Students say Brigham Young University is policing this behavior even more than its parent church does.
Brigham Young University administrators have put an explicit ban on “same-sex romantic behavior” in the school’s Honor Code, and students say it goes farther than the Mormon Church’s policy on same-sex relationships.
In 2020, BYU deleted a ban on “homosexual behavior” from the Honor Code, leading some LGBTQ+ students to celebrate. But soon afterward, the Church Educational System, which governs all the BYU campuses, clarified that the deletion didn’t mean “same-sex romantic behavior” was acceptable. Last month, it added the language prohibiting “same-sex romantic behavior” to the code.
“Though the ban had never really lost its effect, for some students the official restoration of it still felt like a gut punch,” Religion News Service reports.
The Honor Code tells BYU students to live “a chaste and virtuous life, including abstaining from sexual relations outside marriage between a man and a woman.” With the new language, it notes that “living a chaste and virtuous life also includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behavior.”
BYU is affiliated with the Mormon Church (officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), which opposes same-sex relationships. The church won’t perform same-sex marriages and expects the faithful to refrain from sexual activity with members of the same gender. It also opposes gender transition, and church leaders have said that LGBTQ+ activism comes from Satan.
But some BYU students say certain LDS congregations look the other way when a member is dating someone of the same sex, while the college is policing dating relationships.
“Depending on where you are, who your religious leaders are, you can actually date people of the same sex with very little church repercussions,” BYU student Gracee Purcell, president of the RaYnbow Collective, a group for the college’s queer students and alumni, told Religion News Service. “At BYU, that usually gray line within the church is a hard line. Anything that they deem homosexual behavior, or same-sex romantic behavior, is not allowed.”
That “romantic behavior” could include dating, holding hands, or kissing. If a student engages in any of these, “as in years past, each situation will be handled on a case-by-case basis to help each student feel the love of the Savior and to encourage them to live their gospel covenants and university/college commitments,” says a list of BYU’s answers to frequently asked questions.
LGBTQ+ groups for BYU students and alums opposed the prohibition but said at least the school is being up front about its attitudes. “I’m just glad people can now finally see explicitly what’s happening,” Evelyn Telford, a vice president of Understanding Sexuality, Gender & Allyship, told the news service. “There’s no way to get around it that they are openly being discriminatory to queer students.” But it will make queer students feel more isolated and under scrutiny by others, she said.
The LGBTQ+ groups will continue doing their work, and the RaYnbow Collective will hold its annual off-campus Back-to-School Pride event in Provo, Utah, September 16. Provo is home to BYU’s main campus, and the school also has campuses in Idaho and Hawaii. Ensign College in Salt Lake City is governed by the Church Educational System as well.
Despite BYU’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies, queer students come to the university because of academics, family connections, or other reasons, Telford said. And some may not recognize they’re queer until they’re in college. That was the case with her, she said.
“It’s such a personal decision to be at BYU, and your sexuality shouldn’t mean you don’t deserve a place there,” she told Religion News Service.
Purcell added, “The lack of representation and the increase in religious and societal pressures won’t stop queer students from coming. But it will hurt them.”
I still don’t see how it’s legal for an accredited university to have rules prohibiting sexual activity of their students
Want to be a religious school? That’s fine, but you won’t be accredited to teach any Gen Ed classes. Have your catholic pastor school, or your rabbinical school, that’s fine. But you won’t be making those into general education colleges.
https://bycommonconsent.com/2022/03/04/how-much-federal-money-do-the-byus-receive/
Private, less about $275,000,000 in federal funds, sure.
I want a refund on my taxes. I shouldn’t have to pay for this
Yeah, the anti-tax people kind of have a point sometimes.
A lot of taxpayer money gets funneled to bullshit.
I have absolutely no problem with tax dollars going to towards the Pell Grant. Giving money to kids for an education is awesome.
I have a big problem when that money is for an education at a private religious school that openly and actively discriminates against protected classes.
I mean, we should just do what has been proven to work around the world and make college free to everyone who can get in.
But what about the university share holders?? the ones that are already fabulously wealthy??
Unfortunately, no one believes they are wealthy. Some believe they are comfortable. All believe they could have more.
Well, that’s just lunacy. How would private schools embezzle federal funds?
Some of the blue states are near there with community colleges. I agree the program needs to be expanded.
This part is a slippery slope that I don’t have a pithy hot take for. I wish I did.
I mean, do I really want to wait from 1776 or 1791 until 2013¹ for the state to mandate that all marriage license-issuing court clerks be required to issue marriage licenses to any unmarried pair of adults, even if the pair was assigned the same gender at birth?
Lots of Americans still resent that those clerks are funded by their tax dollars.
- marriage between those without matching birth-certificate sex was the only legal marriage in the United States during this period
Get in line, I still want my money from the 2nd Iraq war. I was too young to vote against it and protested it. Yet to see my refund.
Hmm. I’m not sure if student aid should be counted there or not. Grants to the university itself should absolutely be forbidden, but if a student chooses to go there, should we deny them assistance? Maybe.
I feel, generally, that tax dollars should not go to private companies or institutions.
Lots of things people think are public are legally private. Most transit agencies, the people who print the US dollar, some state universities… etc.
Usually the bylaws of these private entities are formed to stipulate that the governor or someone picks the equivalent of the CEO.
If you’re funded by tax dollars, you should be a public entity.
That way the work still gets done, but money isn’t being wasted maximizing profit for owners.
I know. And I think that is a failed model. Of course if your goal is to make certain people rich it’s a very successful model.
I’ve been parts of these discussions. There are certain things governments just can’t do the way they are currently setup.
An easy example I’m familiar with; some States’ rules are onerous enough that you couldn’t operate a transit system under them.
Sounds like a “problem” created by people with an interest in the state not performing that role. There are many ways to privatize a state asset.
Student aid should count. That’s money that could go to students seeking education in state schools, not religious schooling. This is just like bullshit voucher programs stealing tax payer funded school funds to be sent to religious schools.
If kids or their parents want to go to church school, they can pay for it themselves. Not the tax payer.
Accrediting agencies in the US are privately operated, too. There’s a layer of independent oversight between the Department of Education and the schools themselves.
Whether that’s good or bad is far beyond my knowledge, but that’s how it’s legal. It’s just one private organization giving a thumbs up to another private organization.
It’s also not a great marketing move.
“Come to university but don’t sleep around”, na mate I’ll go somewhere else.
Finding out who you are is the whole point of going to university, otherwise you might as well take an online course.
Idiots.
They don’t want kids coming of age. They’re a religion. That’s stupidly normal for religions, to keep children as innocent as literal children for as long as possible. The only coming of age is supposed to happen on the honeymoon, because you know, that’s not dangerously emotionally underdeveloped territory at all and totally never results in horribly incompatible people ending up forced together…
The parents are making the decision.
I understand what your getting at, but the point of going to a university is getting an education. All other activities are secondary to this. If you have other goals, you can do those just as easy without going into debt, and taking a spot from someone else.
It could be more than one thing. The point of me going to work is to make money but I can also enjoy the company of my coworkers.
I don’t see what accreditation has to do with rules like this.
Religious grounds. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go there. And it’s private, so no federal funds that come with strings attached.
If a religion said black people are a sin and should be avoided… and then started a school with rules banning any contact with black folks, would you treat it the same? Religious grounds, private school, just don’t go there?
Wait, isn’t that just BYU 30 years ago?
Exactly. We figured it that wasn’t right then in the same way this isn’t right now.
I forgot what Christian school did it but they banned interracial dating for a while as well.
I would.
They certainly shouldn’t be receiving taxpayer money, but if people want to go to a place like that then they should be allowed to. If it teaches the material relevant to their discipline in a satisfactory way, I don’t see why accreditation agencies should look past that.
If you sit at a table with 10 Nazis, there are 11 Nazis at the table.
The paradox of tolerating the intolerant…
I don’t understand how your scenario fits this situation.
Take everything Nazis believe. Now just say it’s a religion. Now they start a school to spread their beliefs.
According to you, that’s totally ok… hence the statement.
The paradox of tolerance to a T
Well first off, we’re not talking about Nazis.
An accreditation agency shouldn’t be the ones who dictate what is done by colleges beyond academics. They’re not accrediting ‘social acceptance.’ They’re accrediting academic merit.
“Yeah they have a great x program, but we’re not going to accredit them because of their rules against same-sex PDA.”
This is just you being upset that everyone isn’t on board with censoring those you don’t like.
So if a private university teaches proper math classes, and also has a mandatory training class on war and tactics for establishing a non-white ethnostate, you’d be cool with people going there?
Shit with you in charge, the Nazis just needed to provide good education in the concentration camps and it’d be above board, wouldn’t it?
Sorry, I’m not going to entertain that hypothetical.
Keep believing what you want to believe. This has gotten old.
Unlike Baylor where they get federal funds but ignore federal rules anyway.
We talking about the Baylor football rapists?
BYU should never receive any federal funds at all, in fact, they should be paying the government taxes.
Religion is disgusting
The church robs your parents with intense pressure to donate too much with the expectation you’ll just end up at BYU. Lots of people are there because it was their only realistic option
Yeah, which is why nobody should support Mormonism.
no need to do the whataboutisms here, just jump to the logical ‘all religion is bad, m’kay’. it really is a nasty vestige of humanities upbringing… like slavery, but with more steps.
In “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” by Friederich Nietzsche, the “prophet” went into the forest to meditate on the death of god, and met a monk. He spoke to the monk, and only after leaving did he contemplate: “Has he not realized that god is dead?”
He never told the monk. He lets him believe what he wants, because god is dead, and religion will die soon enough without ruining the lives of those who depend on it - those who cannot accept the truth.
Nietzsche also said that many “should not read my books, if they can.” The realization of god’s non-credibility cannot be forced, one must come upon it on their own…
i am realizing now one of my favorite ideals (not sure where i heard it) seems derived from that; ‘you cannot logic someone out of something they did not logic themselves into’
Jonathan Swift appears to have authored its first incantation in 1721:
Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired
It doesn’t matter what religion you follow, I oppose this perceived ‘god given right’ for a religion to maintain its own little fief where their ‘honor code’ supersedes federal anti-discrimination law in its entirety
If they don’t want to have rules that our society finds acceptable they don’t have any right to just exist. This isn’t a person were talking about they are an education institution. A school cannot by definition have a religion because it isn’t a person. I don’t particularly care if the people wo made the school are themselves religious; that should not give them the right to use their new founded institution to enforce those beliefs on other people. If you want to teach people I think you should be held to certain standards, and one of those standards is that you shouldn’t restrict the freedom of your students.
Having sexual morality rules is absolutely restricting their freedom. People have a right to privacy that such rules inherently violate.
Federal funds go there and even if they didn’t they are still tax free.
i’m not even gay and id buttfuck a twink just to stick it to the man. then i would claim it’s not romantic because i’m not gay so how could i feel romance toward another male.
checkmate
How very Roman of you.
well it’s not quite rome, but… when in the place where romans eventually went to and then we’re like “yo let’s bury a golden book”, then it’s time to reign in the bodacious butt fuckin?
idk it’s all greek to me.
I volunteer as tribute!
Sounds kinda romantic. Please verify you’re not into it first. And then: let’s do this.
I’ll be screaming every second of it
Perfectly ambiguous. Deal.
Having sex at all violates the Honor Code at BYU
fine i’ll get one of those crazy mormons to jump hump me into butt fuckin a twink. stick to the LDS rules.
Now that is the BYU spirit!
Yeah, but, like, to completion, tho?
Spilling seed on the ground is a sin. I mean, cum on. I mean, come on. And cum in.
“romantic behavior” could include dating, holding hands, or kissing.
So no-strings-attached raw fucking is allowed only if they say no homo? Nice.
Does sucking cock count as kissing?
As long as it’s not romantic. Meet me in the showers, Elder.
I hear it isn’t gay unless penises touch.
I mean, if I recall right, hardline Abrahamics and their derivatives aren’t supposed to trend towards believing in contraception in the first place, so of course it’d be raw
What about if there’s no romance involved, and you’re just aggressively banging to release the stress of studying.
“Sir you don’t understand. We were being completely chaste while fucking the shit out of each other. We were just trying to prepare for that orgo exam.”
sounds like discrimination to me
They’re a private religious college, for Mormons, so discrimination on these grounds is not illegal.
The Honor Code tells BYU students to live “a chaste and virtuous life, including abstaining from sexual relations outside marriage between a man and a woman.” With the new language, it notes that “living a chaste and virtuous life also includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behavior.”
Par for the course for their religious beliefs
Why the fuck would a gay person want to go to a Mormon university?
The obvious answer being that you are far more likely to be closeted if you’re Mormon and it might be the only school you got a scholarship (they give very generous scholarships at BYU) to or your parents will pay for you to go to, but probably many more reasons than that
A lot of people don’t know they’re gay until college.
They would not.
Lots of people whose parents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which had a shorter nickname until 2018, but even a church that self-identifies as the Universe’s one true church should not be deadnamed after transitioning) teach their children to:
- go proselytize, door-to-door, for two years after high school, during which, they must
- spend all that time being never alone, with a person of the same sex as they were assigned at birth, and they must
- never masturbate, and then
- come home and go [back] to BYU, but also
- begin having children with a spouse as soon as possible, all the while,
- being at the age of their highest libido ever and surrounded by people, each in their physical prime, and then most importantly, they must
- not discover, realize, or admit they might not be straight. It is forbidden. Like fruit of the tree of knowledge. For to do so would mean they must never ever have sex, or alternatively, that they must marry a person to whom they are not attracted, and then be encouraged to procreate with that person anyway.
THIS IS WHAT MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS ARE ACTUALLY TOLD TO BELIEVE
even a church that self-identifies as the Universe’s one true church should not be deadnamed after transitioning
This cracked me the fuck up. great work.
I mean, you say it like those are the crazy parts. Where’s the magic underwear and the always popular, “we live during end times, so fuck actually helping people.” thing? Or the billions of hidden wealth the church is sitting on?
The church is vile and disgusting, but not for most of the reasons you cite. That’s all normal no sex before marriage and gays aren’t real stuff: common amongst Christians and other sects alike.
“normal no sex before marriage and gays aren’t real stuff”
While it might not be first in the list of things that Mormons should be demonized for, it’s still very much an issue and is on the list. It should 100% be called out and they should be shamed for it. Just because other churches are assholes too doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it.
To prepare to become a Log Cabin Republican
Why are shitholes like this allowed to exist? I thought y’all had separation of church and state. Indoctrination farms are antithetical to democracy and human decency.
Edit: I see from another comment this is a private institution. Disregard.
Edit 2: apparently private indoctrination farms get federal money. Boooooo
They still get federal money though. I shouldn’t have to pay for a college with my taxes that would reject me for who I am
In addition to that, which is enough of a reason on its own, the point of giving federal money to universities is to ensmarten the population in general, thereby benefiting all taxpayers. So not only is this a terrible deal for people who are directly and personally affected by this cult’s bigotry, but it’s a terrible deal for everyone who would otherwise benefit from being surrounded by a community of educated people instead of wingnuts.
I am sorry this is a thing.
Oh don’t worry. The state of Utah takes care of them just fine.
Fucking Mormons, man. I swear…
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To be fair every single former-Mormon I have ever meet was a really cool person who acted like nothing could faze them since they had already seen hell.
One guy I used to get smashed with, from a Mormon family of 7, he could drink me under the table and still be cracking wise.
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No, they’re not fucking. Cos of the code.
They’re sort of fucking.
They just need James Marsden to jump on the bed next to them.
( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
A University named after a disgusting, abhorrently racist and radical man makes derogatory decision.
“Don’t worry, there’s no romance, we’re just fucking!”
NCAA should ban them from all competitions. This is straight up bigotry.
School should not be religious. Period. Ever.
Religiosity is entrenched in the history of schooling. I think there is a place in the world for religious schooling. I just don’t think such places should receive direct governmental funding unless the religious part is optional.
I think there is a place in the world for religious schooling.
Yeah, that’s called a church
Key word being history. Slavery was entrenched in the history of society and we successfully separated the two (although society still needs to work on the second order effects, sadly). Just saying it’s been that way in the past is not a valid argument for why it should continue. That’s basically an appeal to tradition fallacy.
Just finished reading a book on slavery - current estimates are anywhere from 30 to 50mil people are still enslaved across the world in 2023.
More slaves alive today than at any other time in history, in fact.
And it’s been illegal worldwide since only 1981 (Mauritania), where it was essentially a misdemeanor until 2007.
I’m not sure I agree because religion in school means children get little to no sex education. I think one could certainly study world religions and such, as an academic topic, but having gone to publicly funded Catholic school I’m personally very not in favour.
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IMO, you cannot be Higher Education if you behave this way. I feel for those attending this University as now they are no longer coming from an esteemed place.
The worst thing about BYU to me (other than this sort of social bullshit) is that they have a really good archaeology program and the only reason it’s so good is so they can ‘prove’ Joseph Smith’s moronic history of the Americas was correct.
esteemed place
Do you… Not know what BYU is?
how exhausting, policing peoples love life. When has this Ever Worked?
“Just turn it off, like a light switch.
Just go click!
It’s a cool little Mormon trick!”
