Counsellors must help gay students: court
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- A coalition of Christian lawyers has lost a case in which it acted for another would-be student counsellor who’d refused to work with gay people.
The Alliance Defense Fund represents Jennifer Keeton, a graduate student in school counseling who claims her views, “which hold that homosexual behavior is immoral and that homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle”, wouldn’t interfere with her ability “to provide competent counseling to gay men and lesbians”, said p2pnet recently.
Now federal judge George Caram Steeh (right) has dismissed a lawsuit the ADF had filed for Julea Ward against Eastern Michigan University.
She was “kicked out of its graduate program in school counseling last year for refusing, on religious grounds, to affirm homosexual behavior in serving clients”, says the Chronicle for Higher Education.
In a summary judgment, Steeh said “the university’s requirement that the student be willing to serve people who are homosexual was reasonable, and did not amount to an infringement of the Christian student’s constitutional rights to free speech and free expression of religion”, it says.
The university “had a right and duty to enforce compliance” with professional ethics rules barring counselors from being intolerant or engaging in discrimination, Steeh wrote, says the story.
Ward’s “opposition to homosexuality got her into trouble” when she enrolled last year in a course that involved counseling real clients in a university-operated clinic, says the Chronicle, continuing >>>
When she encountered a client who wanted to be treated for depression — but previously had been counseled about a homosexual relationship — she asked her faculty supervisor whether she could refer the client to another counselor, explaining that her religious views precluded her from doing anything to affirm the client’s homosexual behavior.
The ADF says it plans to appeal Steeh’s decision.
“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”, it states.
… and identi.ca
p2pnet – Gay rights case with a difference, July 23, 2010
Chronicle for Higher Education – Federal Judge Upholds Dismissal of Counseling Student Who Balked at Treating Gay Clients, July 27, 2010
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July 28th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Want to read another doozey of a story in what is going on in America’s educational system? Check:
County Sued Over ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/27/29148.htm
Hidalgo County violates the constitutional rights of truant teenagers by jailing them for their inability to pay fines from missing school, a class action claims in Federal Court. “Since January 2009, approximately 150 teens served time in Hidalgo County jail that may be attributed to unpaid fines for failure to attend school or other school-related misdemeanor offenses that are not supposed to be punishable by jail time,” the lawsuit states.
The policy purportedly applies to teens aged 17 and older, but the class claims many teens are ticketed “long before they turn 17, the age when adult criminal responsibility attaches in Texas.”
[...]
“Texas law permits and encourages the assessment of multiple fines of up to $500 per ticket against students for failure to attend school,” the students add. “[B]etween 2005 and 2009, the number of truancy or failure to attend school charges filed by Texas schools increased 40 percent, from about 85,000 to 12,000.
“Excessive ticketing for school-related conduct can quickly amount to thousands of dollars in fines and places an onerous burden on low-income families,” the lawsuit states.
The median per capita income in Hidalgo County is $9,899, and 45.1 percent of children ages 18 and under live in poverty, according to the complaint. …
F*cked up or what?