Associated Press reports:
A coalition of groups has launched an ad campaign against House Speaker Beth Harwell and other lawmakers over a controversial bill that would allow counselors to refuse to treat patients on the basis of “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
[…]
Republican Sen. Jack Johnson of Franklin, who sponsored the bill, has said that the legislation is an effort to overturn a 2014 change in the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics.
Read more on AP.org.
Okay, would you even want to be counseled by someone who is so bigoted that they don’t want to counsel/help you? Of course, they’re viewing HB 1840 as protecting the counselor’s rights not to be discriminated against and claim that the counselor would be obliged to refer the patient to someone else.
See the American Counseling Association’s statement, here.
I wonder if those who support the bill might also claim that failure to pass the law would result in compelled speech by counselors.
Legislation is pretty fouled up. Never heard of anything so ludicrous. If mental health counselors really feel this way and discriminate against ‘people of different religious beliefs’, ‘gay’ or transgender, then I think they are in the wrong profession.
I wonder if brain lobotomy will get the twisted thinking out of these Republican legislators heads.
sorry, to sound judgmental on this but this is so fouled up.
In next month’s legislation, counselors will not have to counsel people who believe in abortion or who have had an abortion. And that will be amended to also apply to anyone who belongs to a different political party than you do.
If counselors can’t be professional, they don’t belong in the field.
Wow. That is horrible, beyond words. When you think it can not get worse on discrimination, it does.
Uh, I was being sarcastic about next month’s legislation. You need to get used to my humor.
The sarcastic humor was just as the actual legislation. But now I know to not be so gullible.