Counselors Rush To Stop Plan That Would Let Them Avoid Clients For Religious Reasons

Therapists are stepping up their efforts to kill a proposal that would let members of their profession turn away clients on religious or moral grounds.

They say the measure will have far greater consequences than Tennessee lawmakers realize.

The heart of the dispute is the American Counseling Association’s 2014 decision to bar therapists from using their views to refuse entire groups of people.

The policy isn’t just backed by secularists in the profession. Peter Wilson, the director of the graduate counseling program at Trevecca Nazarene, the Christian university in Nashville, says it has broad support among counselors who are Christian.

“There’s nothing in the code of ethics that keeps any therapist, whether a professional therapist or a student in training, from having their own beliefs and values. What the code does say, though, is you cannot impose those values and beliefs.”

Yet conservatives in the Tennessee legislature hope to pass a law that would keep the ACA from enforcing its new non-discrimination policy. House Bill 1840, which could come up for a final vote as soon as Wednesday, would protect therapists from the consequences if they were to turn away clients because they conflict with their “seriously held religious beliefs.”

Professional counselors say state lawmakers should stay out of what is, essentially, an intradisciplinary dispute. And, they say, lawmakers have failed to grasp how important non-discrimination is to counselors.

Without it, therapists wouldn’t just be able turn away clients because they’re gay or from a different faith. A pacifist counselor could refuse former soldiers with PTSD if the organization’s opponents were to succeed.

They hope such arguments will convince Tennessee lawmakers to drop the matter.