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Georgia Student Sues University Over Her Lack Of Objectivity On Homosexuality

07/25/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Jennifer Keeton is a graduate student in the school of counseling at Augusta State University, and she has filed a lawsuit with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund stating that university officials have violated her constitutional rights by ordering her to change her views opposing homosexuality.

Keeton has said in and out of class that homosexuality is immoral and a lifestyle choice according to her Christian beliefs, but that she has been told that she has to complete a remediation plan including diversity sensitivity workshops.

In truth, what she should be completing is a course in what constitutes scientific research and data since her views fly in the face of all current scientific data on homosexuality as well as imposes a moral belief upon her counseling, which is unethical and immoral for any professional counselor to do and is something that has lead to the expulsion of many of the “ex-gay” counselors from not only the halls of academia, but from psychological practice.

What is also amazing is that this woman has managed to get high enough grades to pass in a state where in order to graduate from a Master’s program, one needs to have a ‘B’ average.

According to the Alliance Defense Fund’s David French “A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. Abandoning one’s own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree.” He also stated that her Christian beliefs would not effect her ability to council lesbians and gays which is, of course, misleading and inaccurate. The reality is that her ability to council lesbians and gays would be extremely compromised by her beliefs due to the fact that she would not treat them with respect as she believes that their “lifestyle” is immoral. She has already made a value judgement upon her clients and this is unethical and immoral in any counseling program.

Of course, she might be trying to get a degree in order to council lesbians and gays to “give up their lifestyle”, which would be fraudulent in the extreme because all scientific data shows that homosexuality is not a choice.

According to the Alliance Defense Fund, the university violated Keeton’s freedoms of speech and religion. Given that the setting is a university, one’s free exercise of religion and speech are already curtailed as it is considered an expellable offense to plagiarize and it is even a problem for certain professors to advocate certain religious and political positions. The ADF has filed suits of this nature before, but it is not forthcoming as to the outcomes of those suits.

ASU has not been served with the suit yet, so they have not been willing to comment beyond the fact that they respect diversity, and that they have internal mechanisms that are designed to deal with issues like this.

It is unclear if Keeton went from being told she had to take these remedial courses to lawsuit without dealing with this internally first.

The fact that Keeton has been unwilling to respect scientific method and research is of far greater concern for her degree. Her positions are not held up by research that has any validity to it, but rather has been pursued by groups such as the American Family Association. These groups often distort their data in order to garner a particular point of view. For the most part, they come up with a conclusion and fit the evidence to suit it. This should disqualify her from getting a masters in counseling because that field requires that she be as objective as possible and it has been shown that she is not objective at all.

Oh, yes, and the fact that it is possible to be Christian and pro-LGBT does not seem to play at all into her mind.