An Oral History Project Conducted by John Robert Lewis Scholar Amy Griffin
Project Description
In a Church School That Loves Acronyms, Some Letters Are Less Desirable Than Others”: A History of Discrimination Against and Activism on Behalf of the LGBTQ+ Population at Brigham Young University and Within Mormonism.
As a recent journalism graduate, I chose to write a longform multimedia piece on Mormonism's (and specifically my school, Brigham Young University's) discrimination against the LGBTQ+ students and members, and highlight their activism in working to change policies and hearts. In my piece, you'll meet and hear from three incredible LGBTQ+ individuals working in different fields for the same aims, as well as flip through a timeline of action taken against and protests organized by the Mormon LGBTQ+ community. The multimedia piece also includes a ~6 minute broadcast package.
Longform Multimedia Piece
“Tom Fairholm was “firmly in the closet” in early spring of 2020, and with everything going on around him, he knew he’d have to stay that way.”
On February 19 of the same year, the flagship university of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brigham Young University, had announced changes to their Honor Code. Specifically, it removed the section titled “Homosexual Behavior,” which had explicitly prohibited students from engaging in what the Church Education System deemed “inappropriate” behavior, namely “all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.”
Campus erupted. Community leaders and student activists applauded the change, believing that lesbian, gay, and bisexual students who wished to date would be held to the same chastity standards as their heterosexual peers. Many students finally came out to their classmates and the community. Others kissed in front of a campus Brigham Young statue.
Two students kiss in front of a campus statue of Brigham Young. Image courtesy @fremlo_ on Twitter
“I felt just so seen and so valued,” said Joey Sheppard, a queer BYU graduate student who uses they/them pronouns. “I had never felt I belonged so much at BYU until that moment.”
But on March 4, a letter was released by BYU signed by Paul V. Johnson, then-commissioner of the Church Education System. The letter said the changes to the Honor Code had been misinterpreted, reasoning that because “same-sex romantic behavior cannot lead to eternal marriage, [it is] therefore not compatible with the principles included in the Honor Code.” (The Church prohibits same-sex couples from marrying inside the more than 280 temples owned and operated by the faith, inside which devout heterosexual couples can be married for what the Church calls “time and all eternity”).
In the days that followed, hundreds of students protested, carrying signs and rainbow flags on and outside of campus while chanting and singing. Others celebrated the seeming return to what some called “God’s laws.” Some counterprotested by reading the Church’s statement on heterosexual marriage “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” aloud on campus or carrying umbrellas, which members of Deseret Nation or #DezNat on Twitter designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ symbol supporting only “traditional” families.
BYU student Kate Lunnen at a protest near the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints headquarters in Salt Lake City. Image: Rick Bowmer for AP
Sheppard called it a “giant communication breakdown” between the Church and the university.
For Fairholm, a gay music composition major who, at the time, was just a year from finishing his undergraduate degree, witnessing the chaos reaffirmed his decision to stay closeted.
“I remember listening to some of my peers make comments as they were watching these protests unfold,” Fairholm said. “They were generally unkind comments, like, ‘Why don’t they just go somewhere else if they don’t like it here?’ And my feeling is, why don’t you make it someplace where they would like it here?”
Fairholm hoped that, at minimum, the “kerfuffle” would lead to further conversation.
“I thought maybe we can keep this momentum going, that we’ll see some actual positive change here,” he said. “And then it was just kind of interrupted and forgotten about.”
Enter COVID-19. BYU shifted to online learning and encouraged students to return home less than two weeks after the CES clarification letter was issued. As the coronavirus dominated the news cycles, university policies, and student worries, the conversation on the Honor Code and the needs of LGBTQ+ students abruptly ended. For gay students across the Church’s universities, this was especially distressing. For Fairholm, it was the beginning of a trend in campus climate that he sees as getting “progressively worse.”
A Timeline LGBTQ/BYU Involvement
Timeline prepared largely using information from Brigham Young University LGBT History Wikipedia page.
A Tough Two Years
In the time since the Honor Code pivot, many LGBTQ+ students have felt they haven’t been able to catch their breath. Combined with the ever-present mental health challenges that have accompanied the pandemic and its required social isolation, several policy changes and other events concerning the LGBTQ+ community have put a strain on some students’ mental health.
First came a quick tweet by the university after student organization Color the Campus lit the Y on the mountain with rainbow flashlights in March of 2021. The university immediately asserted that it had not authorized the lighting. In May of last year, a popular BYU professor with a large social media following, Hank Smith, tweeted a Church term for an anti-Christ (“Korihor”) at an LGBTQ+ BYU student. The tweet has since been deleted.
In August, Church apostle Jeffrey R. Holland used an opportunity to speak to the faculty to ask for additional “musket fire” in defense of the Church’s stance on marriage. Following his speech, BYU students covered South Campus’s sidewalks with rainbow chalk art; and the artwork was vandalized by a student who was recorded using a slur.
In January of 2022, the university released a new demonstration policy which included a specific ban on demonstrations on Y Mountain, as well as any demonstrations which don’t align with the university’s values. Just a month later, BYU’s speech clinic announced it would not provide voice therapy for transgender clients. Y Mountain was fenced off on Rainbow Day in March, and several students were escorted off of campus for handing out rainbow pins.
For Bradley Talbot, recent graduate and founder of Color the Campus, the demonstration policy proves that BYU is “missing the point.”
“So many people think, for one, that we’re protesting or that we are angry,” Talbot said. “The intent behind [events such as Rainbow Day & lighting the Y] is just so simple. It’s just to show, like, ‘Hey, I’m willing to do better, I’m willing to be a support to the LGBTQ+ community.’”
For Talbot, that’s the keyword: community.
“Obviously BYU has certain policies that are very oppressive,” he said. “In the long term, yes, we want those to change. But I’m more focused on the community and getting people to change the culture a little bit more.”
His approach to the issues varies from Fairholm’s, who focuses on the more philosophical and artistic when it comes to wrestling with Church doctrine. Fairholm is the author of a popular series of Medium articles grappling with the existential questions raised by being gay in a church whose heaven doesn’t seem to have a clear place for you.
‘Why don’t you just leave?’
It’s a phrase LGBTQ+ students have heard time and again. ‘If they don’t like it here, why don’t they just leave?’
“That’s not realistic for everybody,” said Talbot. “A lot of students can’t leave. A lot of student’s don’t realize they’re queer before they enroll. A lot of students can’t afford to leave.”
““A lot of students can’t leave. A lot of student’s don’t realize they’re queer before they enroll. A lot of students can’t afford to leave.””
Beyond those who can’t, many LGBTQ+ students still want the BYU education and experience. Fairholm is one of those.
“I love my professors. I love my program. I love the subjects I learned. I love that kind of intellectual atmosphere. I love getting to know people who are different than me,” said Fairholm. “And I’m afraid we are going to lose that if we keep pushing out people who think differently, or who love differently. I think it weakens the university experience.”
Fairholm sees the university experience as a chance to learn from the free exchange of ideas.
“In order to have that, you need a more diverse student body,” he said. “But when the policies and the culture of the university seem to discourage that, then you don’t get the aims of a quality university education. It’s a real problem.”
For Fairholm, transferring somewhere more welcoming of his sexuality would have caused him to miss out on a core part of his education.
“I love BYU, I love its mission,” he said. “I love the notion that everything is spiritual: basketball and physics and German. These can all make you a better disciple of Christ.”
Moreover, the university and the Church encourage LGBTQ+ students, along with all students, to stay. The university announced a new Office of Belonging in August 2021, which President Worthen said would aim to combat “prejudice of any kind,” including discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. The new vice president over the office, Carl Hernandez III, is expected to “guide BYU’s efforts” to implement recommendations and “address the needs of all marginalized individuals on campus.”
In November 2017, Church apostle Elder M. Russell Ballard responded to a question about LGBTQ young single adults in a way that emphasized understanding and making a place in the Church.
“I want anyone who is a member of the Church who is gay or lesbian to know I believe you have a place in the kingdom and I recognize that sometimes it may be difficult for you to see where you fit in the Lord’s Church, but you do,” he said.
He stressed listening and “do[ing] better than we have done in the past so that all members feel they have a spiritual home.”
“Every person is a child of God,” he said. “Everyone is entitled to love and respect.”
Fears of an “orthodoxy test”
In March of 2022, the Church Education System released ecclesiastical endorsement questions for new faculty hires, which includes a question requesting the status of the individual’s testimony of the Church’s teachings on marriage, family, and gender. Ecclesiastical endorsements are required annually for faculty and staff at the university.
Talbot worries about future LGBTQ+ students at the university.
“It’s really not defined,” said Talbot. He believes that the Church’s interpretation of doctrine likely will continue to change in the future.
“This is definitely going to impact LGBTQ+ students, because I know a lot of people–I mean, for me, too, I would go to certain professors and faculty to talk to them and feel supported.” Now, Talbot worries that professors won’t be able to offer the support that many of them have in the past without fearing for their job security.
For Sheppard, kind and welcoming professors made all of the difference.
“They said, like, ‘I believe you have a place here and I support you. How can I best support you?’ and they took the time to listen and to ask me,” they said. “I just wish other people had done as they did, they just actually sat down with me. It was like, ‘Help me understand this.’”
Talbot worries that hurtful comments made in lectures could increase.
“I’m really concerned as to how this is actually going to unfold. It sounds like it’s going to potentially increase statements that are said in classes that can be really harmful and very discouraging and just isolating,” Talbot said.
Fairholm, too, is concerned that CES is trying to “weed out” sympathetic professors. He sees it as an “orthodoxy test,” questioning whether BYU faculty have “the right opinion.”
“I sense that the Church and the university [are] feeling insecure about what it notices is changing among the opinions of its students, faculty, and the Church as a whole,” Fairholm said. He sees this as a reactionary policy that indicates the Church feels some anxiety.
In his study of Church history, he’s seen this pattern before.
“I think you’re seeing here an echo of what happened in the 90s with the September 6 excommunications,” Fairholm said. “The Church sees society changing, they get spooked, and they recognize BYU as the intellectual hub of the Church. And so somebody has to receive the brunt of that anxiety.” In this case, Tom sees those receiving the “brunt” as the sympathetic professors.
““The Church sees society changing, they get spooked, and they recognize BYU as the intellectual hub of the Church. And so somebody has to receive the brunt of that anxiety.””
To Sheppard, the direction the university is taking doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“I just feel like BYU is trying to protect itself from something it’s not even a danger. Like, I’m just me!” they said.
“Bishop Roulette”
LGBTQ+ members of the Church talk about a game of “bishop roulette,” where the ward boundary to which you are assigned can impact the extent to which you are allowed to participate in the Church. These members say some bishops allow as much freedom as possible under the Church’s policies while others choose to restrict the level of participation of certain members based on their beliefs about queer members’ testimonies or behaviors.
Now, the concern is whether a similar game will start to be played for faculty. Sheppard sees it as unfair that the academic career of a professor is controlled, to a certain extent, by volunteer clergy.
“Let me just, you know, put the entire power of your employment and your career into the hands of this one man, who might not even know you that well,” they said. “Who might be a judge in Israel, but why is he a judge over that?”
Talbot believes the power to exclude belongs only to God.
“Even if [people] don’t agree with it, [queer people] still belong at BYU, they still belong in the Church. It’s not our job to be that gatekeeper. It’s Gods, leave that to God.”
A place to belong
For each LGBTQ+ BYU student, the fight to belong on campus is just a smaller portion of the wider turmoil in attempting to belong at church.
“We have a standard for almost everybody,” Fairholm said, referring to the Church’s doctrine on temple marriage as a qualifier for the highest degree of heaven. “And then a small minority, whose circumstances are biologically determined and unchosen, has a far different and far stricter standard, which is to be alone forever, or enter into a marriage of someone of the gender to which you are not attracted.”
Fairholm and other LGBTQ+ Saints wish that the topic of queer members would shift away from sex.
“I mean, we’re actually held to a standard higher than that of the Prophet,” Fairholm said, referring to the current president of the Church, Russell M. Nelson. “You’ll recall that President Nelson and President Oaks are remarried at pretty old ages. Were those marriages exclusively about sexual gratification? I don’t think so. They understand, in their own experience, that a life of loneliness is not preferable.”
Fairholm has written extensively about his experience grappling with his deeply held beliefs and his sexuality. Talbot has similarly made decisions for his life that he feels lines up with God’s will for him.
“I feel God is guiding me,” Talbot said. “I’ve learned to just live in a way that is authentic to me.” He doesn’t see himself as having to choose between God and love. “It doesn’t have to be this either/or,” he said. “It’s not black and white. It’s rainbow. It’s a spectrum, it’s this beautiful diversity that we have.”
For him, his difficulty feeling like he belonged at BYU hasn’t tainted the rest of his experience.
“I don’t regret it,” said Talbot. “Even if I could go back, I would still choose BYU. But it was also really hard.”
His message for other queer students?
“We’re grateful you’re at BYU,” he said. “We deserve to be here. We belong here. We can make it work.”
For Fairholm, the solution to the belonging problem is glaringly obvious.
“Gay people are created in the image of God,” Fairholm said. “And the image of God is broader than we sometimes imagine. We like to put God in these tiny little boxes. We like to think that Zion implies uniformity rather than unity. But I think gay people, just like any other group of people who are different from the mainstream or majority, they’re necessary if we’re going to build the body of Christ.”
““Gay people are created in the image of God.””
View my broadcast segment below (never aired by BYU). Originally taped and edited in April of 2022.