By: Bob Livingston
http://www.personalliberty.com
Monday, August 2, 2010
Source: http://www.personalliberty.com/hot-topics/freedom-watch/christianity-not-accepted-here/
Expelled for being Christian. That’s the fate of two college graduate school students at separate universities that apparently should just put a sign out front that says, “Christianity Not Accepted Here.”
Julea Ward lost her lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University July 26. She sued after she was dismissed from a counseling program in March, 2009, for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable.
While in a counseling practicum course in the school in January, 2009, she was assigned a potential client who needed help regarding a homosexual relationship. Knowing she couldn’t affirm the client’s homosexual relationship without compromising her religious beliefs, Ward asker her supervisor how to the handle the matter.
The supervisor assigned the client to another counselor. The university then told Ward she would have to undergo a “remediation” program to help her “see the error of her ways” and change her “belief system” if she wanted to stay in the program.
She claims EMU faculty denigrated her Christian views and asked inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs. She was then dismissed from the counseling program.
She appealed to the dean who upheld the dismissal. Now a Federal court has sided with the school.
A similar case is ongoing at Augusta State University in Augusta, Ga. There Jennifer Keeton was told her Christian beliefs are unethical and incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession.
She must stop sharing her beliefs with others and change her beliefs if she’s to graduate from the program, the school has told her.
“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,” said David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which is handling the cases for both women. “Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform. Abandoning one’s own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree. This type of leftist zero-tolerance policy is in place at far too many universities, and it must stop. Jennifer’s only crime was to have the beliefs that she does.”
Requiring a change in a belief system to continue in a university program is an Orwellian concept and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the Christian faith.
You don’t “remediate” someone out of Christianity. Christian beliefs are rooted in Bible truths and faith in a Supreme Being. They are not simple ideas that you can pick which side you come down on.
More and more it seems the fascist elites in government and education preach tolerance of every alternative, abnormal, perverted or despicable, self-serving behavior that man can devise. But let someone profess Christianity and she is shown the door—or the losing end of a court battle.
It’s becoming painfully evident that, in this day and age, perhaps President Obama was right when he said ours is not a Christian nation. Certainly it won’t be if the elites continue to have their way.