Rights of Conscience

We seem to be in a season of judicial sanity. As Jeremy Tedesco, the lawyer who argued the case reports, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that vindicated the claims of Julea Ward.

Ward was a counseling grad student at Eastern Michigan University, and when she used the recommended procedures to refer a gay couple that she felt she could not counsel appropriately because of her Christian beliefs, she was summarily tried and executed by the faculty—in other words expelled from the program.

In a strongly worded opinion the Sixth Circuit reversed a lower court decision and reinstated Ward’s lawsuit. As the court put it: tolerance is a two-way street. Professors can’t insist that all values and life-style choices are equally valid, and then turn around and punish those who happen to be Christians.

Read the rest of Tedesco’s account here .

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Church in the Age of Therapy

Matthew Loftus

In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…

Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot

Anna Farrow

On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…

The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen

Mike Aquilina

Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…