She doesn't look like the usual liberal womyn...
Posted on 12/06/2011 11:37:31 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
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.
Augusta State University, in east Georgia, put counseling student Jennifer Keeton on academic probation in 2010 after she acknowledged in private conversations and during class that she disagreed with homosexuality. School administrators claimed Keeton said it would be hard for her to counsel gay clients, a stance they said violated ethical standards for licensed counselors, as put forth by the American Counseling Association.
Faculty members also faulted Keeton for saying she wanted to work with conversion therapy -- which aims to help clients stop living a homosexual lifestyle -- after graduation. And the faculty feared Keeton might harm middle and high school students she was scheduled to work with as part of her degree plan, said Cristina Correia, the state attorney who argued the school's case.
"The university has a responsibility when putting students in a practicum and graduating them," Correia told the court during oral arguments Nov. 29 in Atlanta. "When you have that kind of evidence, the faculty could not, under their ethical standards, put that student in a clinical setting without further remediation."
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.
In a brief filed before the hearing, ADF attorney Jeff Shafer denied Keeton ever had a problem maintaining ethical standards for counselors, which include withholding value judgments from clients. The school's only concern has been with Keeton's expressed belief, not her behavior, Shafer wrote.
"It was Miss Keeton's communication of her religion-founded beliefs on sexual ethics which the faculty reported as the justification for their imposing remediation in the first place, and which they condemned as problematic and in need of alteration," he wrote.
Shafer claims Keeton's First Amendment rights were violated because the school targeted her for her expressed viewpoints. He compared the school's attempt to alter Keeton's beliefs in order to remain in the counseling program to a business school that required students to affirm capitalism or disavow socialism in order to graduate.
Attorneys for both sides declined comment after the hearing because the case is under a gag order by the court.
She should sue th euniversity like the young Lady at Missouri State university in Springfield, MO did.
Missouri State U. quickly settles lawsuit with student punished for opposing homosexual adoption
ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom represents student, offending professor forced to resign from administrative duties, student’s infraction erased
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Officials at Missouri State University have agreed to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of MSU student Emily Brooker, represented by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund’s Center for Academic Freedom. Brooker had been punished by school officials for her religious beliefs regarding homosexual adoption.
“Being a Christian shouldn’t make you a second-class citizen on a college campus,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel and CAF Director David French. “Instead of being a marketplace of ideas, some professors try to silence or even punish students whose beliefs do not conform to their personal worldview. To its credit, the university launched an investigation immediately after Emily’s case was filed and has taken appropriate action against the professor and appropriate action to repair Emily’s reputation and record. I only wish other administrations would respond as quickly to violations of students’ rights.”
Brooker, a student in the university’s School of Social Work, had been assigned by a professor, Frank Kauffman, to write a letter to the Missouri Legislature expressing support for homosexual adoption. She refused to do so because of her religious objections and was charged with a “Level 3 Grievance,” the most serious charge possible, and faced the possibility of having her degree withheld (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3904).
In addition, Brooker faced a 2 1/2 hour interrogation from an “ethics” committee, which asked her personally invasive questions such as “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?” and “Do you think I am a sinner?”
In response to the lawsuit, the school has purged the grievance from her academic record and has forced Kauffman to resign from his administrative duties. He was also put on non-teaching leave for the rest of the semester.
“We commend the university for taking the proper steps to make things right,” said French.
ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom is defending religious freedom at America’s public universities. ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
I hear the graduate student is a looker - maybe they are afraid of that!
OK, I’ll affirm it. Homosexuality is deviant behavior. There, I said it. Where’s my scrap of paper so I can go join the 99% at the park?
You know its not the queers demanding this, it is the God hating self loathing liberals.
We are in the midst of the bash-Newt tsunami, and some of it is valid. Michele Bachmann’s calling him “a frugal socialist” has a ring to it because he seems to have an inclination in that direction.
HOWEVER, there is one thing that I find very attractive about Newt. He seems to be the only candidate who regularly denounces the imperial reign of our judiciary. He regularly points out that Thomas Jefferson actually took them on and Newt promises to do the same.
We are now in the situation where we have a one-man constitutional convention named Anthony Kennedy. In a Court divided 4 to 4, this one man will decide whether Obamacare is constitutional and whether the “Commerce Clause” grants dictatorial intrusion into every aspect of our lives.
The Founding Fathers never intended - nor expected - that the third branch would have such powers. The courts need to be fenced in, and if Newt persuades me that he can and will do it, I will vote for him. (Otherwise, I’ll vote for Michelle Bachmann.)
Hard to believe what a clear win this was for sanity.
Oh my goodness.
Will ping out after I get a box ready and take it to the post office.
Anytime any pro-homosexual life form wants to debate the issue on live or unedited TV, I'm up for it.
She doesn't look like the usual liberal womyn...
Righteous and clean what more can one say. A gift to the man she marries or is already married to.
Newt says a whole lot of good things - even amazingly good things.
But, he's Newt.
And he's spent a lifetime promoting the same things behind the scenes that he now says he'll stop.
So it's a problem.
“...the case is under a gag order by the court.”
I’m certainly gagging.
1st Amendment guarantees “No Religious Tests”!!!
Which also protects the inverse, in that you can NOT be required to renounce your Religious beliefs.
Not without rolling back the principle called "incorporation," which in a constitutional context means the states, by precedent law, are as much obligated as the federal to observe the enumerated rights in most of the bill of rights, definitely including freedom of speech and religion as spelled out in the first amendment.
I don’t imagine that many practicing Muslims would go in for becoming counselors. Basically every situation is prescribed by the Koran anyway, so wouldn’t your friendly-neighborhood imam make being a counsellor redundant?
Perhaps. However, if you’ve been taking in the ever-enlightening ‘American Muslims’ on TLC, you’d never in the world come to such an ignorant and hateful conclusion.
They are mom and apple pie (and Ammonium Nitrate).
Report to the re-education camp on the double comrade.
She should have claimed to be a muslim.
That would make it OK.
on the Application
Male_____
Female____
Queer_____
Bbbbut I don't get TLC on my basic cable package!
(BTW, loved your initial take!)
The “no religious tests” is not in the first amendment (added in 1791) but in the original text of the Constitution as adopted at the Constitutional Convention—at the end of Article VI. “...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” That applied only to office-holding and only to the federal government—some states still had religious tests for decades after that.
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