We’ve been documenting a disturbing trend happening across the land: Christian students in public universities who dare to publicly espouse a Biblical view of sexuality are being censored and attacked.

Yet another case has occurred: Jennifer Keeton—a counseling student at the Augusta State University in Georgia—has been ordered to undergo what amounts to a thought control program. It requires her to increase her “exposure” to homosexuality-affirming groups by doing things like “attending the Gay Pride Parade in Augusta,” as well as study documents from groups that communicate an affirming viewpoint of homosexuality and transgenderism.

After doing this research, she must then “submit a two-page reflection to her advisor that summarizes what she learned from her research, how her study has influenced her beliefs, and how future clients may benefit from what she has learned.”

Wow—talk about re-education camps!

If she does not complete these demands, Jennifer is in danger of being kicked out of the university’s counseling program.

What was her crime? Jennifer “has voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian ‘lifestyle.’ She stated in one paper that she believes GLBTQ ‘lifestyles’ to be identity confusion,” according to the university’s “Remediation Plan” for Jennifer, which is documented in an Alliance Defense Fund legal complaint.

Reading the facts of this case makes me feel like I just stepped into the fictional world of Orwell’s 1984. But it isn’t fiction. It’s the frightening reality of the speech-squelching environment on many of our public university campuses.

According to the Alliance Defense Fund’s legal complaint, the university faculty went so far as to give Jennifer “an instructive example of the required relationship between a counselor’s personal beliefs and professional conduct: that while a counselor might oppose abortion personally, that counselor must affirm a client’s decision to have an abortion and the propriety of that client’s values in reaching such a conclusion.”

There is some good news, though. We are seeing more and more courageous students like Jennifer who are refusing to sacrifice their most deeply held religious convictions at the altar of the university’s political correctness. In an email to university administrators, she bravely declared that “My biblical views won’t change.”

“…. I really want to stay in the program,” she wrote, “but I don’t want to have to attend all the events about what I think is not moral behavior, and then write reflections on them that don’t meet your standards because I haven’t changed my views or beliefs, as stated in these papers or at our meetings. With that, I cannot honestly continue with the second part of the remediation plan. My biblical views won’t change.”

Now the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is defending her right to express her personal viewpoints and also earn her master’s degree in counseling at the university. Read more about Keeton’s case here.

UPDATE: Another counseling student, Julea Ward, is facing a battle very similar to Jennifer Keeton’s. On July 26, a Michigan federal district court ruled against Ward–who was dismissed from a graduate counseling program at Eastern Michigan University after she refused to under go a “remediation” program targeting her beliefs about homosexuality. ADF will appeal the case. Food for thought: Are we facing a day not too far ahead in the future when students holding Christian convictions will be phased out of public counseling education programs–and the counseling profession altogether?

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