Two Christian graduate students at public universities (Eastern Michigan University and Augusta State University)  are being expelled from their counseling programs for their religious and moral objections to homosexual behavior.   One case has been decided in favor of EMU (and will be appealed) and the other case has just been filed.   The Alliance Defense Fund is representing both students.

Why the expulsions?  Because the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) “code of ethics” prevents counselors from “imposing values that are inconsistent with counseling goals.”  That, of course, is a value imposed on the counselor, and it begs the question as to what are the “counseling goals.”  What if the client wants to stop engaging in homosexual behavior?  I guess the ACA can’t tolerate that.

The people who say they are fighting for tolerance and diversity are the most intolerant and least diverse people out there.  According to them, the only people who can be counselors are those that affirm homosexuality.   So much for tolerance and diversity.  Instead, they advocate a form of totalitarianism by shutting out different viewpoints and insisting that everyone must agree with them on such a controversial issue.   That includes all people– religious or not– who disagree with homosexual behavior.

The student at EMU, Ms. Julea Ward, didn’t even want to counsel that homosexual behavior was wrong.  She just pledged that she would refer clients with homosexual issues to other counselors.  That wasn’t good enough for EMU.  They wanted to put Ms. Ward through a “remediation” program so she could “see the error of her ways.”  Jennifer Keeton at Augusta State must attend Gay “Pride” parades and change her mind to say in the program.  Speaking of totalitarianism, these  requirements remind me of the goals of a Soviet style “re-education” camp.

These cases have obvious implications on religious rights, and illustrate that there is no such thing as value neutrality.  The value put forth by the ACA, Eastern Michigan University, and Augusta State University is that people with different values need not apply. Either we’ll have gay totalitarianism or Christian liberty, but we won’t have both.

I said quite a bit about this on today’s radio program which should be up in podcast in a couple of days.  I just don’t have time to write more today.   To get a good perspective on the cases and problems with the ACA code of ethics, see Kelly Boggs column here.