I’m sitting in the Phoenix airport (waiting for my flight back to Salt Lake) without much to do. I might as well post something to the blog. But it’s a slow news day and I’m not feeling creatively inspired, so I’m just going to recycle an article I wrote about BYU and its limits on academic freedom and history of homophobia. The article was published by QSaltLake in 2006, but it was initially just a response to my Mormon friends who were asking me to attend BYU at the time. Its tone is more strident and polemical than my writings today; I hope it does not offend.
Giddy over their best football season in years, students at BYU are brimming with school pride. The Cougars handily defeated the Aggies, my school’s team, and narrowly squeaked out a win over the Utes. But though BYU’s students have earned some bragging rights, I am hardly envious of their school choice.
They are missing out on the marketplace of ideas other universities enjoy. I’m not talking about the filtered porn or lacking cable selection, but the onerous censorship of information about the government and the LDS Church with which the university is affiliated.
In 1998, the American Association of University Professors voted to censure BYU for infringements on academic freedom that were “distressingly common” and a climate for academic freedom that was “distressingly poor.” Despite this condemnation, BYU has persisted in a systematic purge of any freethinking faculty. The two most recent victims: BYU professors Steven E. Jones and Jeffrey Nielsen.
Just a few months ago, tenured physics professor Jones was placed on paid leave because of an alternative 9/11 theory (one I disagree with) he advocated outside of his classroom. Jones has colleagues across the country who share his views and have not been subject to discipline. Exhausted from having to endure the controversy, Jones has since retired from BYU altogether.
Nielsen was a philosophy instructor and is a faithful Mormon. Following the church’s statement in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, Nielsen exercised his free agency and respectfully disagreed with the church in a Salt Lake Tribune editorial. Due solely to Nielsen’s editorial, he was fired, or, as BYU put it, his contract “failed to be renewed.”
BYU’s deficit in academic freedom is an obvious deterrent to my ever attending there, but of more concern to me is the institutional discrimination against its gay students. The following is found in BYU’s 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.
Consider how dehumanizing this policy is. Consider what it means for the hundreds of gay students at BYU. They have no community in which to confide; instead, they are told suppress who they are. Moreover, the policy’s vague language gives BYU more latitude to discriminate.
The school has enforced a harsh interpretation of this policy, and this enforcement has a long, infamous, and well-documented history. BYU’s security forces would spy on (suspected) gay students on campus and pursue them off campus on their weekend exoduses to clubs in downtown Salt Lake City. License plates were recorded and put through the university’s database for matches. And, somewhat humorously, security personnel would sometimes go undercover, infiltrate the clubs, and try to draw ‘favors’ from students. If caught, these students faced potential expulsion. This represents just one example of BYU’s grossly unequal application of the Honor Code against its gay students.
As a private university, BYU can claim the right to maintain this discriminatory policy. It cannot, however, claim impunity from criticism. Having the right and being right are different matters entirely.
In BYU’s defense, it did try to help many gay students with their “mental health problem” (as LDS Social Services once referred to homosexuality). That help: reparative therapy—an ineffectual and harmful attempt to ‘cure’ homosexuality. For years, BYU, as directed by LDS Social Services, subjected gay Mormons as young as 15 to aversive techniques like shock therapy.
Affirmation, an LDS gay rights group, has documented the school’s use of shock therapy, where the counselor would produce a mild electric shock in conjunction with slides of males in various stages of dress; no shocks were administered with the images of females. The group has also exposed the use of Ipecac, a vomit inducing drug, in place of an electric shock. As early as 1969, bowing to scientific pressures and seeking to avoid lawsuits, BYU publicly distanced itself from these techniques. Privately, however, it did employ them throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and even on at least one occasion into the ’90s. (Shock therapy was once popular in the United States, but fell into disrepute decades ago).
Jayce Cox was referred to BYU by his bishop to undergo shock therapy in 1995. Electrodes were attached to his hands, arms, torso and genitals. His emotional and physical scars serve as a testament to the horrific experience. And the fact the Jayce, along with countless others, not only consented to but paid thousands for this therapy is a stark indictment of a culture which demands conformity and—for those who cannot conform—breeds self-loathing submission. Not surprisingly, Utah leads the nation in suicides among young men, many of whom are homosexual.
“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 lamented in a 2000 interview with the Las Vegas Bugle. “I believed that through [reparative therapy], faith, temple attendance, prayer and fasting I would be healed. I believed that through God anything’s possible.”
Comparatively, BYU today is more hospitable to homosexuals than it had once been. In a 1966 commencement speech, then BYU President Ernest Wilkinson asked all gays to leave campus immediately. He did not want others to be “contaminated” by their presence. And the LDS Church itself, being a social institution, has already had to divorce itself from its more draconian traditions: polygamy, hostility toward the federal government, and overt racism. Societal pressures may demand yet another convenient revelation of the First Presidency to rescind the church’s current homophobia.
Update: In April 2007, BYU amended its Honor Code policy toward its gay students. The revised policy can be found here.
The exact consequence of these changes has yet to be seen, but they at least constitute a hesitant step in the right direction.
Soulforce’s recent protest at BYU undoubtedly deserves most of the credit for this good news, but I hope, in some modest way, the circulation and publication of my article helped too.
For more information about BYU’s use of shock therapy, or for a more comprehensive history of the LDS Church and homosexuality, refer to Connell O’Donovan’s “Crime Against Nature” and Dichotomy’s LDS Gay History Timeline.
A month after BYU changed the honour code, I came out while still a student. I was fortunate enough to mostly have slipped through the cracks. I was mostly inactive my last year and a half at BYU and completely inactive the last 10 months. The years previous to this were pretty bad, emotionally. I attended Evergreen meetings for a few months before I came out, and the emphasis was definitely on “fixing” unwanted feelings, and “repenting” enough so that you could marry a woman.
While the situation has improved somewhat, it’s only possible to live a somewhat normal life if you constantly lie and dissemble and hide so that the wrong people and the university don’t find out that (horror of horrors) you’ve held a guys hand, or kissed him, or went to Pride in SLC, etc.
I also know at least one person who was subjected to the electroshock “therapy”. The evilness of that practise cannot be overstated.
Craig – I know we’ve been butting heads a bit on this blog, but allow me to express how genuinely sad and sorry I am to hear of your painful experiences at BYU (and I presume the experience you generally had with Mormonism). There is no doubt, how could there be any doubt, that various religious traditions have struggled to work out their moral practices in a way that is consistent and humane. My wife is a counselor, and she has told me far too many horror stories about these “fixing” therapies (even if they are, often times, driven by good intentions).
I am not a Mormon, but my sense is that that extremely elevated position of the family in Mormon theology makes it extremely difficult for Mormonism to handle the question of homosexuality. Needless to say, the way it has been worked out has often not been ideal (understatement alert).
Thanks for your kind words. I feel no animosity towards you, and in fact enjoy discussing things with you.
Not a lot of this dealt with academic freedom, but I would like to share a brief comment of that matter.
I, by no means, deny that “academic freedom” is restricted in some (perhaps even many) ways at BYU, and in many circumstances I don’t entirely agree with the schools actions. I could go into some different perspectives here to try and better understand why such things happen, but will not right now.
I just wanted to say there is another side to the “academic freedom” issue, and is somethings (specifically things dealing with pro-LDS matters), BYU professors have more freedom than some do in other schools. William J. Hamblin has talked/wrote about experiences he had at schools where he was restricted from being able to write and publish pro Book of Mormon articles. For Hamblin, BYU has become a place that offers the freedom to write and publish his pro BoM insights.
I know this hardly makes up for the other restrictions, but it is always helpful to look at the other side.
Interesting. Not that I doubt Hamblin’s experience, but do you have a link that I could follow?
The problem with criticising other universities for their non-support of pro BoM literature is that you have to ignore 99% of the evidence to find any evidence that supports the validity of the BoM. That’s not really infringing on academic freedom, it’s requiring a level of adherence to reality and objective evidence that neither BYU nor the LdS church follow. Like most FAIR/FARMS stuff, pro-BoM “research” is utter nonsense.
Jon, here is the article where Hamblin mentions his experince at other universities and how that is why he came to BYU, because he wanted to be free to publish on the BoM.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=4&num=2&id=103
This is worth throwing into the mix:
In 2006 Jeffrey Daniels was cut from the BYU philosophy department (technically, I think his job offer for the following year was “rescinded” ” instead of his being “fired”) after having written a pro-gay marriage letter to the editor to the the SLC Tribune (in which I do not think he identified himself as being associated with BYU).
I should say, BYU is a private religious university and I think it is within their rights to dismiss people who speak out against LDS teachings. However, upon doing so it then becomes hard to cast yourself as a bastion of academic freedom.
These matters are always a difficult balance for religious schools who are trying to have a certain religious identity along with functioning as a university. Wheaton College fired a philosopher a few years back after he converted to Catholicism (Wheaton is an Evangelical college). And striking a balance on academic freedom has been an ongoing issue at Catholic colleges. Ex Corde Ecclesiae is one document trying to sort out the proper relationship between academic freedom and fidelity to Catholic Church teachings. Pope Benedict spoke about it when he traveled to the United States a few years ago. And the issue flared last year when Obama was given an honorary doctorate from Notre Dame (him speaking at graduation is fine, but why an honorary doctor of laws for someone who supports abortion? Keep in mind, that the secular school he spoke at that year (ASU) did not offer him an honorary degree).
Too often, in my view, Catholic colleges in the United States have sacrificed their unique character and identity in order to conform with secular standards. Point is, this can be a thorny balance. I don’t know enough about the inner workings of BYU to comment much on that university in particular.
Are you thinking of Jeffrey Nielsen, Dr. Kleiner? I mentioned him in the article.
Jon,
Have you researched into how BYU handles African-American studies? Surely, I think there has been some sugarcoating on behalf of BYU – when it comes to discussing Mormonism and how African-Americans are viewed. I’d be interested to know if you have done any writings on that particular subject as well.
I haven’t looked into that, no. Definitely an interesting subject, though. I have read an article by Darron Smith which may be pertinent to your question. Smith is an African-American who has taught at BYU and reports that racial prejudices are still pervasive among the student body. See if you can find his article “These House-Negroes Still Think We’re Cursed: Struggling Against Racism in the Classroom.” It’s a journal article, and you may not have access to it, however. I can email the article to you if you’d like.
Thanks Jon! I searched the web and it seems as though I’d have to pay a service fee to view the journal article. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to see it.
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All religions are a delusion.
The funny part is that they all think they are true!
Nice article, Jon. If you’ll humor me, I wanted to throw an opinion out there. I lean much more toward the neuroscience/research side of psychology, so I’m especially ashamed of the discipline’s use of things like shock and aversion therapies (as well as Dr. Phil). That being said, I think coupling religion with Psychological treatment and counseling is especially dangerous, so I don’t like to see schools like BYU training people to treat psychological disorders. How do you train some one to be unbiased (not passing judgement is a key principle of treatment) while also reinforcing the notion that their Heavenly Father (who is also the final say in their beliefs) is exceptionally opposed to homosexuality? Anywho, I could rant for days about it. Homosexuality is not the only issue of its kind in this particular arena, which is why I personally find BYU to be dangerous in its training of professionals who work extensively in human services.
Also, I think you should consider making this into a series. The old honor code made me a bit angry. It’d be interesting to see your thoughts on BYU in relation to racism and sexism. Thanks for sharing!
Courtney,
I’m interested why you say that your background in neuroscience/research side of psychology would lead you to be ashamed of the aversive treatments BYU and other institutions used to treat homosexuality.
It’s very strait-up behavioristic treatment. Which, isn’t always the most PC, friendly way to treat things, but usually the most effective.
Just curious–more about the insight that you say neuroscience would add to that.
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