Mormon Quotes

Brigham Young University

David O. McKay
I am aware that a university has the responsibility of acquainting its students with the theories and doctrines which are prevalent in various disciplines, but I hope that no one on the faculty of Brigham Young University will advocate positions which cannot be harmonized with the views of every prophet of the Church, from the Prophet Joseph Smith on down, concerning our belief that we should be strong and self‑reliant individuals, not dependent upon the largess or benefactions of government. None of the doctrines of our Church gives any sanction to the concept of a socialistic state.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
I have been happy over the years to know that the faculty itself some years ago resolved that the first qualification for appointment to the faculty of Brigham Young University is that of an "attitude toward and adherence to the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." I am happy, also, to know that a very large number of faculty members are now serving with general boards, or as stake presidents, bishops, and high council members, and in other Church positions. I would urge all members of the faculty, whether they have a Church position or not, to teach the principles of the Gospel and standards in every class whenever the opportunity arises, whether that class be a class in theology or otherwise.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
I want, first of all, to congratulate you, the faculty, and the students of Brigham Young University upon the fact that we have had no riots or other serious disturbances at the "Y" such as have tarnished the reputations of other institutions and brought down public condemnation upon them. In view, however, of current trends and pressures on our young people, as reflected daily by the public press, I wish that you and the faculty would be even more vigilant than you have been in the past to see that only students of acceptable spiritual and academic standards are admitted and retained, and that the reputation of Brigham Young University as a university where the "glory of God is intelligence," and where high standards of moral conduct, sobriety, and order are ever present, are not only maintained, but increasingly improved and enhanced.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
It is part of our "Mormon" theology that the Constitution of the United States was divinely inspired; that our Republic came into existence through wise men raised up for that very purpose. We believe it is the duty of the members of the Church to see that this Republic is not subverted either by any sudden or constant erosion of those principles which gave this Nation its birth.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
I cannot help but think that there is a direct relationship between the present evil trends which I have above indicated, and the very marked tendency of the people of our country to pass on to the state the responsibility for their moral and economic welfare. This trend to a welfare state in which people look to and worship government more than their God, is certain to sap the individual ambitions and moral fiber of our youth unless they are warned and rewarned of the consequences. History, of course, is replete with the downfall of nations who, instead of assuming their own responsibility for their religious and economic welfare, mistakenly attempted to shift their individual responsibility to the government.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
In these days when not only religious standards but some of the Ten Commandments themselves are under attack, I hope that you and the faculty will go the extra mile in seeing that the religious doctrines of our Church are taught in their fullness so that students will have proper religious convictions for all decisions which they have to make. The trends of the time in the opposite direction are so strong that it will require extraordinary vigilance on the part of all of us to resist them.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
In these days when there is a special trend among certain groups, including members of faculties of universities, to challenge the principles upon which our country has been founded and the philosophy of our Founding Fathers, I hope that Brigham Young University will stand as a bulwark in support of the principles of government as vouchsafed to us by our Constitutional Fathers.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
Mark E. Petersen
The discussion on civil rights, especially over the last 20 years, has drawn some very sharp lines. It has blinded the thinking of some of our own people, I believe. They have allowed their political affiliations to color their thinking to some extent, and then, of course, they have been persuaded by some of the arguments that have been put forth. We who teach in the Church certainly must have our feet on the ground and not to be led astray by the philosophies of men on this subject.
Mark E. Petersen, Race Problems ‑ As They Affect The Church, Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, Brigham Young University, August 27, 1954
Mark E. Petersen
I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the Negro is after. He is not just seeking the opportunity of sitting down in a cafe where white people eat. He isn't just trying to ride on the same streetcar or the same Pullman car with white people. It isn't that he just desires to go to the same theater as the white people. From this, and other interviews I have read, it appears that the Negro seeks absorption with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage. That is his objective and we must face it. We must not allow our feelings to carry us away, nor must we feel so sorry for Negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them with everything we have. Remember the little statement that we used to say about sin, 'First we pity, then endure, then embrace'.
Mark E. Petersen, Race Problems ‑ As They Affect The Church, Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, Brigham Young University, August 27, 1954
Mark E. Petersen
No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood.
Mark E. Petersen, Race Problems ‑ As They Affect The Church, Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 27, 1954
Boyd K. Packer
[Church history] if not properly written or properly taught,... may be a faith destroyer... The writer or teacher who has an exaggerated loyalty to the theory that everything must be told is laying a foundation for his own judgment.... The Lord made it very clear that some things are to be taught selectively and some things are to be given only to those who are worthy.
Boyd K. Packer, Boyd K. Packer, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect," reprinted in BYU Studies, v. 21, no. 3, 1981, pp. 259‑277
Dallin H. Oaks
There is great strength in being highly focused on our goals. We have all seen the favorable fruits of that focus. Yet an intense focus on goals can cause a person to forget the importance of righteous means. When I was serving in a stake presidency, a man bragged to me about the way he had managed to preserve his goal of perfect attendance at our stake leadership meetings. He was required to report for his shift work at the time of one of our stake meetings. When the employer denied his request for permission to attend this church meeting, he told me with pride that he "called in sick" so he could come anyway. I kept an eye on that man after that. I wondered if he would steal money in order to pay his tithing. You may think that an extreme example, but it illustrates the point I wish to make. We cannot be so concerned about our goals that we overlook the necessity of using righteous methods to attain them.
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
Dallin H. Oaks
Satan can even use truth to promote his purposes. Facts, severed from their context, can convey an erroneous impression.
Dallin H. Oaks, "Reading Church History," speech delivered at the Ninth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators' Symposium, BYU
Dallin H. Oaks
By the same token, a woman's righteous and appropriate desires to grow and develop and magnify her talents—desires strongly reinforced by current feminist teachings—also have their extreme manifestations, which can lead to attempts to preempt priesthood leadership, to the advocacy of ideas out of harmony with Church doctrine, or even to the abandonment of family responsibilities.
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
Dallin H. Oaks
Satan will also attempt to cause our spiritual downfall through tempting us to misapply our spiritual gifts. The revelations tell us that "there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God" (D&C 46:11). All of these gifts "come from God, for the benefit of the children of God" (D&C 46:26). Most of us have seen persons whom the adversary has led astray through a corruption of their spiritual gifts. My mother shared one such example, something she had observed while she was a student at BYU many years ago. A man who lived in a community in Utah had a mighty gift of healing. People sought him out for blessings, many coming from outside his ward and stake. In time, he made almost a profession of giving blessings. As part of his travels to various communities, he came to the apartments of BYU students, asking if they wanted blessings. This man had lost sight of the revealed direction on spiritual gifts: "always remembering for what they are given" (D&C 46:8). A spiritual gift is given to benefit the children of God, not to magnify the prominence or gratify the ego of the person who receives it. The professional healer who forgot that lesson gradually lost the companionship of the Spirit and was eventually excommunicated from the Church.
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
Dallin H. Oaks
Another area in which strengths can become our downfall concerns finances. We are commanded to give to the poor. Could the fulfillment of that fundamental Christian obligation be carried to excess? I believe it can, and I believe I have seen examples of this.
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
Dallin H. Oaks
Other illustrations of how our strengths can become our downfall concern the activity of learning. A desire to know is surely a great strength. A hunger to learn is laudable, but the fruits of learning make a person particularly susceptible to the sin of pride. So do the fruits of other talents and accomplishments, such as the athletic or the artistic. It is easy for the learned and the accomplished to forget their own limitations and their total dependence upon God. Accomplishments in higher education bring persons much recognition and real feelings of self‑sufficiency. But we should remember the Book of Mormon's frequent cautions not to boast in our own strength or wisdom lest we be left to our own strength or wisdom (e.g., Alma 38:11, 39:2; Helaman 4:13, 16:15). Similarly, the prophet Jacob referred to "that cunning plan of the evil one," remarking that when persons are "learned," which means that they have knowledge, "they think they are wise" (2 Nephi 9:28), which means that they think they have the capacity for the wise application of knowledge. Persons who think they are wise in this way "hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves." In that circumstance, the prophet said, "their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish" (2 Nephi 9:28). "But to be learned is good," the word of the Lord concludes, "if they hearken unto the counsels of God" (2 Nephi 9:29).
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
Dallin H. Oaks
Some persons have a finely developed social conscience. They respond to social injustice and suffering with great concern, commitment, and generosity. This is surely a spiritual strength, something many of us need in greater measure. Yet persons who have this great quality need to be cautious that it not impel them to overstep other ultimate values. My social conscience should not cause me to coerce others to use their time or means to fulfill my objectives. We are not blessed for magnifying our calling with someone else's time or resources. We are commanded to love our neighbors, not to manipulate them, even for righteous purposes. In the same way, we should not feel alienated from our church or its leaders when they refrain from using the rhetoric of the social gospel or from allocating Church resources to purposes favored by others. We should remember that the Lord has given his restored Church a unique mission not given to others. We must concentrate our primary efforts on those activities that can only be accomplished with priesthood authority, such as preaching the gospel and redeeming the dead.
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
First Presidency
We have the responsibility to preserve the doctrinal purity of the Church. We are united in this objective.
First Presidency, First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve statement, Sunstone, 16:6, no. 92, November 1993, p. 72
Janice Graham
Suicidal feelings and attempts, and depression are always mentioned by those promoting the social acceptance of youth homosexuality. Our conversation with Prof. Morgan was no exception; these serious problems are always ridiculously simplified to putting the blame on others. A victim mentality passes off personal responsibility and never helped anyone. Young people who feel suicidal or depressed are immature and easily persuaded, distracted, and recruited into all sorts of escapist causes and addictions. These problems may have less to do with sexuality than with the terrible conflict between right and wrong raging in the soul. There may be mental illness, as in the famous but misrepresented case of Stuart Matis. Many may desperately need clinical and medical attention. Tragically, the deep core issues are not being emphasized or even addressed. Instead, all is focused on the popular and politicized, self‑identified gayness of the sick person.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
If you think BYU upholds traditional family values, think again. Certain department heads, professors, guest lecturers, and students have become a law unto themselves, regularly preaching all manner of progressivism including socialism, radical feminism, anti‑Americanism, revisionist history, outdated Darwinism, and popular homosexualism, and continue to be supported, employed, and welcomed.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
Gay activism has done a great job presenting homosexuality as harmless, equal to heterosexuality, even virtuous, honest, praiseworthy. But homosexuality is not harmless, natural to the human body, chaste, pure, or wholesome in any form. The very nature of homosexuality is out of bounds.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
[We remember] that just a couple of years ago, being openly gay and advocating for homosexuality was considered against the honor code. Apparently it's perfectly fine now, no matter what the honor code still states about unchastity. This shows that rules and codes and laws don't matter so much as the popular consciousness does. Where is our will? Is it with God, with teaching His timeless correct and saving principles no matter how unpopular, or is it with the sycophantic political correctness of the day?
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
If there really are any innocent, clueless students jumping on the now public gay bandwagon for the novelty, youthful rebelliousness, sense of belonging, special attention, or politics of it, they had better find out quick what gayness really is —and so had Prof. Morgan — or they won't be innocent or ignorant for long. They will be recruited in earnest.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
What is going on at BYU is incongruent and inexplicable. Unless we are instructed to turn in our Standard Works for new gay‑affirming scriptures and clean out our ward and home library shelves of all our LDS Church manuals, books, and magazines, homosexuality should still be officially, courageously, and correctly shown as sinful and harmful in both thought and deed in every ward, stake, and Church‑owned or endorsed group, business, or education entity.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
Apart from mental illness, it takes humility and repentance and an abandonment of sinful desires possible through Christ in order to change and improve ourselves. This can happen to everyone. In fact, thousands of people with homosexual tendencies and lifestyles have left it all behind.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
Interestingly, we don't have to worry about Soulforce anymore because now BYU has a very vocal home‑grown student advocacy group of its own called USGA, Understanding Same‑Gender Attraction. It meets every Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. in room 111 of the TMCB on the BYU campus with BYU's permission. Call this group what they will, from what we've seen firsthand, it's really about affirming out‑of‑bounds sexual lust.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
Prof. Morgan related that the BYU counseling center no longer works with students on overcoming homosexual attractions, but merely on learning how to deal with them. So, according to this professor, young people are being told, without the benefit of knowledge and understanding as to how this came about and the spiritual, mental, and physical health dangers, that gay is the way they are, and here's how to accept it. There is no concern for the mortal testing, temporal future, or eternal soul of the young person, no understanding of their impressionable, impulsive, and fallen human nature, no interest in past or future suffering, and no cheering for righteousness, excellence, and nobleness, only what appears to be a perverse motivation to advance the current worldly whim. Can this travesty be true? Perhaps partly. But we happen to know there are still some right‑thinking people at BYU, including at the Counseling Center and send them our prayers.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
By the way, the only defense of the social experiment called gay parenting students could come up with was to compare it as better than foster homes, orphanages, and bad traditional parents. Besides having no information on which to base this comparison, and besides respectable foster parents, honorable orphanages, and imperfect but striving traditional parents rightly taking umbrage at this comparison, the issue is not about comparing these situations. The issue is that gay parents are modeling sinful and highly harmful and risky sexual ideas and behaviors to innocent, untaught children.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
Our book Captain of My Soul, the true story of a young man's dark past experience during his freshman year at BYU ten years ago getting initiated into homosexual behaviors by older men via chat rooms and phone calls, shines the light on the grim reality of these covered sins.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
This meeting, where young people with homosexual attractions will talk about how okay SGA [same‑gender attraction] is, and how bad they have it at BYU, is ill‑conceived. Not only will it not be helpful, it will be harmful, harmful to the souls of those giving the talks, harmful to those young minds listening who will be supported in covering both inward and outward sins and initiated further into homosexuality, and harmful to all those these people come in contact with.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
[We] called and spoke with Professor Morgan and Renata Forste, the department chairman. When asked why the meeting was being held, we were told that BYU students need a greater understanding of homosexual attraction in order to be kinder and more accepting of students who experience it. We were told these gay students are keeping the law of chastity and are not acting out sexually, so there is no honor code issue involved. We wondered how Prof. Morgan could know this, if all students who will attend the meeting have been screened for sexual abuse done to them or by them, or for wrong ideas and attitudes about sex and sexuality, or for current sexual impurity, how this is being defined, and if the gay students have told the truth. Homosexual behaviors are by nature practiced and spread in secret, BYU being no exception.
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Janice Graham
Most recently, the media reported student outrage about a series of letters supporting traditional values in The Daily Universe concerning gay parenting/adoption, prompted by the TV show "Modern Family." A group of gay activist students who took especial offense to one letter to the editor made up an accusatory flyer and without permission stuffed a number of them in the next day's edition. Joe Campbell, the managing editor of the paper, faculty member, and also a columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, catered to the lawless gay activists by printing an apology and affirming the Church's understanding and respect for homosexually‑attracted people, at the same time removing the offending letter from the online version of The Daily Universe, a letter that unequivocally expressed the timeless Biblical truth that homosexuality is sinful. SoL wonders, what about the person who wrote the letter that got removed? There seems to be no understanding and respect for him — or the Bible for that matter. Shouldn't he now be offended? Shouldn't God be offended? Apparently not. To quote the Salt Lake Tribune article, "BYU has no interest in pursuing or punishing the students who produced or distributed the flyer, Campbell said. 'We count this as a learning experience.'" And what has BYU learned? Never to publish scriptural doctrine in its paper because it might offend gay activists?
Janice Graham, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Merrill J. Bateman
Although we want to ensure that every faculty member has the right to discuss and analyze as broadly and widely as possible any topic, including religious topics, including fundamental doctrine of the church, we do not believe they have‑‑they should be able to publicly endorse positions contrary to doctrine, or to attack the doctrine.
Merrill J. Bateman, BYU President Merrill J. Bateman, interview quoted in Mormon America, by Richard and Joan Ostling, pp. 235‑236
Armand Mauss
The pedagogical posture of the CES has become increasingly anti‑scientific and anti‑intellectual, more inward looking, more intent on the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the Mormon version of the gospel as opposed to other interpretations, whether religious or scientific. Lesson manuals still occasionally take gratuitous swipes at scientists, intellectuals, and modernist ideas, which are blamed for jeopardizing students' testimonies. Non‑Mormon sources and resources are rarely used and highly suspect.
Armand Mauss, Armand Mauss, Mormon scholar, The Angel and the Beehive, p. 102
Alan Wilkins
We should not hire people who are a threat to the religious faith of our students or a critic of the Church and its leaders.
Alan Wilkins, BYU hiring process memo leak, see 'BYU Tightens Faculty Hiring Process,' Sunstone, 16:8, no. 94, February 1994, p. 79
Eugene England
I'm pretty pessimistic because it seems like things are just getting narrower and narrower. It's beginning to affect the students.
Eugene England, Eugene England, Dialogue founder, 'An Interview with Eugene England,' Student Review, April 10, 1998, p. 10‑11
Eugene England
This is a good time to remind ourselves that most Mormons are still in denial about the ban, unwilling to talk in Church settings about it, and that some Mormons still believe that Blacks were cursed by descent from Cain through Ham. Even more believe that Blacks, as well as other non-white people, come color-coded into the world, their lineage and even their class a direct indication of failures in a previous life.... I check occasionally in classes at BYU and find that still, twenty years after the revelation, a majority of bright, well-educated Mormon students say they believe that Blacks are descendants of Cain and Ham and thereby cursed and that skin color is an indication of righteousness in the pre-mortal life. They tell me these ideas came from their parents or Seminary and Sunday School teachers, and they have never questioned them. They seem largely untroubled by the implicit contradiction to basic gospel teachings.
Eugene England, Sunstone: 54–58
Hugh B. Brown
We are grateful in the Church and in this great university that the freedom, dignity and integrity of the individual is basic in Church doctrine as well as in democracy. Here we are free to think and express our opinions. Fear will not stifle thought, as is the case in some areas which have not yet emerged from the dark ages. God himself refuses to trammel man's free agency even though its exercise sometimes teaches painful lessons. Both creative science and revealed religion find their fullest and truest expression in the climate of freedom.
Hugh B. Brown, Huge B. Brown Speech at BYU, March 29, 1958
D. Michael Quinn
Oct 23, 1946 ‑ BYU campus newspaper reports that professor of religion Richard Thomson, announced in a class that "during a vision last night, it was made known to me that 'you bet' is the anglicization of "hubet," the pure Adamic word for "you're welcome." Either the word has survived relatively intact for many millennia, or else it was revealed to the true Saints in the nineteenth century as part of the restoration of all things. Personally, I support the latter view." This announcement leads to the creation of the "Hubet Society of BYU" (HSBYU), which in turn leads to an attempt to create an Adamic 101 course. The entire movement is crushed when Jesse Wright, Provo Central Stake president, speaks at a BYU fireside and calls Professor Thomson, who lived in the stake, "insane," "an apostate and a heretic." Professor Thomson soon disappears from BYU.
D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy
D. Michael Quinn
Academic freedom exists at BYU only for what is considered non‑controversial by the university's Board of Trustees and administrators. By those definitions, academic freedom has always existed at Soviet universities (even during the Stalin era).
D. Michael Quinn, D. Michael Quinn to F. Lamond Tullis, August 29, 1988, in 'On Being a Mormon Historian,' p. 94
Connell O'Donovan
On September 5, 1935, New York University professor Dr. Louis W. Max informed a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) that he has successfully treated a "partially fetishistic" homosexual neurosis with electric shock therapy delivered at "intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects," the first documented instance of aversion therapy used to "cure" homosexuality. (Note that the APA's 2007 Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation has concluded that "efforts to change sexual orienation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm.") As far as I can tell, the earliest experiments with aversive therapies at BYU to "cure" homosexuality date to the mid‑1960s and were spearheaded by D. Eugene Thorne, head of BYU's Psychology Dept. By 1968, he had gained enough information to report his findings from BYU in a paper given in San Francisco that year for the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Then in 1969, school administration became more careful in its use of controversial therapies for treating "sexual deviancy" as they put it. The administration publicly claimed that use of such therapies had been curtailed but unofficially they continued unabated. BYU's Academic Vice President, Robert Thomas, advised college deans to alert those who were using aversive therapies to be "particularly cautious in utilizing them" ... out of fear for law suits.
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Connell O'Donovan
Under the oversight of his committee chairman, Dr. Thorne, McBride experimented on fourteen Gay male subjects to determine if using photographs of nude men and women from Playgirl‑ and Playboy‑type magazines was helpful in electric shock therapy. The 14 Gay BYU students in McBride's study were compared after being "treated" on an out‑patient basis during 22 sessions of shock therapy. Each of the 22 sessions lasted 50 minutes. 10 of those minutes were spent in "assertive training" and the remaining 40 minutes in "aversive conditioning." The average duration of treatment for the men was three months. The release form these men were required to sign informed them that "damage to tissue or organs may occur," that they would be looking at "sensitive materials" possibly contrary to their values [ie. pornography], and that BYU would be released from any responsibility for any damage done to them.
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Connell O'Donovan
Max Ford McBride's PhD dissertation, completed in August 1976 under the direction of BYU psychology professor D. Eugene Thorne (note that Dr. I. Reed Payne, of the "Payne Papers" infamy, was also on his dissertation committee), is an excellent example of clinical dehumanization practiced by Mormon "therapists". In the Mormon worldview, the end certainly justifies the means: heterosexuality must be attained and maintained AT ANY COST ‑ even if it means using pornography (which the Mormon Church is usually vehemently opposed to) and physical torture.
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Connell O'Donovan
The longterm effects of the electric shock "therapy" these men were subjected to has been crippling. Two of the men committed suicide soon after completing this torturous study. Every survivor I have interviewed has suffered life‑long emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical damage. In 1999, John Cameron, one of the 14 men who went through this horrific experience in 1976 when he was a 23 year old BYU student and member of the Young Ambassadors, wrote to me, "For 22 years now I have lived with the scars of the experience ‑ unable to articulate a personal suffering and longing that have almost crippled me....I didn't completely come out of the closet until I was 34, and only after much angry, pissed‑off therapy. I spent a lot of money just so I could yell at my psychologist and break things in his office for an hour every week for two years. But it was a hell of a lot more fun than Ford McBride and the electrodes."
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Connell O'Donovan
In 1975, the BYU Psychology Department administrators organized a Board of Review for Psychotherapeutic Techniques to recommend "policies governing the use of sensitive treatment techniques" on campus. Within a year, the review board had assembled a list of eight therapies being used at BYU which "could conflict" with church teachings. However, most of the therapies were not stopped (including electric shock, vommiting aversion, and the use of pornographic materials).
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Peter Bart
Some bishops distribute a handbook that dispenses some unusual recommendations to male students on how to curb their onanistic urge: avoid spicy foods, keep your shower door slightly ajar, and if all else fails, tie your hand to the bedpost... when Playboy magazine declared recently that, based on its survey of major college campuses, BYU had the lowest sexual temperature, the news was greeted with a sense of relief on campus.
Peter Bart, Peter Bart, 'Prigging Out,' Rolling Stone, April 14, 1983, p. 92
Peter Bart
[BYU is] a place where no one is allowed to drink or smoke; where sex is outlawed for everyone but married couples; where public figures like Senator Edward Kennedy and former first lady Betty Ford have been prevented from speaking on campus and films like The Godfather deemed unfit for student viewing; where a boy was brought to trial for looking up a girl's skirt in the library stacks (the girl never noticed, but a security man did); and where gays are not only systematically expelled but, until recent years, were even subjected occasionally to electroshock therapy to treat their 'affliction.'
Peter Bart, Peter Bart, 'Prigging Out,' Rolling Stone, April 14, 1983, p. 89
Hugh Nibley
The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism... the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances.
Hugh Nibley, Waterman, Brian and Kagel, Brian Kagel. The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU. Signature Books. 1998
O. Kendall White
The late sixties found Brigham Young University the focal point of militant protests. Sports events provided the context for protests, boycotts, disrupted games, mass demonstrations, and "riots." At one point the conflict among schools within the Western Athletic Conference became so intense that the conference almost disbanded. Administrators, already embroiled in student demonstrations over Vietnam, began to separate themselves from the Mormon school. Stanford University, for instance, severed all relations with Brigham Young University.
O. Kendall White, "Abandoning an Unpopular Policy: An Analysis of the Decision Granting the Mormon Priesthood to Blacks," Sociological Analysis, v. 41, p. 233, Fall 1980
Sterling M. McMurrin
Yes, and church leaders still bring it up whenever they're inaugurating a president at BYU or Ricks. It quite clearly lays down the law on matters of academic freedom in church institutions: there is to be no freedom in matters pertaining to religion and morals. Clark laid it out very firmly.
Sterling M. McMurrin, Matters of Conscience
Rodney Turner
Women are queens and priestesses but not gods. The Godhead, the 'Presidency of Heaven,' is a presidency of three male deities, similar to a stake presidency whose members each have wives who are responsible for domestic religious education but not ecclesiastical functions.
Rodney Turner, BYU religion professor, Sunstone Panel Discussion, September 7, 1991
Ernest Wilkinson
As to the single men, I need merely to repeat the admonition attributed to Brigham Young, "Every man not married and over twenty‑five is a menace to the community." I asked Dr. Lyman Tyler yesterday if he would document this for me, but he said he had been trying to document it for years; he had given up, so you will have to accept it either on faith, or as apocryphal.
Ernest Wilkinson, Commencement Exercises May 31, 1963 BYU Speeches of the Year, p.1
Ernest Wilkinson
As to the dress standards of women, we want no "go‑go girls" nor their pseudo‑sophisticated friends, nor will we tolerate any "surfers." And for faculty members who are behind time on their modem high school terminology, [an administrator] informs me that a "go‑go girl" is a "sexy, scantily‑dressed girl," and a "surfer" is one who is sloppily clad, often in a T‑shirt or shorts, and sometimes barefooted. Indeed, it is out of place for girls to wear slacks to any class or appear in them in any academic or administrative building on campus. This includes secretaries as well.
Ernest Wilkinson, "Make Honor Your Standard." BYU Speeches of the Year, 1965‑66
Bryan Waterman
Twice a day at Brigham Young University the campus stands still while the American flag is raised or lowered, the national anthem ringing out from loudspeakers mounted atop campus buildings. The patriotic display is, typically, the only disruption at the Mormon church‑owned school—rated "Most Nostalgic for the Reagan Era" by the Princeton Review—whose sprawling grounds are nestled against the Wasatch Front of the Rocky Mountains. A single student refusing to stop for the flag ceremony can generate a mild stream of protest letters to the official campus newspaper, the Daily Universe.
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Bryan Waterman
Operating within an understanding of national events that saw both "campus unrest" and Democratic party victories as signs of a looming socialist state, Wilkinson returned to BYU from his failed political venture. In May 1965, at the end of his first semester back in office, he delivered an apocalyptic commencement address: "The Decline and Possible Fall of the American Republic." Citing rising rates of crime, juvenile delinquency, immorality, divorce, and public welfare, the president blamed these "evidences of moral decay" on the steady increase of federal power beginning with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and extending to Lyndon Johnson's views on social security. Together with the "confiscatory" nature of income tax, an increase of Supreme Court influence, and the federal government's "deficit financing," these proofs (in Wilkinson's mind) of federally funded moral decline spelled the end of cherished American freedoms.
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Bryan Waterman
The student protest came in response to morning headlines announcing the firings of two controversial but popular faculty members: Cecilia Konchar Farr, an English professor who had reportedly upset church leaders and much of the BYU community with her public pro‑choice activism, and David Knowlton, an anthropology professor specializing in Latin American studies, who had critiqued the LDS church's American image in South America, pointing out reasons the church's full‑time proselytizing missionaries—most of whom come from the United States—were common targets for terrorists.
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Bryan Waterman
Wilkinson based his address largely on the words of Mormon leaders from Joseph Smith to the current church president and ardent cold warrior, David O. McKay. In particular he emphasized a "prophecy attributed to the Prophet Joseph that the Constitution of the United States would hang by a single thread, but be saved by the Elders of Israel," meaning church leaders and Mormon men generally. Having failed in his bid for public office, Wilkinson sought to act on "the duty of a university president" in "times of national and world crisis ... to speak forth boldly in behalf of what he considers to be the truth." Confessing his belief that "my generation has failed you [graduates] in preserving and strengthening the Constitution," Wilkinson vowed that he would mail copies of his talk, along with a compendium of anti‑communist "prophetic utterances," to every graduate, "with the hope that you may help stem the tide that is now engulfing our country."
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Bryan Waterman
Wilkinson instituted a practice of beginning each fall semester with a "crisp statement" to all students: rioters would be expelled, no questions asked. Students unfailingly answered with a standing ovation.
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Bryan Waterman
[The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Economist both] pointed out the unusual nature of the campus demonstrations, which included not only public protests, but also spray‑painted graffiti ("Farr should teach here" was scrawled across a south campus stairwell) and a large swastika burned into the administration building's carefully manicured lawn. (Student organizers denied responsibility.)
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
J. Reuben Clark
[We'll develop BYU's School of Theology] only for the purpose of developing and demonstrating the truth of the Restored Gospel and the falsity of the other religions of the world, and thereby up build the faith and knowledge of post‑graduate scholars.
J. Reuben Clark, Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark, and David O. McKay to Committee on Publications (Joseph Fielding Smith, John A. Widtsoe, Harold B. Lee, and Marion G. Romney), 9 Aug. 1944
J. Reuben Clark
I assume that I am an apostate, that I am no friend of higher learning, that I am just a low‑down ignoramus, but in that ignorance I want to say to you that I am not at all concerned with the relative fewness of our attendance at the Y who are graduate students. In this ignorance of mine, I have a feeling that the mission of the Brigham Young University is not to make Ph.D.s or M.A.s, but to distribute among as wide a number as possible the ordinary collegiate work leading to Bachelor Degrees and to instill into the students a knowledge of the Gospel and a testimony of its truthfulness.
J. Reuben Clark, Letter to Ernest Wilkinson, President of BYU
J. Reuben Clark
The function of this Committee is to pass upon and approve all materials, other than those that are purely secular, to be used by our Church Priesthood, Educational, Auxiliary, and Missionary organizations in their work of instructing members of the Church in the principles of the Gospel and in leading others to a knowledge of the Truth. To meet such required standards for use by Church organizations, such materials must: (1) Clearly set forth or be fully consistent with the principles of the restored Gospel. (2) Be wholly free from any taint of sectarianism and also of all theories and conclusions destructive of faith in the simple truths of the Restored Gospel, and especially be free from the teachings of the so‑called "higher criticism." Worldly knowledge and speculation have their place; but they must yield to revealed truth. (3) Be so framed and written as affirmatively to breed faith and not raise doubts. "Rationalizing" may be most destructive of faith. That the Finite cannot fully explain the Infinite casts no doubt upon the Infinite. Truth, not error, must be stressed. (4) Be so built in form and substance as to lead to definite conclusions that accord with the principles of the Restored Gospel which conclusions must be expressed and not left to possible deduction by the students. When truth is involved there is no place for student preference or choice. Youth must be taught that truth cannot be blinked or put aside, it must be accepted. (5) Be filled with a spirit of deepest reverence. They should give no place for the slightest levity. They should be so written that those who teach from and by them will so understand. (6) Be so organized and written that the matter may be effectively taught by men and women untrained in teaching without the background equipment given by such fields of learning as psychology, pedagogy, philosophy and ethics. The great bulk of our teachers are in the untrained group.
J. Reuben Clark, First Presidency's 1944 letter on the Literature Censorship Committee, later renamed the Committee on Publications
Mark A. Taylor
On February 25, 2000, Stuart Matis drove to the LDS chapel in Los Altos, California, and took his life. He was frustrated by the efforts by the LDS Church to pass Proposition 22, and he felt that he could not reconcile his religion and his homosexuality. He was 32 years old.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
I implore the students at BYU [Brigham Young University] to re‑assess their homophobic feelings. Seek to understand first before you make comments. We have the same needs as you. We desire to love and be loved. We desire to live our lives with happiness. We are not a threat to you or your families. We are your sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co‑workers and friends, and most importantly, we are all children of God. [Matis would later commit suicide due to ostracism.]
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
The son of Gilbert Fay and Lucy Pettingill Lauritzen, Brad G. Lauritzen born in Brigham City, Utah on October 26, 1947. In 1966, Brad registered in Brigham Young University's Study Abroad Program and spent a semester in Grenoble, France. While a student at BYU, Brad became affiliated with a social group for gay people in 1967 and early 1968 that met regularly in the "step down lounge" at the Wilkinson Center. Brad was outed by Donald Attridge, another gay student, in the early spring of 1968. Attridge had turned in a lengthy list of names to Apostle Spencer Kimball after receiving assurances from both BYU's head of Standards Office, Kenneth Lauritzen (no relation to Brad), and Kimball that those on the list would be "helped" by Kimball. Instead, Brad was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of a mental institution by his family. He later escaped and ran away to San Francisco, where he committed suicide just before Christmas, on December 18, 1971. He was 24 years old.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
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