This story isn't really about whether one agrees with, approves of, or affirms homosexuality, but rather whether an institution can compel certain speech.
Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University Thursday after school officials dismissed a student from the school’s counseling program for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable. The school dismissed Julea Ward from the program because she would not agree prior to a counseling session to affirm a client’s homosexual behavior and would not retract her stance in subsequent disciplinary proceedings...
EMU requires students in its program to affirm or validate homosexual behavior within the context of a counseling relationship and prohibits students from advising clients that they can change their homosexual behavior. Ward has never addressed homosexual behavior in any form during counseling sessions with clients.
EMU initiated its disciplinary process against Ward and informed her that the only way she could stay in the graduate school counseling program would be if she agreed to undergo a "remediation" program. Its purpose would be to help Ward "see the error of her ways" and change her "belief system" as it relates to counseling about homosexual relationships, conforming her beliefs to be consistent with the university’s views. When Ward did not agree with the conditions, she was given the options of either voluntarily leaving the program or asking for a formal review hearing.
Ward chose the hearing, during which EMU faculty denigrated her Christian views and asked several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs. The hearing committee dismissed her from the counseling program on March 12. Ward appealed the decision to the dean of the College of Education, who upheld the dismissal on March 26.
In the real world, when counselors have problems with clients or potential clients, they refer them to other counselors. The idea that a counselor should be forced to affirm a practice that is contrary to her religious beliefs is constitutionally unsound.
This appears to be yet another step down the road towards forced universal acceptance of homosexuality as equal in all respects to heterosexual behavior, and superior to religious belief or expression, even though freedom of religion is a Constitutional right. As the Iowa Supreme Court ruling legalizing homosexual marriage illustrates, the argument used is that homosexuality is a suspect class, along with fundamental rights and racial classifications. This also vaults sexual orientation over gender into the Promised Land of constitutional analysis. Once an area is classified as suspect, nearly any law will be found to be unconstitutional. Should women be angry? You bet. We've now been told that being discriminated against because you are female is more permissible than being discriminated against because you are a lesbian.
There are all sorts of counselors. Demanding that students should be forced to mouth statements they don't believe should be an insult to any person seeking counseling.
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