1) I consider mixing political activities with counseling duties to be a severe conflict of interests - even if you are lobbying for a cause that would benefit your clients. It diffuses your focus on your clients and makes it too easy to seem them as part of "the cause" and not as an individual.
Now, I do agree I have a duty to keep records of the environmental and sociological factors that affect my clients. I agree that when called upon I should bear record of wide spread effects of these factors. I even agree that if I see a pattern I should bring it to someone's attention - preferably a reseacher's who is also studying something similar.
But while I am actively treating clients, I cannot ethically be an activist and still give my clients my all.
If something is that obvious and that destructive that I have to take on the role of lobbyist/activist, then I will retire from my practice and become one. At the very least, I will find myself a position where I am not directly treating people - a program director or something similar - so I can still eat and yet not risk imposing my political impetus on my clients care.
2) I am against painting one idealogy more "educated" or "enlightened" than another, because too often some people think they can by-pass the mental work and be "smart" by just deciding to believe a set of values put together by those they see as educated, without testing them out for themselves.
You can usually spot these people because they insist on trying to embrace the whole of an idealogy and are threatened by anyone else who doesn't treat the complete idealogy as sacrosanct. Even more so, they really get their noses bent out of shape when someone with a conflicting view shows themselves to be more knowledgeable in general.
"I'm open-minded - as long as you fit the stereotypes I have placed on you. I accept everyone - except you narrow-minded troglodytes who are not of my esteemed beliefs."
This would include conservatives who had education in social sciences and liberals who enjoy studying military stratagies. Of course, these are the same types who refuse to believe that there are such things as centrists. I even had one insist I stop calling myself that. My response, boiled down to the essentials, was "Bite me."
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