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Students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have a long, documented history at Brigham Young University (BYU), [1] [2]: 59, 60 and have experienced a range of treatment by other students and school administrators over the decades. Large surveys of over 7,000 BYU students in 2020 and 2017 found that over 13% had marked their sexual orientation as something other than "strictly heterosexual", while the other survey showed that .2% had reported their gender identity as transgender or something other than cisgender male or female. [3] [4]: 2 BYU is the largest religious university in North America and is the flagship institution of the educational system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)— Mormonism's largest denomination.
Historically, experiences for BYU students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have included being banned from enrolling due to their romantic attractions in the 60s; [2]: 379 being required by school administration to undergo therapy in the 1970s, including electroshock and vomit aversion therapies in "special cases"; [5]: 155 having nearly 80% of BYU students refusing to live with an openly homosexual person in a poll in the 1990s; [6] and a ban on coming out until 2007. [7] [8] Until 2021 there were not any LGBTQIA+-specific resources on campus, though there is now the Office of Student Success and Inclusion. [9] [10] [11] BYU students are at risk of discipline and expulsion by the Honor Code Office for expressions of same-sex romantic feelings that go against the school's code of conduct such as same-sex dating, hugging, and kissing, [15] for gender non-conforming dress, and students and faculty are still banned from meeting together in a queer-straight alliance group on campus. [16] [17] [18]
Several LGBT rights organizations have criticized BYU's policies around queer students [19] and The Princeton Review has regularly ranked BYU as one of the most LGBT-unfriendly schools in the United States. [20] [21] [22] Although BYU policies specific to same-sex romantic expressions have existed since the 50s, these were only available to administrators, and the first publicly available explicit mention of homosexuality in the language of the school's code of conduct was not publicly published until the fall of 2009. [23] [24] The first LGBT-specific campus-wide event was held in April 2017. [25] Though faced with this historical and current environment, LGBT individuals have continued to enroll in and attend BYU with many participating in unofficial LGBT BYU communities.
Before 1959 there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration, [2]: 375, 377, 394 but by 1962 a ban on homosexual students was enacted, though not mentioned in the media or in literature provided to students. On September 12, 1962, apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Peterson and BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson agreed on a university policy that "no one will be admitted as a student ... whom we have convincing evidence is a homosexual." [2]: 379 They agreed to share information about individuals cases of homosexual members between general church administration and BYU administration. [29] [30] This policy was broadcast in Wilkinson's address to BYU in September 1965 when he stated "we [do not] intend to admit to this campus any homosexuals. ... [I]f any of you have this tendency, ... may I suggest you leave the University immediately .... We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence." [31] [32] [33] The next month general authorities again privately decided that the "University does not permit any known homosexual to enter or remain at BYU", though they decided "for the purposes of admission or retention at BYU" that masturbation (or "self abuse") was "not considered homosexuality." [34] The decision by top leaders forbidding the enrollment of homosexuals at BYU was again repeated in meetings on January 27, 1966, and January 25, 1968, and was codified in the 1967 administrators version of the Honor code. The approved version read "homosexuality will not be tolerated", while the proposed sentence banning "masturbation" was removed in committee. [29] [35]
The complete ban on any students with a homosexual orientation was softened a decade later by Wilkinson's successor, Dallin H. Oaks, in an April 19, 1973, Board of Trustees meeting. There it was decided BYU administrators would allow for students who had repented of homosexual acts and forsaken them for a lengthy period of time. Additionally, students guilty of infrequent sexual behavior (not including fornication or adultery equivalents) who were repentant and showed evidence that the act(s) would not be repeated would be admitted while those still suspected of current same-sex sexual behavior would still be barred from remaining and enrollment. [29] [36] [37]
Under Oaks, a system of surveillance and searches of dorms of problem students, including suspected homosexuals, was implemented. [2]: 442 This included electronic recording devices which BYU Security Chief Robert Kelshaw confirmed in 1975 had been planted on students to gather information. In reference to the widespread campaign to find homosexuals among BYU students, Oaks stated, "Two influences we wish to exclude from the BYU community are active homosexuals and drug users, and these subjects are therefore among those with which our security force is concerned." [40]
Four years later BYU's newspaper reported Oaks asking BYU security to be "especially watchful" for any student homosexual infractions. [41]: 126 [42] BYU's security force conducted stake outs looking for license plates of BYU students at gay bars in Salt Lake City. [2]: 442 [43] [44] They also placed fake contact advertisements in a gay Salt Lake City newspaper to entrap gay students. [45] [43] [40] This resulted in the arrest of David Chipman who was no longer a BYU student at that time. [41]: 126 [46] [47] However, the director of public relations for the university stated that by 1979 Oaks ordered BYU security to stop surveilling gay bars and to cease posting entrapment advertisements. [43]
In September 1976 top church leaders on the BYU Board of Trustees approved BYU president Dallin H. Oaks's Institute for Studies in Values and Human Behavior dedicated most heavily to search for evidence supporting church views on homosexuality. [49] The primary assignment was writing a church-funded book on homosexuality to be published by a non-church source (in order to boost the book's scientific credibility). [52] BYU psychologist Allen Bergin acted as the director [53] [54] and book author. Institute member and church Social Services director Victor Brown Jr. [55] wrote, "Our basic theme is that truth lies with the scriptures and prophets, not with secular data or debate." [56] Several dissertations were produced by the Values Institute [37] [57] [58] before it closed in 1985. [59]
In 1977, gay BYU student Cloy Jenkins and gay BYU instructor Lee Williams [60] coauthored an open letter to refute the anti-gay teachings of BYU professor Reed Payne. The anonymous letter was later published with the help of Lee's gay brother Jeff and Ricks College faculty member Howard Salisbury as the "Payne Papers" pamphlet (later titled "Prologue"). [61] This was anonymously mailed to all high-ranking LDS leaders and most BYU and Ricks College faculty causing a controversy. [50]: 1 This elicited a response from apostle Boyd K. Packer in the form of his "To the One" 1978 BYU address on homosexuality [63] and an article from the recently formed BYU Values Institute. [50]
In the late 1990s a reference to "homosexual conduct" was added to the BYU Honor Code. [64]: 146 In 1997 Honor Code Office director Rush Sumpter stated that BYU forbids actions of verifiable, overt displays of homosexual affection, but does not punish attractions. One student stated she tried to pray her feelings away, and another said her parents sent her to BYU to straighten out her homosexual feelings. [65]
In 2000 a reported 13 students were kicked off campus when caught watching the TV series Queer As Folk. [64]: 145 [66] The next year two gay students (Matthew Grierson and Ricky Escoto) were expelled under accusations deemed "more probable than not" of hand-holding or kissing. [64]: 145 The Associate Dean of Students Lane Fischer over the BYU Honor Code Office stated in a letter to those two students that it was "inappropriate" for a BYU student to "advocate for the [homosexual] lifestyle" by publishing material or participating in public demonstrations as well as advertising one's "same-sex preference in any public way" reinforcing the existing honor code ban on coming out for lesbian, gay, or bisexual students. [8] [7] He also required homosexual students facing discipline to refrain from same-sex "dating, holding hands, kissing, romantic touching, showering, clubbing, ets., as well as regular association with homosexual men." [67]
BYU continues to ban same-sex romantic behavior such as dating, holding hands, and kissing as of August 2023. [68] [69] In 2007, BYU changed the honor code to read that stating one's sexual orientation was not an honor code issue while removing the phrase that "any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code." The change also clarified the policy on advocacy of LGBTQ rights or romantic relationships. [70] [71] [72] Several students, including those identifying as LGBTQIA+, thought that the previous wording was confusing and unclear.
While both homosexuals and heterosexuals must abide by the church's law of chastity (i.e. no sexual relations outside of marriage, no crude language, and no pornography), [73] the Honor Code additionally prohibits all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings (e.g. dating, hugging, hand holding, or kissing) as of 2022 [update]. [74] There is no similar restriction against expressing heterosexual feelings. [24] The policy on homosexuality was not noted in the online version of the honor code available to students until the fall of 2009. [23] [24] Both this version and the 2010 versions contained a clause banning homosexual advocacy defined as "seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable." [24] [75]
In early 2011, BYU quietly removed the clause prohibiting advocacy. [76] [75] [72] However, in 2021 BYU fired Sue Bergin and the next year BYU's sister school BYU-Idaho (also run by the Church Educational System) fired two employees Lindsay Call and Ben Buswell all for allegedly expressing concerns over church teachings around LGBTQ people. [77] BYU continues to ban LGBTQ student groups from meeting on campus as of 2022 [update]. [78] During an off-campus September 2022 BYU LGBTQ student "Back to School Pride Night", 100 protesters (many also BYU students) gathered and yelled slurs at the 300 LGBTQ BYU students and friends in attendance. [78] [74] [79]
A 2021 BYU-conducted survey of its students found that 74% of the 13,000 respondents experienced or witnessed "derogatory remarks about LGBTQ+ people" within the past year, and one in four LGBTQ students surveyed said they did not feel safe on campus. [74] [4]: 6, 9 Carolyn Gassert, president of the LGBTQ BYU student group USGA, said most of the queer students at BYU are used to the vitriol and "hear these comments in the classroom." [78]
As for gender diverse students, policies remain unclear, and as of 2017 [update] a BYU spokesperson has only stated that "transgender students are handled on a case-by-case basis." One openly transgender student has tried discussing policies with the Honor Code office, but they ignored his emails. No publicly available BYU policy seems to be in place for students transitioning with hormone therapy, or for an assigned-male-at-birth student expressing a gender identity as a woman through clothing, makeup, or long hair. [80] However, faculty are instructed as of December 2017 [update] that a female with a shaved head, or a male with long nails, brightly dyed hair, or makeup would be violating the Honor Code and should be reported to the Honor Code Office. [81]
In 2010, a group called USGA (Understanding Sexuality, Gender, and Allyship), consisting of BYU students and other members of the Provo community, began meeting on campus to discuss issues relating to homosexuality and the LDS Church. [82] However, by December 2012, USGA was told it could no longer hold meetings on BYU's campus [12] and BYU continues to ban USGA from meeting on campus as of 2022 [update]. [78] [9] [16]
In 2021, groups named Raynbow Collective and Cougar Pride Center were started to address the increasing needs of queer students. These groups began supplementing the work by USGA through additional resources and events.
In 1950, 1961, and 1972 BYU Sociology professor Wilford E. Smith conducted a survey of thousands of Mormon students at several universities including many from the BYU sociology department as part of a larger survey. [83] His data spanning over 20 years found that 10% of BYU men and 2% of BYU women indicated having had a "homosexual experience." He also found that "the response of Mormons [at BYU] did not differ significantly from the response of Mormons in state universities." [1]
An informal poll of students in 1991 by an independent BYU newspaper found that 5% of students identified their sexual orientation as gay (similar to the 4% estimate by a BYU counselor in 1979), [84] [85] and 22% of all students knew of a BYU student who was gay or lesbian. [86] [2]: 59, 60
In 1997 a poll of over 400 BYU students found that 42% of students believed that even if a same-sex attracted person keeps the honor code they should not be allowed to attend BYU and nearly 80% said they would not live with a roommate attracted to people of the same sex. [6] [84]
In 2003 BYU's newspaper cited two LDS therapists who stated that "somewhere around 4 to 5 percent" of BYU students are gay. [87]: 1
A BYU Spring 2017 survey taken by 42% of students found that .2% of the 12,602 who completed the survey (or 25 responders) reported their gender identity being transgender or something other than cisgender male or female. [4]: 2 For comparison, a 2017 meta-analysis of 20 separate large surveys (with sample sizes ranging from over 30,000 US adults to over 165,000 each) found a conservative estimate of .39% for the portion of US adults who self-identify as transgender. [88] A 2020 survey of 7,625 BYU students found that over 13% (996) of those surveyed indicated that their sexual orientation was something other than "strictly heterosexual. [3]
An intervention-style approach to "curing" homosexuality by therapists and unlicensed individuals gradually emerged in the LDS community as it became clear that the church leaders' self-help recommendations were not working. [90]: 89 One of the main efforts was BYU's aversion therapy program from 1959 [2]: 377, 379 to the mid-90s [90]: 90 which used mostly electrical shocks to the arm or genitals, or sometimes induced-vomiting while showing the participants erotic imagery. [91] Shortly after the May 21, 1959, meeting of BYU president Ernest Wilkinson and apostles on the executive committee of the Church Board of Education discussing the "growing problem in our society of homosexuality" BYU began administering "aversion therapy" to "cure", "repair", or "reorient" homosexual feelings among Mormon males. [2]: 377, 379 The on-campus aversion therapy program lasted through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, [93] and into the mid-1990s. [90]: 90 [94] BYU mental health counselors, LDS bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, general authorities, and the BYU Standards Office (equivalent to today's Honor Code Office) all referred young men to the BYU program. [95] Because of religious considerations, on September 22, 1969, BYU administration decided to reduce the amount of the on-campus "electrical aversive therapy" used to treat (among other things) what was deemed "sexual deviancy", though, the program continued. [96] [41]: 82
From 1971 to 1980 BYU's president Dallin H. Oaks [41]: 32 had Gerald J. Dye over the University Standards Office [97] (renamed the Honor Code Office in 1991). Dye stated that during that decade part of the "set process" for homosexual BYU students referred to his office for "less serious" offenses was to require that they undergo some form of therapy to remain at BYU, and that in special cases this included "electroshock and vomiting aversion therapies." [5]: 155
In an independent BYU newspaper article two men describe their experience with the BYU Aversion therapy program during the early 1970s. [98]: 162 After confessing to homosexual feelings they were referred to the BYU Counseling Center where the electroshock aversion therapy took place using pornographic pictures of males and females. Jon, one of the individuals, implied that the treatment was completely ineffective. [60] The experiences match most reports which state that shock therapy was ineffective in changing sexual orientation. [99]: xxvi
From 1975 to 1976 Max Ford McBride, a student at BYU, conducted electroshock aversion therapy on 17 men (with 14 completing the treatment) using a male arousal measuring device placed around the penis and electrodes on the bicep. He published a dissertation on the use of electrical aversive techniques to treat ego-dystonic homosexuality. [100] The thesis documents the use of "Electrical Aversion Therapy" on 14 homosexual men using a "phallometric" apparatus, "barely tolerable" shocks, and "nude male visual-cue stimuli." [101] [100] Although it is not publicly published whether all top LDS Church leaders were aware of the electroshock aversion therapy program, [102]: 1 it is known that apostles Spencer W Kimball, Mark E. Peterson, and now apostle Dallin H. Oaks were, [2]: 379 and leaders involved in LDS Social Services thought the therapy was effective. [103] [48]: 164–165 At the time, homosexuality was considered by the medical community as a psychiatric condition, [104] [105] and aversion therapy was one of the more common methods used to try to change it. [106] In 1966, Martin Seligman had conducted a study at the University of Pennsylvania that demonstrated positive results, which led to "a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality [that] swept over the therapeutic community." [107] After flaws were demonstrated in Seligman's experiments, aversion therapy fell out of popularity, and in 1994 the American Medical Association issued a report that stated "aversion therapy is no longer recommended for gay men and lesbians." [108]
Participant in the 1975–76 BYU study Don Harryman wrote that he experienced "burns on [his] arms and ... emotional trauma." [99]: 26–28 [109] Another participant, John Clarence Cameron, who wrote a play called "14" about his experiences, said "it didn't change anything except increase my self-loathing. I didn't know the ramifications of the experiment until years later." [102] Cameron stated that he "would like everyone to tell the truth, admit the mistakes that took place, and stop trying to act like it didn't happen" [110] Another one of the test subjects described his experiences, stating "No one wanted to change more than I did. I did everything within my power to change, and it didn't alter my homosexuality one whit. All I had learned to do was suppress much of my personality ... I was shutting down, turning off.... I was making my life miserable by a pervasive denial of who I am." [111]
Connell O'Donovan, [112] Val Mansfield and Drew Staffanson described undergoing aversion therapy and Raymond King describes his involvement as an intern with the BYU psychology department's electroshock aversion therapy program in the 1996 short documentary Legacies. [113] [114] The documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition also contains an interview wherein Bruce Barton states that BYU coerced him into vomit aversion therapy, as well as electroshock therapy, which later precipitated his suicide attempt. [115] Jayce Cox also reported his experience with BYU shock therapy [116] and suicidal ideation in articles and an MTV documentary. [120] Scott Burton discusses the burn marks on his wrists he developed when undergoing electroshock therapy from ages 13 to 15 at the hands of a Mormon therapist by request from his Mormon parents. [121]
In 2011 BYU admitted to the past use of electroshock therapy but denies that it had ever used vomit-inducing therapy "in the BYU Counseling Center" [101] (which has been in the Wilkinson Student Center since 1964). However, the students that underwent the treatment have stated that the vomit therapy took place in the basement of the Psychology department's Joseph F. Smith Family Living Center (built in 1957, demolished in 2002). [113] [122] In 2021 Dallin Oaks falsely stated that electroshock aversion therapy "never went on under my administration" at BYU while he was the university's president from 1971 to 1980, while a BYU student produced a master's thesis on the electroshock program at BYU in 1976). [123] [124]
In 2016, the church's official website declared that conversion therapy or sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) are "unethical." [128] [129] This statement is echoed by studies on the harmful effects of SOCE. [130] Prior to this change in stance BYU ecclesiastical leaders and Honor Code office administrators have encouraged or required students with homosexual feelings to undergo conversion therapy (also known as sexual orientation change efforts), sometimes under threat of expulsion. This therapy focused on diminishing same-sex romantic attraction sometimes happened on campus by church-employed therapists.
For example, National Geographic journalist Andrew Evans [131] has discussed the compulsory year of conversion therapy and "traumatic moments" BYU made him undergo in the late 90s as a student after he was caught kissing a man by his roommate. BYU told him he could be expelled or visit weekly with his bishop, turn in fellow gay students, cut off contact with any gay friends, and have frequent visits with a BYU therapist until he was heterosexual and "safe" for other students to be around. Included in the therapy was weekly dates with women as an additional attempt to change his attractions. [132]
Similarly, LGBT activist Michael Ferguson also discussed the many years and different modalities of expensive conversion therapy he underwent (including with a BYU psychologist) starting with a 2004 recommendation from his BYU bishop. He was told by local church leaders that many had "overcome" and diminished their same-sex romantic feelings and their "addiction" to those of the same sex. Ferguson believed that through this he could follow church teachings and marry a woman and enter the highest degree of glory in the afterlife. Much of the therapy focused on repairing alleged emotional damage from things deemed to cause homosexuality like an overbearing mother, distant father, and rejection from same-sex peers. [133]
Below is a brief timeline of major events at the intersection of LGBT topics and BYU. Before 1959, there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration. [2]: 375, 377, 394
[They] conducted the school-approved survey to 420 students in randomly selected classes on campus. ... [Clayton] feels the results show a substantial amount of intolerance and prejudice among students towards same-sex oriented people. Clayton, who says he is gay, points to the 42 percent of students who are ignorant of or opposed to the school's policy. He also said that while 91 percent of those surveyed said they were familiar with the church's stance, only a third actually were. ... Almost 80 percent of respondents would not live with a same-sex oriented roommate.
There are no institutional means of supporting students or educating professors on LGBTQ issues. ... USGA, is forced to meet in a local library because the university does not support or sanction its existence. Students in the group say they've been told it will never be allowed on campus.
The decision by LGBT students to attend or stay at BYU comes with the price of being unable to participate in the university's dating culture. It oftentimes means staying home while roommates go on dates or watching as they get engaged. It's knowing that two straight friends can hug, or go on a friend date, but that two LGBT students who are the same gender can't do the same.
In 1965, for instance, university President Ernest L. Wilkinson said in a speech to the student body that BYU does 'not intend to admit to campus any homosexuals. If any of you have this tendency and have not completely abandoned it, may I suggest that you leave the university immediately after this assembly; and if you will be honest enough to let us know the reason, we will voluntarily refund your tuition. We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence.'
The school's Honor Code forbids 'all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.' Violations can lead up to expulsion. 'I'm very affectionate with my friends,' he says. 'But every time I hug someone, in the back of my mind, there's always something nagging at me. Like, 'Oh, they're going to be watching.' It is really stressful.'
Since he had admitted to being in love with his boyfriend, Kovalenko was told that any contact with him—even a handshake or a hug—would be inappropriate. Any sign of affection would be just as inappropriate as sexual relations and be seen by the honor code as advocating for homosexual behavior.
[BYU] says its security police staked out homosexual bars in Salt Lake City to investigate homosexual activity at the Latter-day Saint‐owned school, but stopped the practice once administrators learned of it. Paul Richards, director of public relations for the university, confirmed yesterday allegations by the American Civil Liberties Union that security officers ventured off campus and wrote letters to a homosexual‐oriented newspaper soliciting responses as part of a crackdown on homosexuals. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strict ban on homosexual behavior in line with traditional Christian teachings. "Those things were done," Mr. Richards said. "But, when President [Dallin] Oaks got involved, he said, 'Cut that out right now.' "Mr. Richards said the surveillance had occurred more than a year ago, before the Utah Legislature approved a controversial bill giving peace officer status to campus police.
The fears proved well-founded. Designated drivers in the parking lots of gay bars saw men writing down license plate numbers. Some [BYU] students reported being outed by campus security soon thereafter, Aaron says.'Then the families ended up finding out they were excommunicated,' he says.
The letter sought people interested in forming a "BYU gay underground." [David] Chipman, although not a BYU student, met his contact in the student center, but was arrested by the man in a canyon away from the school. The man revealed he was a BYU police officer posing as a homosexual. ... [Security Chief Robert] Kelshaw admits a BYU detective wrote the unauthorized "gay underground" letter.
Social Services is now part of Personal Welfare Services, with Brother Victor Brown Jr., as director.
[BYU student Ricky] Escoto says he knows of 13 other BYU students who were kicked off campus last year after being caught watching the Showtime series Queer as Folk.Also archived here.
Question: One of my female students has shaved her head. Do I have a responsibility here? Answer: Yes, faculty have a responsibility in this situation! A girl shaving her head, a guy dying his hair bright blue, or any other extreme fashion is not appropriate for representatives of the Church and the University. Question: One of my male students wears black clothing and eye shadow to class; and his fingernails are at least half an inch long. What can I do about it? Answer: That sort of appearance is not appropriate for a BYU student, particularly a male.
Forty-two percent of [BYU] students think those with a same-sex orientation should not be allowed to attend the LDS Church-owned school, according to a recent survey. ... In the first study, BYU student Samuel Clayton, with the help of several faculty members, gave questionnaires anonymously to 420 students in randomly selected classes.
According to local psychologists who are working on homosexuality research, anywhere from 1 to 4 percent of the BYU male population have homosexual tendencies. Dr. Ford McBride, a psychologist at Timpanogos Community Mental Health Center, and Dr. Maxine Murdock, licensed psychologist at the BYU Counseling Center who works with homosexual students, estimate the figure at 4 percent. McBride said his estimate is based on extrapolation of the old Kinsey report.
[O]ur final analysis included 20 samples. Table 1 describes each of these samples in more detail. Among them, 6 samples (30%) were drawn from the general population and 14 (70%) from college and university students and adult inmates. ... The estimated proportion of transgender individuals based on surveys that categorized transgender as gender identity was 0.39% (95% confidence interval [between 0.16% and 0.62%]). ... An estimate extrapolating our meta-regression results ... suggests that the proportion of transgender adults in the United States is 0.39% ... and almost 1 million adults nationally. Our estimate of 0.39% is not quite as high as the 1% that was posited on the basis of a qualitative review of international studies.
'They promised me it would work, and who doesn't want to live a life that's normal and acceptable in your society and have your family embrace you?' he asks rhetorically. Therapist Ron Lawrence of Community Counseling Center in Las Vegas says this 'reparative therapy' is 'equivalent to what I would call the kind of torture that people experienced in Nazi concentration camps.' Jayce displays the scars on his hands and tells of more scars where the electrodes were placed 'on my torso, and [breathing deeply as though reliving some excruciating pain ] on my genitalia.' The words don't come easily to Jayce as he explains why he so willingly gave up his education savings [$9,000]—and put his earning potential on hold—in order to endure what Lawrence describes as 'assault and battery, abuse'. 'You're taught that the leaders of the church will never lie to you, never deceive you and you're taught to believe them blindly,' Jayce explains. 'I believed the counselors. I believed it would work. I believed that through that [reparative therapy], faith, temple attendance and prayer and fasting I would be healed. I believe that through God anything's possible. And I was told it would work. It probably sounds really naive, but I truly believed it would work.'
The LDS church claims the Holy Bible as scripture and, through traditional Biblical interpretations, has historically both condemned same-sex sexuality as sinful and explicitly encouraged its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) members to attempt sexual orientation change. While the LDS church has somewhat softened its stance toward LGBTQ individuals in recent years, it continues to communicate to its LGBTQ members that sexual orientation change is possible through various means including prayer, personal righteousness, faith in Jesus Christ, psychotherapy, group therapy, and group retreats. In these respects, the LDS church's approach to SSA has closely paralleled other religious traditions including Orthodox Judaism, evangelical Christianity, and Roman Catholicism.
What about 'Turn It Off?' In this show-stopper for Tony-nominated supporting actor Rory O'Malley as Elder McKinley, some missionaries share their approach to confusing thoughts or bad feelings. ... [W]hen you have gay thoughts for your best friend, well, 'Turn it off!' Non-believers hear hypocrisy and an absurdly simplistic solution to difficult issues: 'Turn it off/ Like a light switch/ Just go flick/ It's our nifty little Mormon trick.' ... It's not an official approach by any faith, as such, but numerous fundamentalist faiths acknowledge that some men are inherently gay. They want those men to simply tamp down these bad feelings and marry a woman anyway, because with prayer and the proper spouse and God's love you can be alright.
On the show-stopper 'Turn It Off,' sung by a closeted missionary struggling with his sexuality. 'I'm one of the few missionaries who actually was out to myself as a gay person on my mission and out to some of my mission companions—the ones who asked. [The Book of Mormon song] 'Turn It Off' is such an insightful view into the psychology of a homosexual missionary in particular, but also into all Mormons. In the church, you don't say you're gay, you say you have homosexual tendencies, because gay is this label they want you to hopefully outgrow, which I tried to do. It didn't work.
While shifts in sexuality can and do occur for some people, it is unethical to focus professional treatment on an assumption that a change in sexual orientation will or must occur.
With substantial evidence of serious harms associated with exposure to [sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts (SOGICE)] particularly for minors, 21 states (and multiple cities and counties) have passed bipartisan laws or regulations prohibiting SOGICE. ... Furthermore, compared with LGBTQ youths with no exposure, those exposed to SOGICE showed 1.76 times greater odds of seriously considering suicide, 2.23 times greater odds of having attempted suicide, and 2.54 times greater odds of multiple suicide attempts in the previous year.
I believe in retaining criminal penalties on sex crimes such as adultery, fornication, prostitution, homosexuality, and other forms of deviate sexual behavior. I concede the abuses and risks of invasion of privacy that are involved in the enforcement of such crimes and therefore concede the need for extraordinary supervision of the enforcement process. I am even willing to accept a strategy of extremely restrained enforcement of private, noncommercial sexual offenses. I favor retaining these criminal penalties primarily because of the standard-setting and teaching function of these laws on sexual morality and their support of society's exceptional interest in the integrity of the family.
[I]t is hard for me to understand why men wish to resemble women and why women desire to ape the men. ... Then we're appalled to find an ever-increasing number of women who want to be sexually men and many young men who wish to be sexually women. What a travesty! I tell you that, as surely as they live, such people will regret having made overtures toward the changing of their sex. Do they know better than God what is right and best for them?Alternative youtube.com and archive.org links.
Carlyle D. Marsden was found in his car along Nichols Road dead from a pistol wound of the chest.
Eight men were arraigned in the Pleasant Grove Precinct Justice Court Monday afternoon on charges of lewdness and sodomy stemming from alleged homosexual activity at the two rest stops on I-15 north of Orem. ... Two of the suspects were arrested and charged with an act of sodomy. One of them, a 54-year-old Salt Lake County man, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest two days after his arrest, according to Serge Moore, state medical examiner. ... Funeral services for Carlyle D. Marsden, 54, of 1388 Nichols Road, Fruit Heights, who died Monday, March 8, 1976, will be Friday at 10 a.m. in the Kaysville 11th-14th LDS Ward Chapel ... Mr. Marsden was a music teacher at Eisenhower Junior High School and at [BYU].
Non-Student Is Set Is Set Up and Arrested Kelshaw (Security Chief) admits a BYU detective wrote an unauthorized letter to a gay newspaper in Salt Lake the Open Door in an effort to obtain the names of students who would be interested in forming a 'BYU gay underground'. David Chipman not a student of BYU responded to the article and was thereby set up for later arrest. David made connection with the detective who was posing as a homosexual. The two then drove into a nearby canyon where David was arrested when he touched the groin of the officer. Chipman has pleaded innocent and his attorney has moved for dismissal on grounds of entrapment... 'The law passed on May 10 is blatantly unconstitutional for allowing police power to be used to enforce views, if not exclusively limited to, at least including in church doctrine,' said Shirley Pedler director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Utah ... Salt Lake Tribune Oct 23, 1979.
KBYU viewers who turned on their television sets August 6 to see the last in a three-part series on homosexuality in Utah heard instead an announcement that the segment had been cancelled ... The segment contained interviews with homosexual students at BYU. ...[P]roducer of the series Kevin Mitchell told the Provo Daily Herald 'I didn't want their faces shown because if they were caught, they would be kicked out of the university.'
Recognition of inadequate treatment regimens regimes regimens may account for erroneous but widespread beliefs such as that male homosexuality is not changeable. ... Change was embedded in an accepting evaluative and loving non-erotic social milieu that provided expectations ideology and actual interpersonal experiences leading to the extinction of homosexual impulses and behaviors. ... Warren was discovering that he was not the odd man out he had believed all his life and as his gender security increased his homosexual desires decreased.
In 1990, the [Student Review] staff threw aside the magazine's taboos and published its 'What?!? Homosexuality HERE at BYU!?!' issue, which explored the topic from a variety of religious and social perspectives. Over the next four years gay issues took up much space in the Review—perhaps because the Review had become a semi-safe space for gay students themselves. Such articles—without exception promoting tolerance if not outright social and theological change—always drew critical response from students.
Foundation for Attraction Research was founded by Dennis V. Dahle, JD; A. Dean Byrd, PhD, MBA, MPH; and Shirley E. Cox, DSW, LCSW in 2005 for the purpose of developing resources and conducting research supportive of traditional Judeo-Christian standards of morality. ... The members of the Foundation's board of directors, all of whom served as editors of Understanding Same-Sex Attraction, follow: A. Dean Byrd, PhD, MBA, MPH; Shirley E. Cox, DSW, LCSW; Dennis V. Dahle, JD; Doris R. Dant, MS, MA; William C. Duncan, JD; John P. Livingstone, EdD; M. Gawain Wells, PhD
Instead, the authors of this book assert the unpopular opinion, backed by scientific research, that same-sex attraction can be lessened or eradicated in those who desire change and are willing to try. Readers who empathize with the Church's position on homosexuality will likely find hope and useful ideas in this five-hundred-page compilation ... Here essayists recount how they emerged from homosexual lifestyles to find satisfaction in rejoining the Church mainstream, some even finding success in heterosexual marriages ... As some professional and state organizations frown on therapists who believe in reorientation therapy—seeking to ban their practice, in some cases—this book fills a void.
USGA President J.D. Goates said the mission of USGA is "to improve and save the lives of LGBTQ/SSA (Same Sex Attracted) BYU students." The USGA organization was created in 2010 when BYU authorized LGBTQ students to participate in groups, according to Goates. USGA has a leadership team of 40 students and is specifically geared towards BYU students, although it is open to anyone in the community. During the Fall and Winter semesters, USGA meetings regularly see 70-90 students in attendance, Goates said.
FreeBYU this summer added gay and transgender rights to their cause after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage nationwide. BYU also violates ABA nondiscrimination guidelines, Levin said, by forcing some LGBT members to hide their sexual orientation and gender identity or risk expulsion. ... But breaking away from the LDS religion before graduation is against a conduct code signed by each student. So are homosexual relationships. Sex-reassignment surgery can lead to excommunication from the church, which would get students booted from the school. ... The professional organization of attorneys and law students forbids schools from "taking action" based on race, religion, gender, nationality, sexuality, age or disability.
An investigation is underway into [BYU's] law school for possible discrimination. The American Bar Association is looking at the school's standards of expelling gay and former Mormon students.
Addison Jenkins, who spoke at the first LGBT campus forum last year, said the school took a step forward Thursday by hosting the panel, the Salt Lake Tribune reported .
His words were unmistakably a call to arms: Holland used the word 'fire' 10 times, 'musket' eight times, and made multiple references to 'friendly fire,' 'wounds,' and 'scarring.' In particular, he called for 'more musket fire' from BYU's faculty to defend Mormonism's official position on the inferiority and social dangers of same-sex relationships and marriages
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Students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have a long, documented history at Brigham Young University (BYU), [1] [2]: 59, 60 and have experienced a range of treatment by other students and school administrators over the decades. Large surveys of over 7,000 BYU students in 2020 and 2017 found that over 13% had marked their sexual orientation as something other than "strictly heterosexual", while the other survey showed that .2% had reported their gender identity as transgender or something other than cisgender male or female. [3] [4]: 2 BYU is the largest religious university in North America and is the flagship institution of the educational system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)— Mormonism's largest denomination.
Historically, experiences for BYU students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have included being banned from enrolling due to their romantic attractions in the 60s; [2]: 379 being required by school administration to undergo therapy in the 1970s, including electroshock and vomit aversion therapies in "special cases"; [5]: 155 having nearly 80% of BYU students refusing to live with an openly homosexual person in a poll in the 1990s; [6] and a ban on coming out until 2007. [7] [8] Until 2021 there were not any LGBTQIA+-specific resources on campus, though there is now the Office of Student Success and Inclusion. [9] [10] [11] BYU students are at risk of discipline and expulsion by the Honor Code Office for expressions of same-sex romantic feelings that go against the school's code of conduct such as same-sex dating, hugging, and kissing, [15] for gender non-conforming dress, and students and faculty are still banned from meeting together in a queer-straight alliance group on campus. [16] [17] [18]
Several LGBT rights organizations have criticized BYU's policies around queer students [19] and The Princeton Review has regularly ranked BYU as one of the most LGBT-unfriendly schools in the United States. [20] [21] [22] Although BYU policies specific to same-sex romantic expressions have existed since the 50s, these were only available to administrators, and the first publicly available explicit mention of homosexuality in the language of the school's code of conduct was not publicly published until the fall of 2009. [23] [24] The first LGBT-specific campus-wide event was held in April 2017. [25] Though faced with this historical and current environment, LGBT individuals have continued to enroll in and attend BYU with many participating in unofficial LGBT BYU communities.
Before 1959 there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration, [2]: 375, 377, 394 but by 1962 a ban on homosexual students was enacted, though not mentioned in the media or in literature provided to students. On September 12, 1962, apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Peterson and BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson agreed on a university policy that "no one will be admitted as a student ... whom we have convincing evidence is a homosexual." [2]: 379 They agreed to share information about individuals cases of homosexual members between general church administration and BYU administration. [29] [30] This policy was broadcast in Wilkinson's address to BYU in September 1965 when he stated "we [do not] intend to admit to this campus any homosexuals. ... [I]f any of you have this tendency, ... may I suggest you leave the University immediately .... We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence." [31] [32] [33] The next month general authorities again privately decided that the "University does not permit any known homosexual to enter or remain at BYU", though they decided "for the purposes of admission or retention at BYU" that masturbation (or "self abuse") was "not considered homosexuality." [34] The decision by top leaders forbidding the enrollment of homosexuals at BYU was again repeated in meetings on January 27, 1966, and January 25, 1968, and was codified in the 1967 administrators version of the Honor code. The approved version read "homosexuality will not be tolerated", while the proposed sentence banning "masturbation" was removed in committee. [29] [35]
The complete ban on any students with a homosexual orientation was softened a decade later by Wilkinson's successor, Dallin H. Oaks, in an April 19, 1973, Board of Trustees meeting. There it was decided BYU administrators would allow for students who had repented of homosexual acts and forsaken them for a lengthy period of time. Additionally, students guilty of infrequent sexual behavior (not including fornication or adultery equivalents) who were repentant and showed evidence that the act(s) would not be repeated would be admitted while those still suspected of current same-sex sexual behavior would still be barred from remaining and enrollment. [29] [36] [37]
Under Oaks, a system of surveillance and searches of dorms of problem students, including suspected homosexuals, was implemented. [2]: 442 This included electronic recording devices which BYU Security Chief Robert Kelshaw confirmed in 1975 had been planted on students to gather information. In reference to the widespread campaign to find homosexuals among BYU students, Oaks stated, "Two influences we wish to exclude from the BYU community are active homosexuals and drug users, and these subjects are therefore among those with which our security force is concerned." [40]
Four years later BYU's newspaper reported Oaks asking BYU security to be "especially watchful" for any student homosexual infractions. [41]: 126 [42] BYU's security force conducted stake outs looking for license plates of BYU students at gay bars in Salt Lake City. [2]: 442 [43] [44] They also placed fake contact advertisements in a gay Salt Lake City newspaper to entrap gay students. [45] [43] [40] This resulted in the arrest of David Chipman who was no longer a BYU student at that time. [41]: 126 [46] [47] However, the director of public relations for the university stated that by 1979 Oaks ordered BYU security to stop surveilling gay bars and to cease posting entrapment advertisements. [43]
In September 1976 top church leaders on the BYU Board of Trustees approved BYU president Dallin H. Oaks's Institute for Studies in Values and Human Behavior dedicated most heavily to search for evidence supporting church views on homosexuality. [49] The primary assignment was writing a church-funded book on homosexuality to be published by a non-church source (in order to boost the book's scientific credibility). [52] BYU psychologist Allen Bergin acted as the director [53] [54] and book author. Institute member and church Social Services director Victor Brown Jr. [55] wrote, "Our basic theme is that truth lies with the scriptures and prophets, not with secular data or debate." [56] Several dissertations were produced by the Values Institute [37] [57] [58] before it closed in 1985. [59]
In 1977, gay BYU student Cloy Jenkins and gay BYU instructor Lee Williams [60] coauthored an open letter to refute the anti-gay teachings of BYU professor Reed Payne. The anonymous letter was later published with the help of Lee's gay brother Jeff and Ricks College faculty member Howard Salisbury as the "Payne Papers" pamphlet (later titled "Prologue"). [61] This was anonymously mailed to all high-ranking LDS leaders and most BYU and Ricks College faculty causing a controversy. [50]: 1 This elicited a response from apostle Boyd K. Packer in the form of his "To the One" 1978 BYU address on homosexuality [63] and an article from the recently formed BYU Values Institute. [50]
In the late 1990s a reference to "homosexual conduct" was added to the BYU Honor Code. [64]: 146 In 1997 Honor Code Office director Rush Sumpter stated that BYU forbids actions of verifiable, overt displays of homosexual affection, but does not punish attractions. One student stated she tried to pray her feelings away, and another said her parents sent her to BYU to straighten out her homosexual feelings. [65]
In 2000 a reported 13 students were kicked off campus when caught watching the TV series Queer As Folk. [64]: 145 [66] The next year two gay students (Matthew Grierson and Ricky Escoto) were expelled under accusations deemed "more probable than not" of hand-holding or kissing. [64]: 145 The Associate Dean of Students Lane Fischer over the BYU Honor Code Office stated in a letter to those two students that it was "inappropriate" for a BYU student to "advocate for the [homosexual] lifestyle" by publishing material or participating in public demonstrations as well as advertising one's "same-sex preference in any public way" reinforcing the existing honor code ban on coming out for lesbian, gay, or bisexual students. [8] [7] He also required homosexual students facing discipline to refrain from same-sex "dating, holding hands, kissing, romantic touching, showering, clubbing, ets., as well as regular association with homosexual men." [67]
BYU continues to ban same-sex romantic behavior such as dating, holding hands, and kissing as of August 2023. [68] [69] In 2007, BYU changed the honor code to read that stating one's sexual orientation was not an honor code issue while removing the phrase that "any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code." The change also clarified the policy on advocacy of LGBTQ rights or romantic relationships. [70] [71] [72] Several students, including those identifying as LGBTQIA+, thought that the previous wording was confusing and unclear.
While both homosexuals and heterosexuals must abide by the church's law of chastity (i.e. no sexual relations outside of marriage, no crude language, and no pornography), [73] the Honor Code additionally prohibits all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings (e.g. dating, hugging, hand holding, or kissing) as of 2022 [update]. [74] There is no similar restriction against expressing heterosexual feelings. [24] The policy on homosexuality was not noted in the online version of the honor code available to students until the fall of 2009. [23] [24] Both this version and the 2010 versions contained a clause banning homosexual advocacy defined as "seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable." [24] [75]
In early 2011, BYU quietly removed the clause prohibiting advocacy. [76] [75] [72] However, in 2021 BYU fired Sue Bergin and the next year BYU's sister school BYU-Idaho (also run by the Church Educational System) fired two employees Lindsay Call and Ben Buswell all for allegedly expressing concerns over church teachings around LGBTQ people. [77] BYU continues to ban LGBTQ student groups from meeting on campus as of 2022 [update]. [78] During an off-campus September 2022 BYU LGBTQ student "Back to School Pride Night", 100 protesters (many also BYU students) gathered and yelled slurs at the 300 LGBTQ BYU students and friends in attendance. [78] [74] [79]
A 2021 BYU-conducted survey of its students found that 74% of the 13,000 respondents experienced or witnessed "derogatory remarks about LGBTQ+ people" within the past year, and one in four LGBTQ students surveyed said they did not feel safe on campus. [74] [4]: 6, 9 Carolyn Gassert, president of the LGBTQ BYU student group USGA, said most of the queer students at BYU are used to the vitriol and "hear these comments in the classroom." [78]
As for gender diverse students, policies remain unclear, and as of 2017 [update] a BYU spokesperson has only stated that "transgender students are handled on a case-by-case basis." One openly transgender student has tried discussing policies with the Honor Code office, but they ignored his emails. No publicly available BYU policy seems to be in place for students transitioning with hormone therapy, or for an assigned-male-at-birth student expressing a gender identity as a woman through clothing, makeup, or long hair. [80] However, faculty are instructed as of December 2017 [update] that a female with a shaved head, or a male with long nails, brightly dyed hair, or makeup would be violating the Honor Code and should be reported to the Honor Code Office. [81]
In 2010, a group called USGA (Understanding Sexuality, Gender, and Allyship), consisting of BYU students and other members of the Provo community, began meeting on campus to discuss issues relating to homosexuality and the LDS Church. [82] However, by December 2012, USGA was told it could no longer hold meetings on BYU's campus [12] and BYU continues to ban USGA from meeting on campus as of 2022 [update]. [78] [9] [16]
In 2021, groups named Raynbow Collective and Cougar Pride Center were started to address the increasing needs of queer students. These groups began supplementing the work by USGA through additional resources and events.
In 1950, 1961, and 1972 BYU Sociology professor Wilford E. Smith conducted a survey of thousands of Mormon students at several universities including many from the BYU sociology department as part of a larger survey. [83] His data spanning over 20 years found that 10% of BYU men and 2% of BYU women indicated having had a "homosexual experience." He also found that "the response of Mormons [at BYU] did not differ significantly from the response of Mormons in state universities." [1]
An informal poll of students in 1991 by an independent BYU newspaper found that 5% of students identified their sexual orientation as gay (similar to the 4% estimate by a BYU counselor in 1979), [84] [85] and 22% of all students knew of a BYU student who was gay or lesbian. [86] [2]: 59, 60
In 1997 a poll of over 400 BYU students found that 42% of students believed that even if a same-sex attracted person keeps the honor code they should not be allowed to attend BYU and nearly 80% said they would not live with a roommate attracted to people of the same sex. [6] [84]
In 2003 BYU's newspaper cited two LDS therapists who stated that "somewhere around 4 to 5 percent" of BYU students are gay. [87]: 1
A BYU Spring 2017 survey taken by 42% of students found that .2% of the 12,602 who completed the survey (or 25 responders) reported their gender identity being transgender or something other than cisgender male or female. [4]: 2 For comparison, a 2017 meta-analysis of 20 separate large surveys (with sample sizes ranging from over 30,000 US adults to over 165,000 each) found a conservative estimate of .39% for the portion of US adults who self-identify as transgender. [88] A 2020 survey of 7,625 BYU students found that over 13% (996) of those surveyed indicated that their sexual orientation was something other than "strictly heterosexual. [3]
An intervention-style approach to "curing" homosexuality by therapists and unlicensed individuals gradually emerged in the LDS community as it became clear that the church leaders' self-help recommendations were not working. [90]: 89 One of the main efforts was BYU's aversion therapy program from 1959 [2]: 377, 379 to the mid-90s [90]: 90 which used mostly electrical shocks to the arm or genitals, or sometimes induced-vomiting while showing the participants erotic imagery. [91] Shortly after the May 21, 1959, meeting of BYU president Ernest Wilkinson and apostles on the executive committee of the Church Board of Education discussing the "growing problem in our society of homosexuality" BYU began administering "aversion therapy" to "cure", "repair", or "reorient" homosexual feelings among Mormon males. [2]: 377, 379 The on-campus aversion therapy program lasted through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, [93] and into the mid-1990s. [90]: 90 [94] BYU mental health counselors, LDS bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, general authorities, and the BYU Standards Office (equivalent to today's Honor Code Office) all referred young men to the BYU program. [95] Because of religious considerations, on September 22, 1969, BYU administration decided to reduce the amount of the on-campus "electrical aversive therapy" used to treat (among other things) what was deemed "sexual deviancy", though, the program continued. [96] [41]: 82
From 1971 to 1980 BYU's president Dallin H. Oaks [41]: 32 had Gerald J. Dye over the University Standards Office [97] (renamed the Honor Code Office in 1991). Dye stated that during that decade part of the "set process" for homosexual BYU students referred to his office for "less serious" offenses was to require that they undergo some form of therapy to remain at BYU, and that in special cases this included "electroshock and vomiting aversion therapies." [5]: 155
In an independent BYU newspaper article two men describe their experience with the BYU Aversion therapy program during the early 1970s. [98]: 162 After confessing to homosexual feelings they were referred to the BYU Counseling Center where the electroshock aversion therapy took place using pornographic pictures of males and females. Jon, one of the individuals, implied that the treatment was completely ineffective. [60] The experiences match most reports which state that shock therapy was ineffective in changing sexual orientation. [99]: xxvi
From 1975 to 1976 Max Ford McBride, a student at BYU, conducted electroshock aversion therapy on 17 men (with 14 completing the treatment) using a male arousal measuring device placed around the penis and electrodes on the bicep. He published a dissertation on the use of electrical aversive techniques to treat ego-dystonic homosexuality. [100] The thesis documents the use of "Electrical Aversion Therapy" on 14 homosexual men using a "phallometric" apparatus, "barely tolerable" shocks, and "nude male visual-cue stimuli." [101] [100] Although it is not publicly published whether all top LDS Church leaders were aware of the electroshock aversion therapy program, [102]: 1 it is known that apostles Spencer W Kimball, Mark E. Peterson, and now apostle Dallin H. Oaks were, [2]: 379 and leaders involved in LDS Social Services thought the therapy was effective. [103] [48]: 164–165 At the time, homosexuality was considered by the medical community as a psychiatric condition, [104] [105] and aversion therapy was one of the more common methods used to try to change it. [106] In 1966, Martin Seligman had conducted a study at the University of Pennsylvania that demonstrated positive results, which led to "a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality [that] swept over the therapeutic community." [107] After flaws were demonstrated in Seligman's experiments, aversion therapy fell out of popularity, and in 1994 the American Medical Association issued a report that stated "aversion therapy is no longer recommended for gay men and lesbians." [108]
Participant in the 1975–76 BYU study Don Harryman wrote that he experienced "burns on [his] arms and ... emotional trauma." [99]: 26–28 [109] Another participant, John Clarence Cameron, who wrote a play called "14" about his experiences, said "it didn't change anything except increase my self-loathing. I didn't know the ramifications of the experiment until years later." [102] Cameron stated that he "would like everyone to tell the truth, admit the mistakes that took place, and stop trying to act like it didn't happen" [110] Another one of the test subjects described his experiences, stating "No one wanted to change more than I did. I did everything within my power to change, and it didn't alter my homosexuality one whit. All I had learned to do was suppress much of my personality ... I was shutting down, turning off.... I was making my life miserable by a pervasive denial of who I am." [111]
Connell O'Donovan, [112] Val Mansfield and Drew Staffanson described undergoing aversion therapy and Raymond King describes his involvement as an intern with the BYU psychology department's electroshock aversion therapy program in the 1996 short documentary Legacies. [113] [114] The documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition also contains an interview wherein Bruce Barton states that BYU coerced him into vomit aversion therapy, as well as electroshock therapy, which later precipitated his suicide attempt. [115] Jayce Cox also reported his experience with BYU shock therapy [116] and suicidal ideation in articles and an MTV documentary. [120] Scott Burton discusses the burn marks on his wrists he developed when undergoing electroshock therapy from ages 13 to 15 at the hands of a Mormon therapist by request from his Mormon parents. [121]
In 2011 BYU admitted to the past use of electroshock therapy but denies that it had ever used vomit-inducing therapy "in the BYU Counseling Center" [101] (which has been in the Wilkinson Student Center since 1964). However, the students that underwent the treatment have stated that the vomit therapy took place in the basement of the Psychology department's Joseph F. Smith Family Living Center (built in 1957, demolished in 2002). [113] [122] In 2021 Dallin Oaks falsely stated that electroshock aversion therapy "never went on under my administration" at BYU while he was the university's president from 1971 to 1980, while a BYU student produced a master's thesis on the electroshock program at BYU in 1976). [123] [124]
In 2016, the church's official website declared that conversion therapy or sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) are "unethical." [128] [129] This statement is echoed by studies on the harmful effects of SOCE. [130] Prior to this change in stance BYU ecclesiastical leaders and Honor Code office administrators have encouraged or required students with homosexual feelings to undergo conversion therapy (also known as sexual orientation change efforts), sometimes under threat of expulsion. This therapy focused on diminishing same-sex romantic attraction sometimes happened on campus by church-employed therapists.
For example, National Geographic journalist Andrew Evans [131] has discussed the compulsory year of conversion therapy and "traumatic moments" BYU made him undergo in the late 90s as a student after he was caught kissing a man by his roommate. BYU told him he could be expelled or visit weekly with his bishop, turn in fellow gay students, cut off contact with any gay friends, and have frequent visits with a BYU therapist until he was heterosexual and "safe" for other students to be around. Included in the therapy was weekly dates with women as an additional attempt to change his attractions. [132]
Similarly, LGBT activist Michael Ferguson also discussed the many years and different modalities of expensive conversion therapy he underwent (including with a BYU psychologist) starting with a 2004 recommendation from his BYU bishop. He was told by local church leaders that many had "overcome" and diminished their same-sex romantic feelings and their "addiction" to those of the same sex. Ferguson believed that through this he could follow church teachings and marry a woman and enter the highest degree of glory in the afterlife. Much of the therapy focused on repairing alleged emotional damage from things deemed to cause homosexuality like an overbearing mother, distant father, and rejection from same-sex peers. [133]
Below is a brief timeline of major events at the intersection of LGBT topics and BYU. Before 1959, there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration. [2]: 375, 377, 394
[They] conducted the school-approved survey to 420 students in randomly selected classes on campus. ... [Clayton] feels the results show a substantial amount of intolerance and prejudice among students towards same-sex oriented people. Clayton, who says he is gay, points to the 42 percent of students who are ignorant of or opposed to the school's policy. He also said that while 91 percent of those surveyed said they were familiar with the church's stance, only a third actually were. ... Almost 80 percent of respondents would not live with a same-sex oriented roommate.
There are no institutional means of supporting students or educating professors on LGBTQ issues. ... USGA, is forced to meet in a local library because the university does not support or sanction its existence. Students in the group say they've been told it will never be allowed on campus.
The decision by LGBT students to attend or stay at BYU comes with the price of being unable to participate in the university's dating culture. It oftentimes means staying home while roommates go on dates or watching as they get engaged. It's knowing that two straight friends can hug, or go on a friend date, but that two LGBT students who are the same gender can't do the same.
In 1965, for instance, university President Ernest L. Wilkinson said in a speech to the student body that BYU does 'not intend to admit to campus any homosexuals. If any of you have this tendency and have not completely abandoned it, may I suggest that you leave the university immediately after this assembly; and if you will be honest enough to let us know the reason, we will voluntarily refund your tuition. We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence.'
The school's Honor Code forbids 'all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.' Violations can lead up to expulsion. 'I'm very affectionate with my friends,' he says. 'But every time I hug someone, in the back of my mind, there's always something nagging at me. Like, 'Oh, they're going to be watching.' It is really stressful.'
Since he had admitted to being in love with his boyfriend, Kovalenko was told that any contact with him—even a handshake or a hug—would be inappropriate. Any sign of affection would be just as inappropriate as sexual relations and be seen by the honor code as advocating for homosexual behavior.
[BYU] says its security police staked out homosexual bars in Salt Lake City to investigate homosexual activity at the Latter-day Saint‐owned school, but stopped the practice once administrators learned of it. Paul Richards, director of public relations for the university, confirmed yesterday allegations by the American Civil Liberties Union that security officers ventured off campus and wrote letters to a homosexual‐oriented newspaper soliciting responses as part of a crackdown on homosexuals. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strict ban on homosexual behavior in line with traditional Christian teachings. "Those things were done," Mr. Richards said. "But, when President [Dallin] Oaks got involved, he said, 'Cut that out right now.' "Mr. Richards said the surveillance had occurred more than a year ago, before the Utah Legislature approved a controversial bill giving peace officer status to campus police.
The fears proved well-founded. Designated drivers in the parking lots of gay bars saw men writing down license plate numbers. Some [BYU] students reported being outed by campus security soon thereafter, Aaron says.'Then the families ended up finding out they were excommunicated,' he says.
The letter sought people interested in forming a "BYU gay underground." [David] Chipman, although not a BYU student, met his contact in the student center, but was arrested by the man in a canyon away from the school. The man revealed he was a BYU police officer posing as a homosexual. ... [Security Chief Robert] Kelshaw admits a BYU detective wrote the unauthorized "gay underground" letter.
Social Services is now part of Personal Welfare Services, with Brother Victor Brown Jr., as director.
[BYU student Ricky] Escoto says he knows of 13 other BYU students who were kicked off campus last year after being caught watching the Showtime series Queer as Folk.Also archived here.
Question: One of my female students has shaved her head. Do I have a responsibility here? Answer: Yes, faculty have a responsibility in this situation! A girl shaving her head, a guy dying his hair bright blue, or any other extreme fashion is not appropriate for representatives of the Church and the University. Question: One of my male students wears black clothing and eye shadow to class; and his fingernails are at least half an inch long. What can I do about it? Answer: That sort of appearance is not appropriate for a BYU student, particularly a male.
Forty-two percent of [BYU] students think those with a same-sex orientation should not be allowed to attend the LDS Church-owned school, according to a recent survey. ... In the first study, BYU student Samuel Clayton, with the help of several faculty members, gave questionnaires anonymously to 420 students in randomly selected classes.
According to local psychologists who are working on homosexuality research, anywhere from 1 to 4 percent of the BYU male population have homosexual tendencies. Dr. Ford McBride, a psychologist at Timpanogos Community Mental Health Center, and Dr. Maxine Murdock, licensed psychologist at the BYU Counseling Center who works with homosexual students, estimate the figure at 4 percent. McBride said his estimate is based on extrapolation of the old Kinsey report.
[O]ur final analysis included 20 samples. Table 1 describes each of these samples in more detail. Among them, 6 samples (30%) were drawn from the general population and 14 (70%) from college and university students and adult inmates. ... The estimated proportion of transgender individuals based on surveys that categorized transgender as gender identity was 0.39% (95% confidence interval [between 0.16% and 0.62%]). ... An estimate extrapolating our meta-regression results ... suggests that the proportion of transgender adults in the United States is 0.39% ... and almost 1 million adults nationally. Our estimate of 0.39% is not quite as high as the 1% that was posited on the basis of a qualitative review of international studies.
'They promised me it would work, and who doesn't want to live a life that's normal and acceptable in your society and have your family embrace you?' he asks rhetorically. Therapist Ron Lawrence of Community Counseling Center in Las Vegas says this 'reparative therapy' is 'equivalent to what I would call the kind of torture that people experienced in Nazi concentration camps.' Jayce displays the scars on his hands and tells of more scars where the electrodes were placed 'on my torso, and [breathing deeply as though reliving some excruciating pain ] on my genitalia.' The words don't come easily to Jayce as he explains why he so willingly gave up his education savings [$9,000]—and put his earning potential on hold—in order to endure what Lawrence describes as 'assault and battery, abuse'. 'You're taught that the leaders of the church will never lie to you, never deceive you and you're taught to believe them blindly,' Jayce explains. 'I believed the counselors. I believed it would work. I believed that through that [reparative therapy], faith, temple attendance and prayer and fasting I would be healed. I believe that through God anything's possible. And I was told it would work. It probably sounds really naive, but I truly believed it would work.'
The LDS church claims the Holy Bible as scripture and, through traditional Biblical interpretations, has historically both condemned same-sex sexuality as sinful and explicitly encouraged its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) members to attempt sexual orientation change. While the LDS church has somewhat softened its stance toward LGBTQ individuals in recent years, it continues to communicate to its LGBTQ members that sexual orientation change is possible through various means including prayer, personal righteousness, faith in Jesus Christ, psychotherapy, group therapy, and group retreats. In these respects, the LDS church's approach to SSA has closely paralleled other religious traditions including Orthodox Judaism, evangelical Christianity, and Roman Catholicism.
What about 'Turn It Off?' In this show-stopper for Tony-nominated supporting actor Rory O'Malley as Elder McKinley, some missionaries share their approach to confusing thoughts or bad feelings. ... [W]hen you have gay thoughts for your best friend, well, 'Turn it off!' Non-believers hear hypocrisy and an absurdly simplistic solution to difficult issues: 'Turn it off/ Like a light switch/ Just go flick/ It's our nifty little Mormon trick.' ... It's not an official approach by any faith, as such, but numerous fundamentalist faiths acknowledge that some men are inherently gay. They want those men to simply tamp down these bad feelings and marry a woman anyway, because with prayer and the proper spouse and God's love you can be alright.
On the show-stopper 'Turn It Off,' sung by a closeted missionary struggling with his sexuality. 'I'm one of the few missionaries who actually was out to myself as a gay person on my mission and out to some of my mission companions—the ones who asked. [The Book of Mormon song] 'Turn It Off' is such an insightful view into the psychology of a homosexual missionary in particular, but also into all Mormons. In the church, you don't say you're gay, you say you have homosexual tendencies, because gay is this label they want you to hopefully outgrow, which I tried to do. It didn't work.
While shifts in sexuality can and do occur for some people, it is unethical to focus professional treatment on an assumption that a change in sexual orientation will or must occur.
With substantial evidence of serious harms associated with exposure to [sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts (SOGICE)] particularly for minors, 21 states (and multiple cities and counties) have passed bipartisan laws or regulations prohibiting SOGICE. ... Furthermore, compared with LGBTQ youths with no exposure, those exposed to SOGICE showed 1.76 times greater odds of seriously considering suicide, 2.23 times greater odds of having attempted suicide, and 2.54 times greater odds of multiple suicide attempts in the previous year.
I believe in retaining criminal penalties on sex crimes such as adultery, fornication, prostitution, homosexuality, and other forms of deviate sexual behavior. I concede the abuses and risks of invasion of privacy that are involved in the enforcement of such crimes and therefore concede the need for extraordinary supervision of the enforcement process. I am even willing to accept a strategy of extremely restrained enforcement of private, noncommercial sexual offenses. I favor retaining these criminal penalties primarily because of the standard-setting and teaching function of these laws on sexual morality and their support of society's exceptional interest in the integrity of the family.
[I]t is hard for me to understand why men wish to resemble women and why women desire to ape the men. ... Then we're appalled to find an ever-increasing number of women who want to be sexually men and many young men who wish to be sexually women. What a travesty! I tell you that, as surely as they live, such people will regret having made overtures toward the changing of their sex. Do they know better than God what is right and best for them?Alternative youtube.com and archive.org links.
Carlyle D. Marsden was found in his car along Nichols Road dead from a pistol wound of the chest.
Eight men were arraigned in the Pleasant Grove Precinct Justice Court Monday afternoon on charges of lewdness and sodomy stemming from alleged homosexual activity at the two rest stops on I-15 north of Orem. ... Two of the suspects were arrested and charged with an act of sodomy. One of them, a 54-year-old Salt Lake County man, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest two days after his arrest, according to Serge Moore, state medical examiner. ... Funeral services for Carlyle D. Marsden, 54, of 1388 Nichols Road, Fruit Heights, who died Monday, March 8, 1976, will be Friday at 10 a.m. in the Kaysville 11th-14th LDS Ward Chapel ... Mr. Marsden was a music teacher at Eisenhower Junior High School and at [BYU].
Non-Student Is Set Is Set Up and Arrested Kelshaw (Security Chief) admits a BYU detective wrote an unauthorized letter to a gay newspaper in Salt Lake the Open Door in an effort to obtain the names of students who would be interested in forming a 'BYU gay underground'. David Chipman not a student of BYU responded to the article and was thereby set up for later arrest. David made connection with the detective who was posing as a homosexual. The two then drove into a nearby canyon where David was arrested when he touched the groin of the officer. Chipman has pleaded innocent and his attorney has moved for dismissal on grounds of entrapment... 'The law passed on May 10 is blatantly unconstitutional for allowing police power to be used to enforce views, if not exclusively limited to, at least including in church doctrine,' said Shirley Pedler director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Utah ... Salt Lake Tribune Oct 23, 1979.
KBYU viewers who turned on their television sets August 6 to see the last in a three-part series on homosexuality in Utah heard instead an announcement that the segment had been cancelled ... The segment contained interviews with homosexual students at BYU. ...[P]roducer of the series Kevin Mitchell told the Provo Daily Herald 'I didn't want their faces shown because if they were caught, they would be kicked out of the university.'
Recognition of inadequate treatment regimens regimes regimens may account for erroneous but widespread beliefs such as that male homosexuality is not changeable. ... Change was embedded in an accepting evaluative and loving non-erotic social milieu that provided expectations ideology and actual interpersonal experiences leading to the extinction of homosexual impulses and behaviors. ... Warren was discovering that he was not the odd man out he had believed all his life and as his gender security increased his homosexual desires decreased.
In 1990, the [Student Review] staff threw aside the magazine's taboos and published its 'What?!? Homosexuality HERE at BYU!?!' issue, which explored the topic from a variety of religious and social perspectives. Over the next four years gay issues took up much space in the Review—perhaps because the Review had become a semi-safe space for gay students themselves. Such articles—without exception promoting tolerance if not outright social and theological change—always drew critical response from students.
Foundation for Attraction Research was founded by Dennis V. Dahle, JD; A. Dean Byrd, PhD, MBA, MPH; and Shirley E. Cox, DSW, LCSW in 2005 for the purpose of developing resources and conducting research supportive of traditional Judeo-Christian standards of morality. ... The members of the Foundation's board of directors, all of whom served as editors of Understanding Same-Sex Attraction, follow: A. Dean Byrd, PhD, MBA, MPH; Shirley E. Cox, DSW, LCSW; Dennis V. Dahle, JD; Doris R. Dant, MS, MA; William C. Duncan, JD; John P. Livingstone, EdD; M. Gawain Wells, PhD
Instead, the authors of this book assert the unpopular opinion, backed by scientific research, that same-sex attraction can be lessened or eradicated in those who desire change and are willing to try. Readers who empathize with the Church's position on homosexuality will likely find hope and useful ideas in this five-hundred-page compilation ... Here essayists recount how they emerged from homosexual lifestyles to find satisfaction in rejoining the Church mainstream, some even finding success in heterosexual marriages ... As some professional and state organizations frown on therapists who believe in reorientation therapy—seeking to ban their practice, in some cases—this book fills a void.
USGA President J.D. Goates said the mission of USGA is "to improve and save the lives of LGBTQ/SSA (Same Sex Attracted) BYU students." The USGA organization was created in 2010 when BYU authorized LGBTQ students to participate in groups, according to Goates. USGA has a leadership team of 40 students and is specifically geared towards BYU students, although it is open to anyone in the community. During the Fall and Winter semesters, USGA meetings regularly see 70-90 students in attendance, Goates said.
FreeBYU this summer added gay and transgender rights to their cause after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage nationwide. BYU also violates ABA nondiscrimination guidelines, Levin said, by forcing some LGBT members to hide their sexual orientation and gender identity or risk expulsion. ... But breaking away from the LDS religion before graduation is against a conduct code signed by each student. So are homosexual relationships. Sex-reassignment surgery can lead to excommunication from the church, which would get students booted from the school. ... The professional organization of attorneys and law students forbids schools from "taking action" based on race, religion, gender, nationality, sexuality, age or disability.
An investigation is underway into [BYU's] law school for possible discrimination. The American Bar Association is looking at the school's standards of expelling gay and former Mormon students.
Addison Jenkins, who spoke at the first LGBT campus forum last year, said the school took a step forward Thursday by hosting the panel, the Salt Lake Tribune reported .
His words were unmistakably a call to arms: Holland used the word 'fire' 10 times, 'musket' eight times, and made multiple references to 'friendly fire,' 'wounds,' and 'scarring.' In particular, he called for 'more musket fire' from BYU's faculty to defend Mormonism's official position on the inferiority and social dangers of same-sex relationships and marriages