Religious people with rigid, inflexible beliefs about common situations like homosexuality or other sexual issues should be barred from being licensed professional counselors, just the same as a would-be MD who refuses to practice widely-accepted science-based medicine. Faith healers don’t belong in the professional counseling field any more than they would in the medical field. It’s fraud to act as a professional in a field like this if one can’t meet professional standards.
The “Christian” ethic … if I say it isn’t right … fuck you!
Beat me to it. That’s just what I was thinking.
As a gay man, I have very mixed reactions to this.
No doubt the law is appalling, vile and sends a terrible message. That said, the last thing this young man, or any person struggling with his or her sexuality, would ever need is a therapist who, as a matter of personal conviction, strongly disapproved of homosexuality, yet who pretended to their struggling client that they did not fundamentally disapprove of it. That could potentially set up a disastrous dynamic between therapist and patient. In fact, it might be in the patient’s better long-term interest if he were directed to another therapist at that point!
It would be instructive to know exactly how many therapists in Tennessee actually feel this way. My guess is it’s a relative handful. If I"m right about that, I see far more harm coming from forcing therapists to work with clients they don’t wish to work with. Finding out one’s therapist harbors a judgmental attitude towards homosexuality (or other variants of human sexual orientation) is, for an LGBT person, pretty universally a reason to RUN, not walk, to the nearest exit. I guess I just don’t see much good coming from compelling therapists who harbor those biases to keep them secret.