Counselor Discrimination Gets Cooler Reception in House

A proposed state law would let counselors use religous beliefs to be exempted from seeing some patients. Image courtesy The Relationship Center

A proposed law meant to keep students in college counseling programs from having to treat gay patients breezed through the state senate last week. But the bill may find a cooler reception in the House.

Heads of university counseling and social work departments pleaded with senators not to excuse students from seeing any patient based on their own religious beliefs. The proposal comes from the conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee. The group is responding to an incident in Michigan, where a Christian student was dismissed for refusing to treat a gay patient.

The sponsor in the House is Democrat John DeBerry of Memphis, who says just having the proposal may be enough for him, even if it never goes into law.

“It basically gets the discussion started. Everybody has come out and we’ve talked about it. I think some good is going to come out of it.”

The state’s public universities hope DeBerry has gotten cold feet. They warn that accreditation of their programs could be jeopardized by the proposed law.