Brigham Young University LGBTQ history
Historically, experiences for BYU students identifying as LGBTQ 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.
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.
[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.
[2]: 442 This included electronic recording devices which BYU Security Chief Robert Kelshaw confirmed in 1975 had been planted on students to gather information.
[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.
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.
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").
[50] In the late 1990s an explicit reference to "homosexual conduct" was added to the publicly available text of the BYU Honor Code for the first time.
[64]: 146 In 1997 Honor Code Office director Rush Sumpter stated that BYU forbade actions of verifiable, overt displays of homosexual affection, but does not punish attractions.
[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.
[82] 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.
[78][9][16] In 2021, groups named Raynbow Collective and Cougar Pride Center were started to address the increasing needs of queer students.
[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.
[92]: 89 One of the main efforts was BYU's aversion therapy program from 1959[2]: 377, 379 to the mid-90s[92]: 90 which used mostly electrical shocks to the arm or genitals, or sometimes induced-vomiting while showing the participants erotic imagery.
[97] 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.
[100]: 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.
[101]: 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.
[102] 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.
[108] 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.
"[101]: 26–28 [111] 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.
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).
For example, National Geographic journalist Andrew Evans[133] 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.
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.
