Attorneys will appeal a federal court decision issued Monday in a lawsuit filed on behalf of student Julea Ward against Eastern Michigan University (EMU) after it kicked out the Christian student for holding to her beliefs on homosexual conduct.
[…]EMU initiated its disciplinary process against Ward shortly after she enrolled in a counseling practicum course in January 2009, when she was assigned a potential client seeking assistance regarding a homosexual relationship. Recognizing the potential conscience issue with the client, and knowing she could not affirm the client’s homosexual relationship without violating her religious beliefs, Ward asked her supervisor how to handle the matter.
Ward was advised to reassign the potential client to a different counselor. EMU then informed Ward that she could only stay in the counseling program if she agreed to undergo a “remediation” program. Its purpose was to help her “see the error of her ways” and change her “belief system” as it relates to counseling about homosexual relationships.
At a subsequent formal review meeting, lawyers say EMU faculty denigrated Ward’s Christian views and asked several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs. A faculty committee then dismissed her from the counseling program. Ward appealed, but the dean of EMU College of Education upheld the dismissal.
[…]The EMU speech codes enabling the university’s actions were challenged as part of the ADF lawsuit, Ward v. Wilbanks. One policy prohibiting “discrimination based on … sexual orientation” adds that counselors cannot “condone” what the university defines as discrimination. Another problematic policy states that EMU’s counseling department may discipline a student who shows a “failure to tolerate different points of view.”
Comments to this post will be strictly monitored in accordance with Obama’s laws limiting free speech.
You can read more about the appeal process on the ADF web site.
I recommend that young Christians concentrate their efforts on mathematics and pursue careers in engineering, physics, chemistry, geology and computer science. Do not homeschool unless you are sure that you can provide the background in mathematics needed to study these fields.
A graduate student has filed a lawsuit accusing Augusta State University officials of violating her constitutional rights by ordering her to change her views opposing homosexuality.
Jennifer Keeton, a graduate student in the school of counseling, says in her court filing that the school threatened to expel her if she didn’t complete a remediation plan that includes diversity sensitivity workshops. Keeton had said in and out class that, according to her Christian beliefs, homosexuality is immoral and a lifestyle choice, according to her suit.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Augusta. The university has not been served with the lawsuit and officials declined to comment on the case, spokeswoman Kathy Schofe said Friday. She did say that the university does not discriminate and has policies in place to protect students if they believe they have been discriminated against.
Keeton is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian attorneys. The suit accuses Augusta State officials of violating Keeton’s First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.
“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,” David French, senior counsel for the defense fund, said in a news release. “Abandoning one’s own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree.”
Keeton, who is pursuing a master’s degree in the education college’s counseling program, was told her beliefs are incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession, her attorneys said in a news release.
[…]The defense fund has filed similar lawsuits against Missouri State University and Eastern Michigan University.
Leftists also have only one sacrament: sex. The orgasm is the source and summit of all bodily pleasure, and to suggest that sexual activity between consenting persons might have a moral content is nothing short of bigotry.
And so it is that a Catholic professor at the University of Illinois has recently had his employment terminated. What for? The university hired him to teach two courses, Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, during the course of which he had the effrontery to educate his students in the natural law philosophy which informs the Catholic Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are sinful. That’s philosophy, not theology.
Check out the damning email, and one sees that nowhere did this professor, Dr. Kenneth J. Howell, refer to the Christian Scriptures, the writings of the Church Fathers, or the pronouncements of the Catholic magisterium:
“Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature.…
“As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don’t arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.”
One student found this offensive:
“I am in no way a gay rights activist, but allowing this hate speech at a public university is entirely unacceptable.… Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing. Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another. The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one’s worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation.”
But Howell refused to leave without a fight, and now he has over 3,100 supporters fighting with him — via a Facebook group called “Save Dr. Ken.”
“It’s turning into a whole movement for freedom of speech in the classroom,” said senior Tim Fox, a member of the group and former resident at the university’s Catholic student Newman Center.
The “Save Dr. Ken” Facebook group includes alumni, current students and outside supporters who are familiar with Howell through his books or his appearances on EWTN, a Catholic television network. Howell is actively involved in the group and has written personal responses to some of his Facebook supporters.
“Save Dr. Ken” is actively working to take its protest beyond Facebook. Its home page offers detailed instructions on how to protest Howell’s dismissal, separately tailored to students, alumni and outside supporters. For example, the group asks alumni to cease donating to the university until Howell is reinstated. It also encourages members to donate to the Alliance Defense Fund, the legal alliance defending Howell’s case.
Members of the Facebook group are planning a prayer vigil on the university’s quad. Students are also organizing a mass boycott of all university religion courses unless Howell is reinstated by the fall, Melissa Silverberg, editor-in-chief of the university’s student newspaper, the Daily Illini, confirmed.
Howell is a popular professor; his students voted for him to receive an “Excellence in Teaching” award last fall, and now they are rallying for him.
Because Howell helped direct programs at the Newman Center, it has become a major player in the conflict. Monsignor Gregory Ketcham, the center’s director, wrote in an e-mail to Newman residents that “We will seek to lobby for [Howell] to continue to teach Catholic courses on campus for University credit and for the Catholic cause on campus.”
Students at the center are not the only ones protesting. The campus secularist group, Atheists, Agnostics & Freethinkers, has taken up Howell’s cause. Howell had worked with the group in the past, helping organize a public debate between an atheist and a Catholic on “Does the Christian God Exist?” last February. Its president wrote a letter to the university chancellor, Robert Easter, saying, “[Howell] has shown a commitment to the questioning of all ideas. His loss is a profound blow to the University of Illinois and its purpose… Who will next be silenced?”
“Even people who disagree with what [Howell] taught think that his firing was wrong,” said Silverberg.
And what the Alliance Defense Fund is doing, from CNS News.
Excerpt:
The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, has given the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until the end of Friday to re-instate a professor who was relieved of his teaching duties following complaints he engaged in “hate speech” by teaching students about Catholic teaching on homosexuality in a course about Catholicism.
In a letter to University officials, ADF attorneys say that Dr. Kenneth Howell lost his position simply for teaching the facts about a Catholic moral teaching, and that University officials have until July 16 to respond to demands that the university immediately reinstate Howell to his teaching position, or face court action.
Ah, the Alliance Defense Fund. Proof that you can be a lawyer and still be a good person. If I had children, I would be sure to tell my children that if they wanted to work for the ADF, all their law school expenses would be paid in full. That is, assuming I had income left over from paying for abortions, IVF and sex changes for Obama’s special interest groups. Oh, well. Let’s hope that someone repeals Obamacare before my future children are ready to go to university.
WINTERY KNIGHT 