What happens when a profession dedicated to helping people heal is overtaken by an ideology that distorts reality? What happens when future counselors are taught not how to serve their clients, but how to conform to political dogma? And what happens when students of faith are punished for refusing to violate their deeply held beliefs?
For Naomi Epps Best, these questions aren’t hypothetical. When she stood up for her convictions while enrolled in her university’s counseling program, it came with a cost.
Who is Naomi Epps Best?
Naomi Epps Best was a counseling graduate student at Santa Clara University.
Naomi entered the university’s counseling program with high hopes. A committed Christian, she had hoped to find a moral grounding in the school’s Jesuit Catholic identity. She believed those values would help lay a foundation for her training and a noble career as a counselor.
What she didn’t anticipate was being exposed to a spiritually corrosive curriculum—one that coerced her to view sexually graphic material and shocking assignments that violated her conscience and dignity.
When curriculum conflicts with conscience
In one required course called “Human Sexuality,” her professor exposed the students to an inappropriate and graphic video with no warning and no opt-out. Naomi stood up and walked out of class.
In addition, she was required to write an eight to ten page “comprehensive sexual autobiography,” including past and present sexual experiences as well as “sexual aspirations” for the future.
When Naomi requested an alternative assignment on ethical and religious grounds, the department chairman denied her request, suggesting she instead pursue a different type of license. She appealed to multiple university officials to no avail.
Naomi realized that her department was being guided by a belief system steeped in critical theory and dismantling norms. This same ideology is driving much of therapy education today. And Naomi couldn’t stay silent. Her stand that day would be her first of many against an ideology that has become pervasive in the counseling field.
Going public—and paying the price
Left with few options, Naomi went to the Wall Street Journal with her story, blowing the whistle on the program’s sociopolitical agenda and exposing the course’s sexually explicit content.
But speaking out publicly came with a price. A week later, Naomi was fired from her therapy internship.
Naomi posted on X about her firing, stating why she chose to courageously speak out: “This field is in crisis. The public needs to know.”
The post went viral, striking a nerve and eliciting responses from across the nation. Naomi received a flood of messages from others who shared her concerns or had experienced discrimination for not conforming to radical ideological constructs in the classroom.
A wider pattern of censorship
Naomi is not the first in the counseling space to experience censorship or cancellation for publicly expressing views counter to the cultural narrative. At Alliance Defending Freedom, we’ve represented students, counselors, and medical professionals who have dared to counter the prevailing worldview on gender and sexuality.
Take Dr. Allan Josephson. Dr. Josephson is an award-winning and nationally recognized leader in his field. For nearly 15 years, he led the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Louisville. As early as 2014, Dr. Josephson became concerned with how doctors were treating gender-dysphoric children: accepting the child’s claimed gender identity, prescribing sterilizing hormones, and setting the stage for life-altering surgery. But after expressing his professional views on these subjects in his personal capacity at a panel in Washington, D.C., the University of Louisville demoted him and then fired him a year later.
Dr. Josephson was punished for expressing the common-sense, science-backed view that medical professionals should aim to understand and treat the psychological issues underlying gender dysphoria in children, rather than rushing them into more radical interventions like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Dr. Josephson reached out to ADF to defend his right to free speech, and after a six-year legal battle, he received a $1.6 million settlement from the university.
Protecting the heart of the profession
Brave individuals like Dr. Josephson and Naomi Epps Best are helping to expose the corruption and ideological strongholds in the field of therapy education and even the field’s top governing bodies such as the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs.
Josephson and Best understand that when counselors are forced to embrace a one-size-fits-all ideological framework, everyone loses—especially the clients they serve.
Clients deserve counselors who are free to tell the truth, act with integrity, and provide care rooted in reality—not radical ideology.
That’s why ADF is representing a counselor in Colorado, Kaley Chiles, at the Supreme Court this fall.
As a licensed counselor who sees her work as an outpouring of her Christian faith, Chiles talks to her clients about various issues, including gender identity and sexual orientation. Many of her clients come to her because they share her beliefs and know that their lives will be more fulfilling if aligned with the teachings of their faith.
But a Colorado law bans counselors like Chiles from speaking certain views about gender and sexuality to minors, bringing the government into counseling conversations and prohibiting counselors like Kaley from helping young people work through issues like gender dysphoria consistent with goals they set for themselves.
Any counselor who speaks the truth on these issues could face steep penalties: up to $5,000 for each violation, possible suspension from practice, and even revocation of the counselor’s license.
This is censorship, pure and simple. And it’s what happens when institutions, academic governing bodies, and professional associations adopt ideological views that go unchecked and unchallenged.
ADF is standing by those who are committed to providing their clients with the truth and are unwilling to go along with the harmful ideologies that have infiltrated the profession— ideologies that are detrimental to some of the most vulnerable members of society.
One case at a time, one voice at a time, we will continue to support those who speak out. We will continue to push back on destructive ideas and laws, including laws that threaten those in the therapy profession and beyond.
And when we stand up, with God’s help, we can win.
Related Articles
