[News] [MI, USA] A Counselor’s Convictions Put Her Profession on Trial
Stephanie Stevens
Beliefs
A Counselor’s Convictions Put Her Profession on Trial
By MARK OPPENHEIMER
Published: February 3, 2012
In 2009, Julea Ward, a teacher and an evangelical Christian, was
studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Eastern Michigan
University in Ypsilanti. As part of her training, she was required to
treat clients, and she expressed her reluctance to work with any who
were in same-sex relationships. A professor, heeding Ms. Ward’s
wishes, referred a gay client to another counselor.
That seemingly simple request became a problem for Ms. Ward when the
university expelled her for having made it. Ms. Ward sued, and her
case raises the question of whether a counselor’s religious
convictions can disqualify her from the profession.
A federal court dismissed Ms. Ward’s claim of religious
discrimination. But on Jan. 27, the United States Court of Appeals for
the Sixth Circuit ordered the lower court
<http://www.emich.edu/aca_case/> to rehear the case, finding that
Eastern Michigan “cannot point to any written policy that barred Ward
from requesting this referral.”
According to the Sixth Circuit decision, written by Judge Jeffrey S.
Sutton, Ms. Ward counseled her first two clients without incident. But
when she “reviewed the file of the third client, she noticed he sought
counseling about a same-sex relationship.” Ms. Ward asked her faculty
supervisor, Yvonne Callaway, “(1) whether she should meet with the
client and refer him only if it became necessary — only if the
counseling session required Ward to affirm the client’s same-sex
relationship — or (2) whether the school should reassign the client
from the outset.”
Professor Callaway reassigned the client, but then began disciplinary
proceedings against Ms. Ward. During the proceedings, professors
challenged Ms. Ward’s interpretation of Christianity, with one, Perry
C. Francis, wondering if Ms. Ward could not give gay men and lesbians
“the same respect and honor that God would give them?”
The Sixth Circuit decision turns on how common it is to refer patients
to other counselors. Ms. Ward argues that one’s religious beliefs are
a reasonable reason to refer a client, while the university argues
that it has to train students to work with all kinds of clients. The
American Counseling Association filed a brief asserting that to
habitually refer gay clients would violate its ethical canon.
Ms. Ward referred questions to her lawyer, Jeremy Tedesco of the
Alliance Defense Fund <http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/> , a
Christian legal advocacy organization. Mr. Tedesco said that “if
referrals are acceptable, including for many nonreligious-based
reasons, they can’t deny someone who has a religion-based need to
refer.” He said that Ms. Ward was not singling out gay men and
lesbians, and that she would also refuse to affirm heterosexuals who
sought counseling about their adultery.
“Does it require a Jewish counselor to affirm the religious beliefs of
a Muslim client?” Mr. Tedesco asked. He noted that the American
Counseling Association <http://www.counseling.org/> allows its members
to choose not to work with terminally ill patients considering
end-of-life options. That proves, he said, that counselors are
sometimes allowed to refuse to treat clients because of a fraught
ethical question — so why not when the question is sexuality, and the
counselor is Christian?
What many of the briefs fail to investigate is the role of the
counselor or therapist. Is it to “affirm” the client’s beliefs, or to
offer support and guidance, even to clients whose practices one may
find distasteful or morally wrong? Daniel Mach, a lawyer with the
American Civil Liberties Union <http://www.aclu.org/> , which filed a
brief in support of Eastern Michigan, said that the canons of the
profession rightly put the needs of clients ahead of the sensibilities
of counselors.
“Nobody should be forced to change her religious beliefs or be
punished for her faith,” Mr. Mach said. However, he said, referring a
client to another counselor is not a neutral act. He pointed out that
high school counselors may be the only compassionate adults available
to gay, bisexual or transgender youths, and that turning away such a
youth in crisis “could be devastating.”
Douglas C. Haldeman, a Seattle psychologist and a former chairman of
the American Psychological Association’s committee on lesbian, gay and
bisexual concerns, said the court’s emphasis on referral was
misplaced.
“The matter of concern,” Dr. Haldeman said, “is, we don’t train our
students in discriminatory patterns of treatment, and we don’t permit
them. We don’t say, ‘You can’t treat Muslims’ or ‘You can’t treat
black people.’ ”
Mr. Tedesco, Ms. Ward’s lawyer, agreed, to a point. “If a person said,
‘I’m going to refer all black people who come through my door,’ that
would be problematic,” he said. But Ms. Ward “would have asked for the
same referral if it were a heterosexual whose practices went beyond
the bounds of biblical morality.”
But Mr. Mach, the A.C.L.U. lawyer, pointed out that the counselor who
seeks to avoid gay people — or adulterers, or those having premarital
sex — has an unworkable view of how the profession works.
“To say, ‘I will start treating them, but if the discussion turns to
matters of relationships, at that point, I will refer them away’ —
that misapprehends the nature of the counseling relationship, in which
you don’t always know where the discussion will lead,” Mr. Mach said.
“You may start out talking about an eating disorder and then, a couple
sessions in, that veers toward a discussion of sexuality.”
In its decision
<http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201013925.pdf> , the Sixth
Circuit mentioned another recent case, Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley, in
which Jennifer Keeton, a counseling student at Augusta State
University, in Georgia, was required to enter a remediation program
because she said she planned to tell gay clients that homosexuality
was wrong. In December, a federal appeals court ruled
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/appeals-court-rejects-christian-students-bid-for-reversal-of-her-expulsion/39257>
that Augusta State had done nothing wrong in removing Ms. Keeton, who
had refused to enter remediation, from its program.
According to the Sixth Circuit, Ms. Ward’s case was totally different,
because she was only asking to refer certain clients. “Instead of
insisting on changing her clients,” the decision reads, “Ward asked
only that the university not change her.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/when-counseling-and-conviction-collide-beliefs.html