Julea Ward. Credit: ADF
Posted on 07/29/2010 10:33:47 AM PDT by NYer
.- Attorneys of the Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) are preparing to appeal a federal judge's decision that a Christian student's beliefs about homosexuality were an acceptable grounds for her dismissal from a graduate program in counseling at Eastern Michigan University.
Julea Ward enrolled in the university's counseling practicum course in January 2009, and was assigned to a client who sought assistance with a homosexual relationship. Ward considered herself unable to assist the client under the circumstances, due to her own moral and religious beliefs, and was advised by her supervisor to reassign the client.
Eastern Michigan University, however, responded to the situation by initiating disciplinary procedures against Ward, involving a “remediation” program. According to ADF, the “remediation” amounted to an ultimatum: Ward would either “see the error of her ways” and change her beliefs about sexual morality in order to encourage her clients in same-sex relationships, or be dismissed from the counseling program.
The university argued that she broke both school policy and the American Counseling Association code of ethics.
But Ward maintained that faculty members questioned her in an “inappropriate and intrusive” manner regarding her Christian faith before formally expelling her from the program. She appealed to the dean of EMU's College of Education, who upheld the decision. In April 2009, with the assistance of ADF, she brought a lawsuit against the university.
In March of this year, a district court in Michigan ruled that those professors responsible for Ward's expulsion could be held liable for discriminatory actions against her. This week, however, the court issued a summary judgment in favor of the EMU professors.
ADF maintains that the university's policy is both personally discriminatory and legally unconstitutional. The professors' real aim, they say, was “to make all students conform to the views promoted within their schools” on “some of the most important and controversial social and moral issues of our day.”
David French, senior counsel for the ADF's regional center in Tennessee and an attorney for Julea Ward, said that the academic freedom and constitutional rights of his client and others were at risk in the wake of Monday's decision. “Christian students,” he said, “shouldn't be expelled for holding to and abiding by their beliefs.”
French also stressed the unprecedented nature of the court's summary judgment. “To reach its decision, the court had to do something that's never been done in federal court: uphold an extremely broad and vague university speech code.”
Additionally, he pointed out that Ms. Ward had not personally refused the client her assistance, but merely followed the advice of her supervisor as to how her dilemma should be resolved.
Declaring his intention to move forward with an appeal, Mr. French expressed his confidence on Tuesday that his client would be vindicated. “We trust,” he said, that “the Sixth Circuit will understand the constitutional issues involved in this case.”
Ping!
The GLBT agenda is well entrenched in the Council of Social Work Eduction the agency that accredits Social Work college courses. Go to their website and do a search under “gay”. They work with LAMBDA to develop curriculums.
She should of told them she was a Muslim.
Just another day of free speech in the land of the free...
Wow, this is the second one in the past few weeks isn’t it? Wasn’t the other at a Augusta (GA) State?
she should file a civil rights suit.
Hey, I guess therapists aren't suppose to have opinions or values, so, what about the other values they hold? How do they separate themselves for all of those? Like, what if a counselor believes law breaking is wrong? Like, you know, it's bad to rob banks and rape women and then some little depressed pinhead comes into the office and he's broken the law at some point in his life, how will that counselor effectively be able to counsel the little depressed pinhead?
I'd like to ask these people if they are qualified to counsel Muslims and Christians then? Is their degrees valid to do that, cause they'd have to separate their beliefs if they counseled anyone who was opposed to homosexuality. Unless, of course, they would then set about counseling to "change their values!"
College counseling programs rely for foundational medical and scientific credibility on the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Removal followed a two year campaign Newsweek described as ongoing disruptive, chaotic attacks on psychiatrists and physiologists. Yet throughout these disruptive attacks, no academic papers were presented at conferences refuting any research previously done. Eventually attacks forced sufficient abstentions and apprehensive responses for a third of APA’s 17,000 plus membership to vote removal.
After this decision a new task force was established to ensure perpetual sanctity for the APA action. No research papers would again arise to confirm initial therapy success rates of 30% to 60 %, substantiating that 7 of 10 homosexuals could eventually walk away from the lifestyle forever. This task force would set peer review standards mandating pre-ordained theses, acceptable flexibility in design definitions, and acceptable human data points. Psychology and Psychiatry chose to abandon scientific rigor in exchange for popular societal and political acclaim.
When Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers seek counseling degrees they find their Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion threatened by college departments. For many followers of desert religions, who seek degrees homosexual behavior is unacceptable. Instead it resides among the myriad sins entrapping humanity that lives in a fallen world with a fallen nature. These college professors cannot accept any position, which might contradict their embrace of what is essentially a secular humanist religious position.
For believers foundational scholarship concludes homosexual relationships separate believers from God. The Old Testament, holy to “People of the Book”, speaks of the character, identity, and purpose of God in a manner, which continuously addresses homosexuality. God is spoken of as masculine, and all humans become feminine in relation to Him. In addition to creating all things, God created the single institution of heterosexual marriage as the earthy manifestation of the relationship of absolute unity and love He seeks with each person. Classical Semitic theology emphasizes searching for and identifying with God in the spiritual dimension. Spiritual life for these, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers means any subsequent reasoning from scriptures must proceed from that basic understanding in order to be a valid derivation. Therefore after this ruling, when believers reject homosexuality in counseling rolls or in common life expressions, they become guilty by popular acclamation of at least cultural prejudice, if not criminal behavior.
How sad but true.
Their world would be perfect without Christians, Heterosexuals and white men. If all in this class would just rise up and protest our values, we’d shut these groups up. Now they know they can just lightly protest, get press and drown our voice.
Similar story but this is a legal ruling.
Cultural Defense Accepted (Sharia Law) for Nonconsensual Sex in NJ Trial Court, Rejected on Appeal
Not if they are full of leftist appointees. I hope for his client's sake he knows something about the Sixth Circuit in order to make that statement.
A word of warning to secularists.
Christians CAN fight.
Keep pushing and you’ll find out.
Years ago, I volunteered at a telephone crisis center. I would not take a call from a homo. I would pass it off to somebody else. I thought a homo was so unnatural and I still do. I was not even a Christian back then, as I am now. I adhor it! God adhors it! I stand with God!
Losing my job or losing an education because I take a biblical stand is a winning stand!
This is not just funny...unfortunately it is true.
They would have not touched her with so much as a feather of rebuke...
I think Ward made a mistake in how she handled the problem. Instead of being "unable to assist the client under the circumstances", she of all people had the tools to be able to help the client with their homosexual relationship.
Biblical Christianity has the answers for mankind's sin problem. She should have handled it on a moral level. Had that been the core of the school's problem with her then this would be an entirely different matter.
She used her faith as a reason why not to treat the client, but it should have been a reason WHY TO treat the client.
After that it would have been a nice discussion on the diagnosis and counseling path, and she could have cited ministries with genuine results in people repenting of the sin and changed lives.
Hindsight is 20/20.
"Wise as serpents, innocent as doves." - Jesus
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