Homosexuality and Mormonism - BYU

BYU

Brigham Young University is the largest religious university in North America, and is the flagship educational institution of the LDS Church. Though its practices and policies are not specifically endorsed by the church, it is viewed as reflective of the church's mindset.

In order to attend Brigham Young University, students must abide by the Brigham Young University Honor Code, which was recently reworded after several students, including gay and lesbian students, thought that the previous wording was confusing and unclear. Lauren Jackson, a lesbian BYU student, commented "If BYU wants celibate students, it has every right to demand that and to limit behavior, but the issue with the Honor Code is not about lifestyle, it's about identity. Not being allowed to express an identity is very damaging." While both homosexuals and heterosexuals must abide by the church's law of chastity, the Honor Code additionally prohibits all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings. There is no similarly spelled out restriction against expressing heterosexual feelings, although the church teaches that intimate heterosexual behaviors such as petting or fornication are unacceptable between unmarried couples. Advocacy of homosexuality and the promotion of homosexual relations as being morally acceptable was explicitly mentioned as "against the honor code" until a change of the Code in early 2011. It does make clear, however, that sexual orientation is not an honor code issue.

Several LGBT rights organizations, including Soulforce, have criticized BYU's Honor Code for its practices.

In the 1970s, a student at Brigham Young University conducted a number of experiments in the use of aversion therapy to treat ego-dystonic homosexuality. It is unknown whether the LDS Church was aware of these experiments. At the time, homosexuality was still treated as a psychiatric condition, and aversion therapy was one of the more common methods used to try to cure it. In 1966 Martin E.P. Seligman had conducted a study at the University of Pennsylvania showing positive results, which led to "a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality swept over the therapeutic community." In Chapter 3 of Max Ford McBride's dissertation, it states that "seventeen male subjects ... were used in the study, 14 completed the treatment." The participants on the BYU campus were shown pornographic photos of men while being shocked with increasing amounts of voltage. One participant was Don Harryman, who shared his experience in Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-Sex Orientation. Another participant, Connell O'Donovan, says he was also sent to BYU for vomit therapy but refused it, and others have stated that they received vomit-inducing drugs, but BYU says it never used vomit-inducing therapy. After Seligman's results were shown to be flawed, 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."

As of 1997, the president of the university (Merrill J. Bateman) was unable to verify electric shock therapies took place at BYU during this time, and requested documentation to support allegations. One faculty member is quoted in a "question and answer" article on the Brigham Young University website stating that aversion therapy may have taken place at BYU when he was an undergraduate student, but only in rare circumstances.

As of 2011, an unofficial group called "Understanding Same-Gender Attraction," mostly consisting of people who questioned church teachings on the subject, began meeting on campus with the support of individual faculty members to discuss issues relating to homosexuality and the LDS faith.

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