LINCOLN, Nebraska, July 5, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) — Defying the recommendations of Nebraska’s top public health authority, the Nebraska Mental Health Practice Board has approved rules that could force Christian psychologists to refer clients with same-sex attraction seeking relationship therapy to professionals that support homosexuality. However, the chief medical officer has said she would not approve the new rules until a compromise is reached.
While still allowing psychologists to decline to offer services, the board followed the state Board of Psychology in rejecting a rules change that would allow psychologists not to refer clients to counseling encouraging immoral behavior.
Jim Cunningham, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference (NCC), has maintained that it would be morally objectionable for a Catholic counselor to make such a referral.
“Our concern had to do with services that we would not be able to provide because they would promote or enhance or validate conduct that is contrary to our religious beliefs,” NCC’s Cunningham said. The NCC has also asked for conscience protection for for licensed counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists.
But the issue has aroused stiff controversy within the Nebraska government: Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joann Schaefer has repeatedly stated that the needs of clients with same-sex attraction and the consciences of Catholic physicians may both be satisfied by a compromise, despite reluctance on the part of state licensing boards to consider one.
Until Schaefer approves the regulations, they cannot take affect, and Schaefer has promised to delay approval until a compromise is reached.
According to Schaefer, when a party claims that a regulation “is infringing upon our rights or certain parts of our business, or our freedoms,” Nebraska’s Health and Human Services department always seeks a compromise.
“At that point we are forced to try to accommodate and make our regulations better,” she said. “This is a large contingency saying that this rule is infringing on their religious freedom. It is a big deal.” [Source]
Just another cause of the government getting their claws in the consciences of religious believers. “If we allow you to keep your job believing as you do you must refer to people who violate your conscience.” So I guess if an alcoholic wants treatment and the psychologist believes that not only is getting drunk gravely sinful and that it damages his life they should refer them to a psychologist who believes alcoholism is linked to hereditary and really is a normal condition. Somebody with some degree of same-sex attraction needs help and that does not mean affirming their same-sex attraction. So much of modern psychology would never have helped someone like Ex-Lesbian Janet Boynes and would have worked to keep her miserable by affirming her as a lesbian.
The reality is that they want to force psychologists to refer patients to people who will not help them in the underlying cause of their problem and can even increase problems for that person. Distractors of course will say opposition to this plan is hatred of those with same-sex attraction failing to see that is pure bigotry to always see someone’s motives as hatred. I would totally disagree with those psychologists who see same-sex attraction as perfectly normal, but I would not see this as hatred towards these persons even though they are not helping them. We live in a time though where opposition to homosexual acts can only mean hatred and that justifies any clamping down on conscience claims.
