Anti-Gay Grad Student's Lawsuit Not About Free Speech

Social conservatives have quite an arsenal of ways and means to combat the "gay agenda." Their favorite often comes in attacks on the "thought police" who use anti-discrimination laws to force feed homosexuality down the nation's throats. It's terribly clever, and totally wrong.

A graduate student named Jennifer Keeton took that line of thought one step further in a lawsuit against Georgia's Augusta State University, which she accuses of "ideological heavy-handedness" for recommending Keeton, who wants to be a mental health counselor, take sensitivity training to counter her "Christian" homophobia.

In Keeton's misguided view, the school was discriminating against her religion; in fact, they were trying to stop her from discriminating against, and potentially harming, future patients.

Backed by the reliably hateful Alliance Defense Fund, Keeton's lawsuit revolves around the fact that she was "substantially intimidated" by faculty and administrators who wanted her to attend a cultural sensitivity program to combat her admitted belief that 'homosexuality is a 'lifestyle,' not a 'state of being.' She also once described same-sex attraction as "identity confusion," a term loaded with harmful potential and worthy of official investigation. Keeton of course sees the scandal from an entirely short-sighted perspective.

"ASU faculty have promised to expel Miss Keeton from the graduate Counselor Education program ... because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity," reads the suit.

It goes on to say, "ASU, acting through its authorized administrators and policymakers, maintains and enforces vague and overbroad speech regulations that chill and penalize constitutionally protected student speech." The school has not released a statement, although the lawsuit, which bills itself as a "civil rights action," admits that the school did suggest Keeton seek her degree through a Christian counseling program, rather than one that doesn't preach discrimination.

The so-called free speech Keeton's lawyers argue has oppressive consequences. According to witnesses, Keeton has said that she believes gay and lesbian people should seek reparative therapy. From the school's memo on Keeton's remediation: "Faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Miss Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations, and she has tried to convince other students to support and believe her views." The school's lawyers would do well to play up this belief.

Almost all medical professionals, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, have come out against conversion therapy. The AMA, for example, describes it as being based on "the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation."

For its part, the American Psychiatric Association insists, "Psychotherapeutic modalities to convert or 'repair' homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable. Furthermore, anecdotal reports of 'cures' are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims of psychological harm."

Though American groups are hesitant to take a harsher stand against reparative therapy, their British peers this year voted against the process. "Sexuality is such a fundamental part of who a person is, that attempts to change it just result in significant confusion, depression and even suicide. You can’t just wish away same-sex attraction no matter how inconvenient it might be," declared Tom Dolphin, the British Medical Association member who proposed the vote.

Keeton certainly has every right to express her disdain or disgust for gay people. Considering she's chosen a career that gives her power over struggling patients, however, her conservative "Christian" perspective becomes far more dangerous than just some free speech. She would be put in a position in which she could do some serious damage to a vulnerable person. Her powers, therefore, would not be used for good, but for evil, and there should be a law against that.

Photo Credit: nualabugeye