The Fuckin' Truth

I'd been scanning the headlines every day, looking for something that really ruffled my feathers, but it had been in vain until I ran across this story today, in regards to one Jennifer Keeton. Ms. Keeton is a student at Augusta State University in Georgia, and is seeking a graduate degree in counseling from the school. However, Ms. Keeton seems not to be interested in meeting the school's requirements to earn her degree. You see, both national standards and common sense hold that, to earn a degree in counseling, students have to recognize and accept differences among their future clients, including cultural diversity and points of view different from their own. Ms. Keeton, though, has the obvious roadblock of having a Bible-based bias, an allegation which she does not dispute. Among her beliefs are that homosexuals suffer from what she terms "identity confusion". Needless to say, this was a source of concern for the university, which required that she attend diversity training, among other things. She has thus far refused, choosing instead to enlist the help of the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization, to sue the university for, she claims, being forced to renounce her religion.

Legally, it's a tough one: freedom of religion versus the national standards we hold our counselors to. That's no little thing. We're talking about people who are supposed to do their best to help others who are struggling with any number of personal issues. Of course, not every person is the same, and as such, counseling sessions would be most effective when tailored to each person's particular needs. If you are a counselor and a patient or client is coming to you for help, they do not want or need to be preached at. If that was what they were looking for, they would go to a church or a synagogue or a mosque or whatever. Ms. Keeton isn't interested in any of that, though. She doesn't want to help people in the way that they need. She has said that she believes "the Bible's teaching is true for all people and it shows the right way to live." The program's associate director indicated that Ms. Keeton believes that she possesses a special knowledge about the way that other people should live their lives, and that others should conform their values to hers.

It appears to me that the issue at hand is not Ms. Keeton's beliefs, but her insistence that they are the only valid ones, which is in direct conflict with the standards of the American School Counselor Association. To be perfectly blunt about it, this woman is in the wrong place for what she wants to do. She wants the prestige of a graduate degree, but is clearly unwilling to meet the requirements. If she wants to offer Bible-based counseling, then she needs to attend a school which limits itself to such teachings, and find a job at a similar place, where everyone will know that she isn't an actual counselor, but just another person who wants to tell people how they are supposed to be living their lives. As an aside, I would frankly be appalled to learn that a counselor I was entrusting myself to had failed so thoroughly to address her own issues.

This is a persistent problem that we have in this country, the inability to call a spade a spade. Ms. Keeton doesn't want to be a real counselor, she wants to be a Christian counselor who calls herself a real counselor. We want to say that the idiots among us have learning disabilities. They can't just be stupid. We somehow pass off those people on Jersey Shore as TV stars, but they're not. They're just an obnoxious orange douche circus. I could go on, but you get the point. We're addicted to euphemisms, and for some reason, we've become okay with that. Let's not be okay with that. It's intellectually dishonest, and it makes you look like a real big piece of equine posterior, and that's the fuckin' truth.