting the usual howls of rage. But in my case, it elicits howl of “huh?”
I’m willing to accept that there is a whole lot of bureaucratic, politically-correct dumbassery in the world, but this pegs my BS meter. *IF* it’s true, the university needs to have its ass handed to ’em but the courts. But this is almost too bizarre to be true. Would they have made a similar demand of, say, a devout Muslim?
While it’s true that the students beliefs very likely will impact her ability to carry out her chosen career functions, that doesn’t seem to be the schools responsibility. A student taking astronomy classes who believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old is clearly a dumbass, and will likely have a pretty awful career as an astronomer (worse yet if he’s studying geology or something to take him into the petrochemical industry). But so long as he passes the tests and does the homework, what should the university care?
10 Responses to “Change Your Religion Or Else”
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I note that the university refuses to discuss the situation in any detail. I suspect some of the management is a bit embarrassed because they thought there would be no disagreement with the demand.
It might be argued that the university is intentionally and deliberately promoting homosexuality. I’d love to see that idea discussed in public.
This doesn’t surprise me. I spent too much of my life in university liberal arts classes and with the faculty, and they are politically-correct to a degree that might be called pathological. I’ve seen degrees handed to minorities who just can’t function but whose tribal self-esteem is to be promoted with a degree. They probably would not do this to a Muslim student, partly to assure there would be no terrorist attack on the campus.
I bet the girl could get her degree from a religious school. Transfer of all her graduate credits would probably be done enthusiastically.
Walter Williams reports on something similar, today. The problem is that the school has chosen to support a minority view that it feels is going to become politically powerful (and, presumably, financially useful) in the future. Likewise, the government school system in Charleston SC: “A white Charleston, S.C. teacher frequently complained of black students calling her: white b—-, white m—–f—–, white c— and white ho. Most people would judge that to be racism and demand it to end. Charleston school officials told the teacher this racially charged profanity was simply part of the students’ culture, and if she couldn’t handle it, she was in the wrong school.” There was a result: “The teacher brought a harassment suit and the school district settled out of court for $200,000.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/07/28/racism_or_stupidity
From the article:
“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.
Keeton’s lawsuit alleges that the university’s remediation plan noted Keeton’s “disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian ‘lifestyle,'” as well as Keeton’s belief that those “lifestyles” are cases of identity confusion.”
The woman in question is training to be a counselor and is in violation of her program’s code of ethics. I’d be miserable at a fundamentalist theological college and they’d probably ask me to leave fairly quickly, it’d just be a case of me being in the wrong institution for my beliefs. Same case applies here. If her personal beliefs conflict with the code of ethics she’s agreed to abide by, then she should go elsewhere for her education.
Interestingly, this is also the other side of the coin from the teacher in Charleston and the college is taking steps to prevent a harassment lawsuit. The school in Charleston allowed the teacher to be harassed and was rightly sued. Augusta State is worried about harassment lawsuits when “the counselor I was assigned discriminated against me because of my sexual orientation” and they’re taking steps to prevent it.
Fox News is just spinning another story to keep their audience angry. They sure wouldn’t get as many pageviews if they waited until the story was “Georgia university sued for discrimination by counseling clients”.
> “The Code of Ethics prohibits counselors from discriminating based on a number of factors, including gender identity and sexual orientation. …
How about “religion?”
Simple fact is that once you start getting all “tolerant” and “diverse” and “multi-cultural,” you start running into a wall. Some cultures do not play well with others, and at some point you must make a choice.
> Fox News is …
… just one of a large number of news organizations reporting on this.
How about the Washington post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/07/two_cases_pit_gay_rights_again.html
Or ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-student-sues-university-lgbt-sensitivity-training/story?id=11261490
Or the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298445/Student-sues-university-told-kicked-course-unless-changed-views-homosexuality.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Or AOL News: http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/christian-counseling-student-sues-to-stay-in-school/19570716
or Ms. Magazine: http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=12538
Or a hell of a lot of other sources.
“How about “religion?””
Your religion doesn’t give you a free pass to discriminate against other people.
> Your religion doesn’t give you a free pass to discriminate against other people.
No, your rights as a Human give you that free pass. Don’t think so? Then imagine that you must like everyone equally, no matter how much some of them may be assholes. Imagine that instead of people picking and choosing who they’re going to date (based on, say, apparent health, financial status, age, personality, ethnicity… hell, some backwards folk even consider *gender* when deciding whether or not they’re going to date someone), they must pull a name out of a hat. And if they express any dissatisfaction or distatse with the results, they must go in for “remediation” to fix their beliefs.
But back to the news story… it seems that the university is using religion to discriminate against the Christian student (again… this assumes that her story is basically accurate). Nobody else seems to be made to attend brainwashing sessions to make sure that their religious beliefs are in line with the preferred ideology. Thus… religion-based discrimination.
This is, I believe, a public university. Thus it would seem they have no more right to force someone to *believe* a certain way in these squishy lib-art studies than in, say, engineering. When I was getting my Aero E degree, I was honestly shocked to discover that about one-quarter of the class thought that we should not have to learn about ballistic missile trajectories because they thought nukes were evil. The way it basically came down: believe what you like, just do the work. Why should this be different for “counselors?”
Her religion-based beliefs may make her a suck counselor in the real world. But that’s up to the market to decide. If she’s doing her work within the accepted parameters of pass & fail, I really don’t see how it’s the schools responsibility what the hell she believes.
Excellent points, but we’ve both been arguing the headline and not the meat of the complaint. The quote from the linked article says she’ll be dismissed unless she changes her religious views, but the actual remediation plan imposed by her school is as follows, from the complaint:
34. The Remediation Plan further sets forth that Miss Keeton, “[t]o address issues of multicultural competence and develop understanding and empathy,” must do the following:
• Jen will attend at least three workshops prior to the end of the fall 2010 semester which emphasize improving cross-cultural communication, developing multicultural competence, or diversity sensitivity training toward working with GLBTQ populations. She will provide to her advisor evidence in the form of attendance certificates.
• Jen will continue to develop her knowledge base on GLBTQ issues by outside reading on the topic. She will read at least ten articles in peer-reviewed counseling or psychological journals that pertain to improving counseling effectiveness with GLBTQ populations. There is much research available on the ALGBTIC [Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling] webpage under Resources.
• Jen will work to increase exposure and interaction with gay populations. One such activity could be attending the Gay Pride Parade in Augusta. She will report on these interactions in her reflections (below).
• Jen will familiarize herself with the ALGBTIC Competencies for Counseling Gays and Transgender Clients.
• Each month Jen will submit a two-page reflection to her advisor that summarizes what she learned from her research, how her study has influenced her beliefs, and how future clients may benefit from what she has learned.
• Based on these written reflections and two scheduled meetings with Jen prior to December 2010, faculty will decide the appropriateness of her continuation in the counseling program.
35. The written Remediation Plan concludes with the following admonition:
Please note that failure to complete all elements of the remediation plan will result in dismissal from the Counselor Education Program.
The college is not formally requiring to change her religious beliefs, the college is requiring her to improve her professional knowledge on the LGBT topic and to further study accepted techniques for counseling LGBT people. She’s basically being told that “conversion therapy” is not an acceptable (based on the current literature) counseling practice and she is being required to study that topic in depth.
That’s all. Just study accepted practice in counseling LGBT people. There is a reference to her beliefs in the remediation program, but a plain reading of the text shows that she could get away with saying “I read the material and will apply what I learned to my practice, but I still believe what I believe”. I don’t think her administration would be happy with her for that, but she’d be well within her rights.
As I said in the main post, some of the story seemed to much to believe.
However, there is still religious discrimination going on here. She is being required to focus on a group of people whose beliefs and practices she doesn;t care for, but yet she may have to deal with in the future. Are any of the LGBTQ/QLSMFT people being required to focus on, say, evangelical Christians or fundamentalist Muslims or orthodox Jews, including being made to attend their services? I suspect *this* is the larger group of people that future counselors will have to interact with, for the simple reason there’s more of ’em.
And let’s face it… if you want to make an evangelical Christian feel more tolerant, understanding and generally warm and squishy about sexually unconventional folk… making that Christian attend a gay pride parade seems like a strategy doomed to backfire.
A subtle hint, people: if you want to have a generally respectful attitude towards homosexuals… doing a Google image search on “gay pride parade” is *not* the way to do it. These events would seem to be the very antithesis of “dignity.”
I have no doubt that there are a lot of perfectly respectable Big Gay Al’s out there who facepalm every time the GPP mices into town and makes that whole subset of the population look like a bunch of freaks. But as with Muslims… it’s not the basically decent ones just trying to live their lives in a reasonable fashion that sets the tone of how their seen, it’s the loudmouth showoffs acting like jackasses with serious impulse control issues.
“it’s the loudmouth showoffs acting like jackasses with serious impulse control issues.”
I think we have a consensus that the JWSICI are an embarrassment to the species.