Of counseling and the Klan

Jennifer Keeton was an MA student in Augusta State University’s counselor-training program, until she refused to administer conventional, affirming treatments to LGBT students because she believed homosexuality was “immoral and changeable” according to her biblical worldview. Claiming infringement of free exercise of religion, Keenan sued Augusta:

A graduate student is suing a Georgia university, alleging that professors are requiring her to change her “biblical views” on homosexuality or be expelled from the counseling program there.

Jennifer Keeton filed a civil rights action in U.S. District Court on July 21 saying Augusta State University violated her “constitutional rights of speech, belief and religious exercise.”

The action says university faculty have “promised to expel” Keeton “because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical conviction on matters of human sexuality and gender identity.”

After Keeton expressed her views verbally and in written assignments, faculty mandated Keeton complete a “remediation plan.”

CNN obtained a copy of the remediation plan from the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents Keeton in the action. The plan addresses issues such as writing ability and organizational skills, as well as Keeton’s ability to be a “multiculturally competent counselor, particularly in regard to working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning populations.”

Among the plan’s requirements, Keeton was to attend at least three diversity workshops, get more exposure to gay populations (one suggestion was to attend a gay pride parade in Augusta, where the university is located), do outside reading about gays and write reflections on these experiences and how they might benefit future clients.

At first, Keeton agreed to the remediation plan, according to the suit. Then, she had second thoughts.

In video provided by the Alliance Defense Fund, Keeton says, “I want to stay in the school counseling program, [but] I can’t honestly complete the remediation program knowing I would have to alter by beliefs. I’m not willing to — and I know I can’t — change my biblical views.”

[via CNN]

That story is from June. In the meantime, there have been some developments in the case. A federal judge ruled against Keeton, but her case remains a rallying point for traditionalist organizations like Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. Now, she’s recieved another endorsement:

The Ku Klux Klan will hold a rally in support of an Augusta State University counseling student who claims her First Amendment rights were violated when the school ordered her to learn more about the homosexual community.

Bobby Spurlock, the imperial wizard knighthawk and grand dragon of South Carolina and North Carolina, said today the group has met with school officials and plans to protest the school’s treatment of 24-year-old Jennifer Keeton. The protest will be Oct. 23 from 1 to 4 p.m. They will be in full dress and located across from the school’s main Walton Way entrance in the median at Fleming Avenue.

Spurlock said they believe Keeton’s First Amendment rights were violated when the school required her to participate in a remediation program after she objected to counseling homosexuals.

“It’s your constitutional right so how could you tell someone you have to do something completely different?” Spurlock said.

Keeton sued the university in July because she felt she was not allowed to retain her biblical viewpoints and remain a graduate student.

The remediation plan required that Keeton attend counseling workshops, read counseling journals regarding gays and to increase her exposure to the gay community.

Spurlock said the KKK has not been in contact with Keeton herself.

“She is no way whatsoever affiliated with us,” he said. “She has not contacted us but we were contacted by someone that is aware of her.”

Even if she’s not affiliated…I imagine it’s still quite embarassing, to understate. I would hope anyone who finds the Klan rallying to their cause would take stock of their values and priorities.

But in any case, the endorsement will distort the conversation of the whole affair. LGBT and Allied bloggers with less imagination or impulse control will make unfair equivalencies between the average anti-gay marriage voter and the KKK, traditionalists will claim encroachment of secular elites, and no one will profit.  Though I come down on the side of the judge who ruled against Keeton, the case raises difficult questions about plurality of conscience in a free society. In brief, I think anti-Keetonites like myself are in a position where they have to explain their reasoning. Of cousre, I think anyone making an argument in public ought to be able to explain thier reasoning, but I digress.

My own runs like this:

If a chemistry student were to say she is committed a believer in phlogiston theory and that she would never consider revising her work or opinions to take into account the “false and pernicious” Periodic Table of Elements, I think many people would question her decision to go into that line of work. Or think of someone studying automotive safety engineering who said he thought seat belts were “immoral” because they allowed people to take risks they wouldn’t have if they weren’t strapped down, and thereby encourage wreckless driving. Imagine him refusing to consult statistics about seat belt’s life-saving capabilities, and replying to instructors who criticize his dangerous designs by saying “Here I stand and can do no other!”  Keeton’s case should send up the same red flags.  She has stated she is not even willing to consider the possibility that any new information might change her opinion on homosexuality. How can anyone be expected to teach someone who enters a classroom and flatly states she is not open to even considering she might be wrong? And insofar as she claims homosexuality is “changable,” despite all the evidence and the consensus of psychiatric authorities, she renders herself analogous to the phlogiston-theorist.

This isn’t about Christianity at all. This is about someone whose beliefs are in contradiction to the established practices and standards of her chosen line of study—in this case, psychology. Crisis counselors don’t affirm gay kids because they have an axe to grind with Christendom or any given sect, but because gay teens kill themselves at heartbreakingly high rates, and they want this to stop.

 Keeton implicitly proposes an alternative to affirmative therapy—she claims that homosexuality is a “changeable” condition, so presumably believes in the effectiveness of “conversion therapy” designed to “cure” homosexuality. The American Psychiatric Association begs to differ; any objective, qualitative study has demonstrated they do nothing to curb same-sex attraction, almost always worsens the mental health of their participants. Keeton’s “alternative” to the rigorous empirical wisdom of the psychiatric establishment can only make LGBT kids even worse off then when they came to her.

But again, the reasons she believes homosexuality is wrong, and that it is her obligation to condemn gay kids and maneuver them into positively destructive “therapies” don’t matter. It’s the beliefs themselves, not their Christian origin, that anyone cares about. And the faculty only cared about those beliefs because they were afraid, even if she was able to finish her education at a different college that didn’t put her through a remediation plan, she’d end up hurting gay kids. They’re worried about children’s lives, not a political agenda.  

Things I failed to do before graduating college

-Read Don Quixote

–Study Aristotle at any length

-Get drunk

-Quit blogging

-Achieve a sufficiently adequate understanding of the theory of relativity, so that I would be able to to accurately explain it to someone else

-Lean to socialized with my peers outside structured events, like student groups or classes

-Write a novel

-Achieve a sufficiently adequate understanding of McTaggert’s A series and B series of time, so that I would be able to able to accurately explain them to someone else

-Get arrested for a worthwhile cause

-Read anything of Mark Twain’s

-Complete a second major in a humanities subject (I’ve only an English minor to show for)

-Lose the weight I gained in college

Some correspondence circulated amongst MU faculty on the O’Brien case

All of these are gleaned from John McAdam’s Marquette Warrior blog. As a faculty member, he’s simply privy to more sources than I am.

Javier A. Ibáñez-Noé, a scholar of German philosophy, characterized the Academic Senate’s resolution representative of a trend way from the university’s “traditional commitment to respect Catholic teaching” :

Dear colleagues,

I find myself obligated to express my disappointment, though not my surprise, at seeing that the resolution passed today by the University Academic Senate fails to mention, let alone to declare support for, the Catholic character and mission of Marquette University. Just as unsurprising is the fact that, in some of the exchanges relating to this resolution, the expression “Catholic Identity” appears in quotation marks and is not too subtly referred to as an outmoded thing.

I and my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy could have predicted this development. We have seen in the course of the past decade a sharp turn away from our traditional commitment to respect Catholic teaching. (I beg my readers to notice that I said “respect,” not “enforce” Catholic teaching). Indeed we at the Philosophy Department can also see, given recent domestic developments, how ironic it is that the University Academic Senate should appeal to the principle of shared governance. It is not quite two weeks ago that our departmental leadership, with the support of the Dean, effectively nullified a close departmental vote which, according to established procedure, indicated a clear preference for a candidate for the Donald J. Schuenke Chair who was both well-qualified and had a deep regard for the Catholic intellectual tradition.

I would hope that the University Academic Senate will find it in itself to show its commitment to inclusiveness by also defending the rights of the diminishing minority of faculty who, without necessarily being themselves Catholic, have an allegiance to the Catholic tradition of our university. I respectfully suggest that this could be done in at least two ways: (a) by refraining from defining “inclusiveness” in such an ideologically biased way that the definition ends up excluding central features of Catholic teaching, e.g., those relating to the nature of the family; and (b) by being prepared to apply the principle of shared governance not only when it is in the interest of the present dominating forces but also when it happens to favor the surviving Catholic-friendly minority.

Javier A. Ibáñez-Noé
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Marquette University

Another philosopher, Robert Ashmore, Professor Emeritus, more or less concurs with Ibáñez-Noé’s thesis, writing that “political correctness” is trumping concerns of preserving a “Catholic or even Christian identity” for Marquette:

May 13, 2010

Dear Fr. Wild,

Nancy Snow’s calling for your resignation was the last straw that has prompted me to speak out. As a ringleader who gleefully tells the public in newspapers and on TV that “we move ahead with our protests,” after rejecting the Academic Senate’s actions as inadequate, Snow should be understood regarding the real agenda.

While rallying support of gullible faculty, administrators and students under the colors of academic freedom, diversity, and gay rights, the really serious purpose is to move MU away from core values that define its Jesuit and Catholic character. Persons who are theologically atheists and philosophically moral relativists sense growing strength.

Is it too strong to suggest that MU is reaping what it has sown? There are faculty (many of them silent) who believe that encouraging the likes of Snow has made the university vulnerable to what is now occurring. I experienced great sadness at your annual dinner for faculty last Thursday, when a platform was created for Snow, from which she smeared the administration, while you embraced her and lauded her as one of Marquette’s finest. In fact, if she and those similarly minded prevailed, MU would become unrecognizable for the values that it trumpets when recruiting students for $30,000 tuition payments.

May I remind those to whom this letter is addressed what has been my commitment to Marquette? I came in 1969, became full professor, served as director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy, served as Director of the Center for Ethics Studies, received the Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, and obtained two institutional grants from NEH that funded successive summer institutes over six years. Against this background, I lament what has happened to my department and to the university.

I have witnessed under two successive deans of Arts and Science the acceptance and encouragement of a turn in the Philosophy Department that has radically fractured what once was a congenial faculty with a sense of mission that fit with MU’s core values. On the broader front, there has been lessened concern about hiring faculty and administrators who are committed to Catholic or even Christian identity at Marquette. Political correctness is seen as trumping those concerns.

Are they wrong who see you as hoisted on your own petard? I trust that it is not too late for a recovery of the sense of identity that Marquette advertises, while many of its hiring and promotion decisions have undercut this. “Diversity” and “academic freedom” (which I support) are being used as slogans that turn heads and mask agenda that should jolt lovers of Marquette into choices that are being challenged today.

Sincerely,
Robert B. Ashmore
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy

If the philosophy department at MU is indeed drifting away from Catholic-Christian commitments, it could be in part from hiring practices—though gauging a person’s religious beliefs in a job interview is taboo if not illegal in many settings. Moreover, most religious philosopher’s main area of expertise is outside of the philosophy of religion or arguments for the existence of God, so their published work is no guide either.

Moreover, the alleged Dechristianization of the MU philosophy department would only be reflective of trends in philosophy on a whole. A Phil Papers survey of working philosophers found that  68.1% percent are atheists while only 20.8% are theists, and 11.1 percent subscribe an “other” theological position. Presumbaly the 11.1 percent represents mostly deists, pantheists, or agnostics without religious commitments, though some religious panentheists are likely also included in that figure.

 There are important Christian philosophers working today—Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, John Polkinghorne —but they are a distinct minority. Making an effort to conscientiously hiring Christian philosophers would be difficult in the same way conscientiously hiring ethnic minorities or women would be difficult; all three groups are underrepresented in contemporary philosophy.

Meanwhile, Nancy Snow continues to rally for support, this time listing explicit courses of action:

Link roundup

Biologists at the University of South Florida in Tampa have found the green sea slug eats nothing, but makes its food through photosynthesis. It is the first animal described as being able to do so.

The only people who believe the “war on terror” is a Crusade and zero-sum conflict between Christian and Islamic civilizations are the terrorists–and one US weapons manufacturer.

Jon Stewart takes on Keith Olbermann’s recent flirtations with self-indulgence and intellectual dishonesty.

The Vatican Bank is accused of laundering the equivalent of $200 million.

In the space of a week, 26 patients at Cuba’s largest psychiatric hospital died during a cold-snap.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus reviews Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas, on the problem of professionalization in the academy.

What China censors, arranged Chinawise.

The legacy of Mary Daly

Monday marked the passing of self-described “radical feminist” theologian and social theorist Mary Daly. Yesterday, Feministing gave her a rosy sendoff with links to eulogies which, with one exception, were overwhelmingly positive. Even the linked Catholic Reporter obituary comes off with a certain warmth. The author, Thomas C. Fox, writes that Daly’s contributions to theology that it were “many, unique, and if I may say so, world-changing.” Fox goes on, saying, 

She created intellectual space; she set the bar high.Even those who disagreed with her are in her debt for the challenges she offered.

Fearlessness in interrogating the assumptions of the masses, orthodoxies and extant paradigms is the first step to intellectual greatness. It is the distinguishing virtue of the character of both Socrates and Jesus of Nazareth, the respective inspirations of the two primary strains of Western thought: skeptical rationalism and Christian theologizing.

However, fearlessness–the primary quality most of Daly’s eulogists are celebrating–is not itself a sign of greatness. Total disregard for recieved wisdom and the feedback of peers can innoculate one from old errors, but leave one open to new ones. The fearless Daly herself fell into into deep methodological errors which occassionally lead her into lapses of rigor unbecoming of any scholar; and ultimately became cut off from the sentiments of the greater mass of thinking and feeling persons, leading her to unsupportable moral prescriptions.

Firstoff, Daly seemed prone to admitting questionable facts so long as they supported her narrative of a genocidally manevolent patriarchy–itself a questionable premise. She claimed nine million women were killed in the Early Modern European witch-hunts, while most historians estimate between 60,000-100,000 persons were killed, one-quarter of them men. Without shame, Daly claimed “romanticize” prehistoric societies over the modern world, pointing to Kosovo and declaring “this is hell,” and claiming pre-state societies did not practice genocide, pointing to . In reality, ethic cleansing and wholesale population devastation were (and are) exponentially more common in them than in even 20th century Europe. Steven Pinker (2007) wrotes,

At the widest-angle view, one can see a whopping difference across the millennia that separate us from our pre-state ancestors. Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage, quantitative body-counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with axemarks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own. It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But, in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. According to anthropologists like Lawrence Keeley, Stephen LeBlanc, Phillip Walker, and Bruce Knauft, these factors combine to yield population-wide rates of death in tribal warfare that dwarf those of modern times. If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million.

From this sometimes-spurious data, Daly painted an exposition of the patriarchy which was, let’s say, unique. She described the overall trend of art, politics, and religion in male-dominated societies “necrophiliac,” in the sense that it allegedly worships death. And also in the more literal sense of wanting to “actually fuck corpses.” There were, for Daly also problems that were striclty “male problems.” One of them “problems” was transsexualism, which she took to be a “fetish.” Daly called trans people “Frankensteinian,” and in her book Gyn/ecology, she wrote (p. 238)

The perpetual need of the castrated males known as transsexuals for hormonal “fixes” to maintain the appearance of femaleness is a sign of their contrived and artificial condition.

Her solution to necrophilic culture and male problems? In a 1999 interview with the magazine What is Enlightenment?, Daly spoke of a need to “decontaminate” Earth, a process necessitating “a drastic reduction of the population of males.” 

[What is Enlightenment? interviewer Susan Bridal]Which brings us to another question I wanted to ask you. Sally Miller Gearhart, in her article “The Future—If There Is One—Is Female” writes: “At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race.” What do you think about this statement?MD: I think it’s not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.

WIE: Yes. I find myself now thinking that’s a bit shocking.MD: Well, it’s shocking that it would be shocking.

Is this call for male depopulation one of those “challanges” which we are supposed to be endebted to Daly for? Or a proposition so radical as to be outrageous and dismissable out of hand?

This is not a plea for equality of the sexes. It is an advocacy of the phasing-out of the population undesirable biological elements. At its most generous, we can call it “eugenics.” If we are not generous, we could call it an advocacy of pogrom. Nothing could be more illiberal and worthy of liberals’ censure.

That feminists themselves are not taking the opportunity of Daly’s demise to say this belies a disturbing double standard. So long as it comes packaged with a critique of patriarchy, matriarchy is tolerated. However, it oughtn’t be. It is itself a privileging of one traditionalist, quasi-essentialist conception of one gender over another, defeating most of the goals and schemas of contemporary feminist theory. However, this is all glossed over because Daly said some original things about the use of pronouns in theology in the 1970’s.

This silence to the illiberal things in Daly’s writing is endemic of a wider double-standard in contemporary academia, viz. an intolerance of right-wing illiberality and authoritarian impulses while ignoring or offering apologetics for theoretical and practical left-wing tyrannies. Any academic who quoted Goebbels to argue for the supreme value of Volk und Raum and called upon us to “repeat Mussolini” would be run off any campus before they could breath the word “tenure.” But when Zizek calls Soviet ideology “socialism with a human face” and argues for the necessity to “repeat Lennin,” he is forgiven if not celebrated within the academy, and he is allowed to ascend to the top of his field.

I am not saying that fascist sympathies or Leninism should necessarily be barriers to any academic post. Also, I do not say a tyrannical theorist has nothing to say. I imagine most people who quote Zizek do not subscribe to his politics, but glean from him other insights (though these too are likely suspect in their own right, drawn from Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism as they are, paradigms which have been given to thorough empirical refutation in their respective fields of psychology and economics). Most of Daly’s enthusiasts likewise believe her opening of feminine spaces in theology can be reconciled with a liberal masculinity.

Merely, I mean to say that if one is to be taken seriously as a champion of human liberty, they must be consistent in pointing out tyranny and decrying it. Mary Daly was an advocate of tyranny. Any true account of her whole legacy is incomplete without giving exposition to those dark and illiberal aspects of her thought.

What philosophers think about free will

Patrick Appel passes along a fascinating survey of  438 professional philosophers and PhDs and 210 philosophy grad students on meta- and normative ethics, God, the afterlife, naturalism, and some ill-defined political positions. And of course, my favorite topic:

Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?

Accept: compatibilism	873 / 3226 (27%)
Lean toward: compatibilism	788 / 3226 (24.4%)
Lean toward: libertarianism	303 / 3226 (9.3%)
Accept: libertarianism	288 / 3226 (8.9%)
Lean toward: no free will	255 / 3226 (7.9%)
Accept: no free will	236 / 3226 (7.3%)

I’ve never heard any of our philosophy students or instructors weigh in on the question. Don’t think I’m not curious.

“Pockets of acceptance and pockets of tolerance”

As frustrating as MU can be for LGBTple and allies, it serves us to remember we’re better off than many. Of the 220 Catholic universities in the country, only about 100 have an officially recognized GSA or equivalent group.

Catholic University in DC is not one of those lucky 100, but necessity has stimulated cunning. They’ve figured out many subversive yet not disrespectful ways to petition their school and broadcast support for those who need it:  

Every Wednesday morning, 150 officials at Catholic University receive an e-mail about a gay student’s struggles on campus.There’s a graduate student who doesn’t mention her girlfriend to classmates or professors for fear of being lectured. An undergraduate who held her girlfriend’s hand and was called an ugly name. Another student learned his roommate’s mother tried to have her son reassigned when she learned he was gay.

…

Although only approved student organizations can reserve space for meetings or events, all students have the right to gather informally on campus. Although only student organizations can advertise their meetings and events on campus bulletin boards, any student can tape a poster to his or her own door in the dorms or wear the group’s signature blue T-shirts.

“We might not be an official group, but we’re winning,” said Robby Diesu, a senior political theory major from New York who is a founder of the group. “We have our own community. . . . It’s empowering.”

But the group has a self-imposed list of topics that are off-limits: pre-marital sex, gay sex, birth control, gay marriage and behavior not permitted by the Catholic church. Despite the university’s refusal to sanction the group, the students say they want to respect the campus’s conservative nature and rules. Instead, they focus on helping gay students who are trying to navigate campus and educating the rest of the student body about gay issues.

Repost: Women in Academia Panel Tomorrow

Empowerment’s last event for the year will be on Wednesday Dec. 3 from 4 pm-5pm in Cudahay rm. 114. Via the event’s Facebook page:

Have questions about life in academia? Being a woman in a demanding career? How Marquette treats its female faculty?

Empowerment is sponsoring a panel of Marquette Professors and Grad Students that will talk about being a woman in academia and who will answer any questions you have. The panelists are from diverse backgrounds, from Computer Science to Philosophy, and the discussion will be guided by your questions.

Also, there may be baked good[sic]!

Women in Academia panel Wednesday

Empowerment’s last event for the year will be on Wednesday Dec. 3 from 4 pm-5pm in Cudahay rm. 144. Via the event’s Facebook page:

Have questions about life in academia? Being a woman in a demanding career? How Marquette treats its female faculty?

Empowerment is sponsoring a panel of Marquette Professors and Grad Students that will talk about being a woman in academia and who will answer any questions you have. The panelists are from diverse backgrounds, from Computer Science to Philosophy, and the discussion will be guided by your questions.

Also, there may be baked good!

Hopefully one of our commentors will be kind enough to provide a list of panelists. Hint hint.

How many of your classmates believe in ghosts?

If you’re a freshman, about one in four. If you’re a senior, one in three:

[H]igher education is linked to a greater tendency to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, according to a new study.

Contrary to researchers’ expectations, a poll of 439 college students found seniors and grad students were more likely than freshmen to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas…

While 23 percent of college freshmen expressed a general belief in paranormal concepts—from astrology to communicating with the dead—31 percent of seniors did so and the figure jumped to 34 percent among graduate students.

Yeah, damn academics, cramming materialisms scientific and dialectical down students’ throats.

Do I preemptively win Scariest Halloween Thing?

(Via Live Science.)