Augusta State Univ to Counseling Student: Change [Christian] Beliefs or Get Out

LifeSiteNews.com -- Your Life, Family, and Culture Outpost ^ | Thursday July 22, 2010

[topher]

Thursday July 22, 2010

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Augusta State Univ. to Counseling Student: Change Beliefs or Get Out

AUGUSTA, Georgia, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed suit against Augusta State University Wednesday on behalf of a counseling student who was allegedly told that her Christian beliefs are unethical and incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession. The student, Jennifer Keeton, says she has been told to stop communicating her beliefs and that she must undergo "training" to accept homosexuality in order to graduate from the counseling program.

Augusta State ordered Keeton to undergo a re-education plan, in which she must attend “diversity sensitivity training,” complete additional remedial reading, and write papers to describe their impact on her beliefs. If she does not change her beliefs or agree to the plan, the university says it will expel her from the Counselor Education Program.

“A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French.

“Abandoning one’s own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree. This type of leftist zero-tolerance policy is in place at far too many universities, and it must stop."

Keeton, 24, is pursuing her master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State. Lawyers say that after her professors learned of her biblical beliefs, specifically her views on homosexual conduct, the school imposed the re-education plan. Keeton says she never denigrated anyone in communicating her beliefs but merely stated factually what they were in appropriate contexts.

The plan, according to ADF lawyers, assails Keeton’s beliefs as inconsistent with the counseling profession and expresses suspicion over “Jen’s ability to be a multiculturally competent counselor, particularly with regard to working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (GLBTQ) populations.” They say the plan requires her to take steps to change her beliefs through additional assignments and additional “diversity sensitivity training" and to “work to increase exposure and interactions with gay populations. One such activity could be attending the Gay Pride Parade in Augusta.”

Each month, Keeton is allegedly required to complete a report on how the “remediation” assignments have influenced her beliefs so that faculty can “decide the appropriateness of her continuation in the counseling program.” Lawyers say the plan concludes by noting that “failure to complete all elements of the remediation plan will result in dismissal from the Counselor Education Program.”

In an ADF video, Keeton said that, “While I want to stay in the school counseling program, I know that I can't honestly complete the remediation plan knowing that I would have to alter my beliefs." "I'm not willing to, and I know I can't, change my Biblical views," she said.

ADF attorneys filed the complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction in Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley with the U.S. District Court for the District of Georgia.

ADF is currently litigating a similar case involving a counseling student at Eastern Michigan University and successfully resolved a case at Missouri State University. Also in litigation is a case involving a Georgia counselor fired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because she would not agree to affirm homosexual behavior as morally acceptable.

URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072207.html

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[Vendome]

Ooops.... and the school has no right to “re-educate” her or force her to accept a new belief.

They can require to abstain from “preaching” but demanding a change in belief and discussing how her re-education is going is way overboard.

[CA Conservative]

Well... to be fair, she is in a secular environment and should couch her counseling devoid of her faith.

First, she is not counseling anyone, she is in training to be a counselor. Even people who want to be Christian counselors need training, right?

Second, there is no evidence she was witnessing. The article appears to show that she answered questions about her beliefs as it pertains to homosexuality, not that she was counseling homosexuals and trying to convert them.

Bottom line, you post makes a lot of assumptions not supported by the story.

[Jim Scott]

Well... to be fair, she is in a secular environment and should couch her counseling devoid of her faith.

Apparently she did - This is a Masters program - until the issue of counseling homosexuals arose and she could not simply pretend she approved of the practice without lying.

If she wants to be a counselor for people seeking help from professionals who share the same faith then she should seek a job there.

She probably planned to do just that but she needs her degrees, first. The school is effectively denying her that unless she pretends to approve of homosexual behavior and 'counsel' homosexuals accordingly, which she cannot do in good conscience.

There is a place for witnessing and there is a place for counseling. Sometimes they meet in the same place but in a secular setting it really would be inappropriate for a counselor to couch her practice, advice or therapy with “her qualifiers”.

She wasn't 'witnessing'. She simply cannot pretend to approve of homosexual behavior and the school refuses to accept her position and insists she be 're-educated'. Granted, it appears to be a stalemate situation but the school is frighteningly heavy-handed in it's strict requirement that she accept homosexual behavior as 'normal', when it clearly is not. I hope she wins the suit.

[Gene Eric]

>> The left is always hypocritical no matter what.

To be hypocritical, I would expect some valuable relationship to support the distinction of hypocrisy. To be always hypocritical implies the elimination of any valuable relationship.

The Left is not out to maintain a compatible set of values with you - it wants to crush you. The Left is not hypocritical, the Left is antithetical.

[BenKenobi]

They really really want to export her and weaken the Christian programs that take on counsellors.

[butterdezillion]

How far we’ve come, that the term can be used freely now, since we’re so “tolerant” of everything except Christianity. I wonder if we’re at the point yet where we could talk about gas chambers so openly.

[chesley]

hypocritical, antiethical. The two are hardly mutually exclusive, and the Left is both, plus some other bad things.

[Gene Eric]

>> The two are hardly mutually exclusive

As the terms are unrelated, I wouldn’t disagree.

To make my point, I wouldn’t call Hitler a hypocrite, but his character is the antithesis of all that is good.

[metmom]

Not public school, K-12, but of interest to the vast numbers of religious people out there who are looking at college with their kids.

[Salvation]

**“A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French. **

Sounds like persecution of Christians to me.

[Salvation]

ARTH?

[magooey]

Re-education camps? Where have I heard that before?

That does kind of grab one's attention.

[lovesdogs]

This poor girl certainly has her house in order...not so much the people who are pushing her around. I have had it up to here with militant gays and their cheering sections of straight folk who want to seem “tolerant”.

We have even lost large chunks of our language to these fools.

Gay-used in Gone with the Wind-used to mean happy, fine time

Queen- used to mean royalty.

tranny- used to be shorthand for transmission

queer- used to mean odd.

fag- used to mean a cigarette in the UK.

And even more scary is this phrase that is all their own: Second generation gay. It means a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning person with at least one LGBTQ parents.

I am hoping that FL continues to ban gay adoption based on the paragraph above, but who knows. We are going the way of old Rome in a hurry. Kids are encouraged to explore these days which is sick. Girls kissing girls is now sexy and ok. That never happened in my day. Guys were glad to get to second base. Third base and home runs were for couples who had been together for a while.

Lets face it, if all bets are off and everything is ok teenage hormones are going to send kids off in all sorts of direction. This young lady who takes the Bible seriously and follows Christian teachings is in for a lot more tests. Please pray for her.

[tutstar]

bttt

[cookcounty]

"We need to use the same Gestapo tactics that the hard left uses. Boycott, picket, publicize, report to government licensing agencies, call the local and national press, and litigate to the hilt. Simply venting our anger is pointless!

No need for that.....The Georgia legislature can simply defund Augusta State, since they are unwilling to serve the public.

[Brown Deer]

When you’re with the Flintstones,
have a yabba dabba doo time,
a dabba doo time,
we’ll have a gay old time.

[eleni121]

Oh yeah... the horns are visible and twitching visibly.

May the Lord Jesus protect us from the vermin running our institutions of learning and govt.

[Steelfish]

Except our state and national legislatures don’t do anything “simply” unless there is a torrent of opposition and yes, street marches.

[metmom]

I informally pinged the list, which is why you got it.

It sort of doesn’t really quite qualify as ARTH, as it’s not K-12 public school and is not another reason to homeschool, but stuff like this is very useful information because of so many people looking at colleges with their kids.

[FreedomPoster]

>>So what the school is advocating is, clearly, Orwellian double-think, the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accept both of them.

My first reaction on reading this was “Ah! Thoughtcrime! Doubleplusungood! Off to re-education camp!”