I really appreciate your thoughtful and challenging comment.

Right now I just want to make the distinction that homosexuality is not a choice or opinion, so it is not analagous to issues that are.

OMG, I just glanced at the clock — it’s Easter and we’re celebrating my father’s 93rd birrthday and I’m blogging instead of cooking! Gotta go! And here I logged on because I read your post on the Tea Parties and I wanted link it in a post about Howard Kurtz just now smarmily slamming Fox News about the tea parties and demanding that they prove they are fair and balanced by saying something nice about Obama! Gag! However, he did note that CNN and MSNBC are in blackout mode regarding the Tea Parties — however, he had no assignments for them to prove their professionalism.

Cynthia

I’m not clear on how my fight for equal rights for lesbians and gays in marriage, service to our country, adoption, employment, housing and public accommodations (i.e., stores, restaurants, etc.) is a campaign against liberty.

The campaign against equal rights for lesbians and gays, however, clearly is founded in greed for money and lust for power, variously posing as patriotism and piety. Babies = power for both church and state, and we are not reliably productive in that regard, so we are stigmatized, coerced, even murdered.

I signed onto fiscal conservatism because I came to see it as the foundation for individual liberty. However, I find social conservatism to be as totalitarian as liberalism is. I’m not going to let that slide. As I go along, I will be explaining why totalitarianism on both the right and left is a menace to liberty and corrupting to society. Liberals believe that they should have my money and property because they know better than I do how to use them. I disagree. Social conservatives want my soul and control of every aspect of my behavior because they know better than I do about how to be and how to live. I disagree.

Until GLAAD gives you the award for most dramatic about-face that is in your future, whenever you denounce our quest for equal rights, look at one of the photos of Margaret and me first, then imagine whether you would feel the same way about equal rights for gays if or when one of your children comes out as gay or lesbian.

Since my post mentioned a fictional teen suicide, I want to mention that I learned yesterday of a local boy who committed suicide. His mother told him not to go somewhere, he went anyway and got caught. When he came home, she grounded him for three days and sent him to his room. He hanged himself from his bunkbed. He was 11.

I am not saying that boy was gay. I just want you to know that you may be talking unawares to one of your own children, and that it doesn’t take much to push some people over the brink.

Cynthia

The one thing I’d ask you to consider in this, dear Cynthia, is whether or not you would extend your logic to the abortion issue. I know that one cannot analogize perfectly, since it is generally among mental-health professionals among whom the homosexuality dimension might crop up (few others would have the chance to cop that judgment in the first place), but there must be clinical issues that deal with morality–WRT to abortion and what constitutes death with dignity, for instance–upon which individuals will have to vary in their opinions.

If I were to have to choose, I would prefer to have practitioners in place from a variety of religious perspectives, to make sure that every person got some sort of treatment, in accordance with his/her OWN belief system.

But there are limits, and there must be. For instance, I believe that the Western World MUST accept circumcision of males, but CANNOT accept genital mutilation of females. (Now someone is going to drop in and tell me that female “circumcision” is just that–when anyone with a brain knows it is not.)

So of course I don’t see any perfect solution, here: clearly, I’m saying that orthodox Christians can be health-care professionals, but orthodox Muslims of a certain stripe cannot be. So there is a line I draw.

But on abortion and homosexuality, I’d rather see the patient’s own preferences/orientations supported by having practitioners on each side of the divide, rather than risk people not getting what they need. So on those issues I advocate a compromise, whereas on female “circumcision” I can do no such thing.

Homosexuality is not a belief, so none of your analogies apply.

As I pointed out in another reply to a comment, Ward’s handling of the situation shows severe boundary problems on her part. Counseling is not about about imposing your beliefs and values on your client. The ministry is the profession to pursue when you want to convert people to believing the way you do. That profession is open to Ward.

Ward was training to become a counselor, not a medical doctor.

The news story didn’t define what was meant by “affirm.” I think it means Ward was required to accept that her client’s homosexuality was part of his or her being. If Ward had had healthy boundaries, she would have been able to do that.

Cynthia

Just so you know, Stacy is Robert Stacy McCain and we have some cordial running battles going. Smitty is his co-blogger.

The situation looks to me like Ward was going to counsel the patient and try to condemn their homosexuality, but she got caught violating her would-be profession’s guidelines and her plan B was to refer the patient. Plan C is the one currently in operation, crying victim and suing. Affirming a counseling client’s homosexuality means accepting it as being as much a part of their being as breathing.

I think it can be reasonably argued that Ward’s belief that she is entitled to violate her client’s autonomy is a form of sociopathy. That is why she was tossed out.

In fact, the scorched earth campaign Ward is conducting against EMU also is characteristic of borderline personality disorder, or BPS. Borderline what, you may ask. “Borderline psychotic,” is the answer, but since the accurate name for the syndrome, “borderline psychotic personality disorder” triggers psychotic episodes by the persons who have it, the counseling professions have taken the path of less resistance and left out “psychotic.”

The litmus test for BPS is setting any kind of boundary — say, for example, “Your gay client came to you for depression over a break-up, you are not allowed instead to counsel the patient the way to bliss and relationships that never, ever fail is to become heterosexual since being homosexual makes Jesus hate you.”

Oh, and I left out the shaming. Ward was thwarted from shaming her gay client — as much as she wanted to, anyway, because the referral was pretty darn shaming in itself. Shaming is the sign of narcissism. Any time a narcissist feels shamed — and they can pull shame out of thin air — they offload their shame by shaming, humiiliating and/or criticizing someone else.

I’m thinking that there are many counseling programs with leaders that consider someone with poor boundaries who shames others and goes on scorched earth campaigns of revenge when confronted with a boundary to be not quite healthy enough to counsel others.

If anyone cares to Google for it, there is research confirming that the counseling professions attract more than their share of people with borderline personaity disorder.

Thank you for your kind praise!

Cynthia

This issue is more complex for me. While I disagree with Ward’s “conscience,” it’s discomfiting that a person should be shut out of a profession because of her beliefs. At the same time, I don’t understand why people like Ward choose professions the guidelines of which conflict with their beliefs. As you state, she could have become a minister and counseled from there, but I’m guessing she wanted a formal education and training in counseling. Also, what does it mean that she “refused to affirm” the client’s homosexual behavior?

In the end, I can’t stand the smarmy twittishness of anyone who would condemn a gay person from the eminence of her own lofty heterosexual decency.

btw, I just found your blog and I wanted to at least drop by to say Hello. Keep butchering those sacred cows on both the right AND the left.