Alone and Unobserved

Now we know why the BYU Honor Code webpages were down a month ago when I (and everyone else and their dog) tried to link to them. The section on homosexuality has been revised, going from this:

Brigham Young University will respond to student behavior rather than to feelings or orientation. Students can be enrolled at the University and remain in good Honor Code standing if they maintain a current ecclesiastical endorsement and conduct their lives in a manner consistent with gospel principles and the Honor Code. Advocacy of a homosexual lifestyle (whether implied or explicit) or any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code.
(emphasis added—link)

to this:

Brigham Young University will respond to homosexual behavior rather than to feelings or orientation and welcomes as full members of the university community all whose behavior meets university standards. Members of the university community can remain in good Honor Code standing if they conduct their lives in a manner consistent with gospel principles and the Honor Code.

One’s stated sexual orientation is not an Honor Code issue. However, the Honor Code requires all members of the university community to manifest a strict commitment to the law of chastity. Homosexual behavior or advocacy of homosexual behavior are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings. Advocacy includes seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable.
(emphasis added&mdashlink)

So gay BYU students still can’t touch each other, or defend the morality of “homosexual behavior,” but . . . they can at least tell people they’re gay. I guess. If they want to deal with the social consequences of that action.

What I find interesting is what a big deal everyone is making of this (just read the Salt Lake Tribune article, or the blog post on Towleroad), when the truth is, WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE. You see, not too long ago, in the late 1990s, BYU was in a similar situation: due to pressure from various quarters, the university had released public statements asserting that gay students could attend openly, as long as they remained celibate. Sam Clayton, who was attending at the time as an openly gay student, recounts (in an essay on the Affirmation.org website) that “it seemed gay life at BYU was more open than ever. . . . My strategy was to act like I was invincible. Somehow it seemed to work.” He continues,

In a miraculous, inverted twist of fate, the honor code had gone from being the tool that BYU used to root out people like me, to my shield that protected me from BYU. The honor code didn’t know what to do with a definition of gay that had to do with identity rather than gay sex. As long as I kept the honor code (meaning no pre-marital sexual relations, which every other single student at BYU had to abide by) I was free to be as unapologetic as I felt.

Unfortunately, this illusion of invincibility ran up against the cold, steely heart of homophobia that underlies everything at BYU. The administration attempted to trick and then coerce Clayton into participating in a discriminatory and underhanded investigation against a professor who was believed to be gay; finally Clayton himself was threatened with expulsion for being openly critical of the Mormon Church’s stance on homosexuality. (link)

BYU has a long history of discriminating against, entrapping, witch-hunting, expelling, coercing and torturing gay students and faculty. Yes, torture—that’s the only reasonable way to describe the aversion therapy that gay students in the ’70s were required to submit to, which involved anything from induced vomiting to electric shocks, and which took place in the Spencer W. Kimball Tower in the center of campus. This is all chronicled in Affirmation.org’s “BYU Pages“; Carol Lynn Pearson also corroborates a few of these details in her book Goodbye, I Love You. So forgive me if I don’t view this as a change of heart—like everything at BYU, this is probably just a quick surface coat, meant to protect the university against charges of “homophobia.” Time will tell. Until then: gays, steer clear.