Several years ago, one of our company leaders at American Express said that when it came to innovation, it was best to be the second company to make that change. If you were the first one, you had the disadvantage of having to work out all the bugs. If you were the second one, you could benefit from the first company’s mistakes. If you were the third or fourth or later company to make this change, you had already lost too much market share.
New Wine, Old Bottles
Over the last week I’ve been reading with wariness the announcement of the BYU Honor Code change to an environment that allows celibate gay students the freedom to date (chastely) like their heterosexual peers without their entire education being threatened by other students reporting them to the Honor Code Office. Given the impacts to these students who’ve chosen to attend BYU, who attend Church, many who’ve served missions, the change is something that will allow them to study in peace and to finish the degrees they are seeking without being hounded and persecuted by their fellow students. Most members of faculty and students are thrilled with these changes, but there are some who are banding together to oppose these changes under the banner of SaveBYU (one example), believing that the purity of the Church and the Y are at stake if gay students are allowed this level of personal freedom. This is an example of why Pres. Nelson said to take your vitamins because change was coming.
In the book The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, he points out something very disruptive that explains the leaps forward that occur in industries: new entrants. When you aren’t tied to the baggage of the past, you can create something entirely new and essentially break an industry. Existing companies that want to compete in a completely new space have to tear down old structures and behaviors that were necessary to support the preceding technology or system. A new company doesn’t have to do that. This also explains why many countries with emerging economies and poor infrastructure may have no landlines but have nearly universal cell phone coverage. A disrupting new idea can build something that doesn’t rely on old systems. It also allows companies (or countries) to create something fresh that is well-suited to a new technology, product or system while ignoring the old technology or system that they never fully invested in. Or as Jesus put it, when you try to put new wine in old bottles (or wineskins), the bottles burst. They don’t work. Clearly Jesus read the Innovator’s Dilemma.
This is also behind the idea that Mormonism is a restoration church. We don’t have to deal with doctrines that had crept into Christianity that we don’t like. We aren’t a protestant Church explaining why we broke with Rome. We can just create (or restore) doctrine and the structures and that suit that doctrine. Joseph Smith was particularly wary of codifying structures or documents that might create future brittleness. He decried “creeds” which had a tendency to become doctrinal baggage that would hold back a Church from further light and knowledge through revelation or increased understanding.[1] When the Church was restored, our doctrines and scriptural interpretations (and scriptures!) were new wine. They couldn’t be inserted into an existing sect of Christianity without breaking it. They were radical enough to require a completely new religion to hold them (and maybe more importantly to enable their creation). They were an innovation in a stale market.[2]
Structures Lead to Structural Failure
On another project I was on, we discussed how to design the user experience. Where did we want the users to go? Someone raised the valid point that first we needed to know where the users went naturally: the cow trails. You can fence the cows in, but where the pastures are wide, you can see the migration patterns of the cows, and they usually are related to what helps the cows survive: water, avoiding poisonous plants, following the herd (which protects them from predators), etc. This is one of my main beefs with the layout of the quad at BYU and on most campuses, actually. When the trails force late students trying to make it to class on time to go around two sides of a square to get to class, you can bet they are going to cut corners and run across the grass.
Sarah Winchester used this line of thinking in creating her mansion. Because she feared retribution from the angry ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles, she built a house that was deliberately designed to confuse the ghosts. Staircases led nowhere or straight into the ceiling, doors were installed that didn’t open, some rooms were cut off from the rest of the house. Was she crazy? Yeah. But the principle holds true: when you make create dysfunctional structures, the users (or in her case, angry ghosts) get confused and eventually give up and quit using the system.
The more structures you have, the harder it will be to make changes happen. Most leaders understand this. If they create something they want to protect beyond their lifetime, the best way to do it is to codify it. That’s how we got the Nicene Creed, and it’s also how we got the Proclamation to the World (which hasn’t been canonized but is being treated as if it has). Sometimes structure gets created to protect an idea a leader feels must be preserved or it will die a natural death, but just as often codification of ideas happens through scope creep. I recently read the Honor Code of Southern Virginia University (an LDS affiliated but not owned 4-year school). On their website, there are photos of students and professors with neatly groomed beards. The dress and grooming section of their code says:
Our dress and grooming should be clean, modest, respectful, and appropriate for the occasion.
BYU’s code appears to be simple as well, until you realize that it points you to another document that actually contains the real code, and it’s got a LOT of caveats. You can be turned away from taking a test if you haven’t shaved recently enough or if you are wearing leggings. There are also rules about housing that force students to live in places that disallow opposite sex guests in certain areas of the apartment or after a curfew and that require word of wisdom observance. These are structures that preserve an increasingly strict set of behaviors, and they are much stricter than when I went to school there in the late 80s and early 90s. At a cursory glance, the following things have been explicitly added:
- Regular Church attendance
- Expansion of dress and grooming restrictions
- A line about “following campus policies”
- An annual ecclesiastical endorsement
- Avoiding profane and vulgar language [3]
- They just added vaping which wasn’t a thing then, but I would have assumed this would be verboten.
Going back to the amping up of the ecclesiastical endorsement, particularly when coupled with mandatory Church attendance, failure to obtain this means that you could be kicked out of school. The Honor Code Office has explained that most of their cases are opened due to “spontaneous confessions” by students. That is literally not a thing that was going on when I was a student there. If you had something to confess, you went to your bishop or possible a trusted professor who might recommend you go to your bishop. Some bishops were great, and some were terrible. Unless you stayed in the same apartment complex for multiple years, you changed bishops a lot. The fact that so many cases are the result of “spontaneous confessions” makes it obvious what is happening. By making Church attendance mandatory and requiring an annual ecclesiastical endorsement, some bishops are forcing confessing students to turn themselves in to the HCO. They are putting a student’s academic standing at risk over something confessed in private. Unless a student has some kind of compulsive disorder, she’s not going to spontaneously confess to the Honor Code Office. Why would she? As a result, the Honor Code office is many times as large as it was when I attended. We can see several structures in this example: an increasingly stringent behavior code, an annual interview, mandatory weekly attendance, and a growing HCO to handle the caseload generated by it all. I suspect we got here through the slippery slope of incrementally building hedges about the law to “clarify” every little case that comes up. Once you start creating those structures, it’s hard to justify throwing them out.
It’s the premise of another business book, First Break All the Rules. We tend to assume that we have to operate within the structures that exist. Nobody has time or resources to tear down all the freeways to build new ones. But when those existing structures start to fall apart, suddenly the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing.
Blame the User
Back in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic began, it was mostly treated as a joke by those in power (although reports of the Reagan administration’s role are mixed). The very topic of homosexuality was still in the closet, and it was a time in which sexuality in any form wasn’t very openly discussed. Religions saw homosexuals as a separate group of people, deviants, not a part of their own congregation. It was mainstream for individuals to view homosexuals as choosing a profligate lifestyle, one that took them away from God. Most churches saw them as simply not the target audience for their message (ironic given who Jesus hung out with, but there it is).
Regardless, that is not the world we live in now, not at all. We know that being gay is not a choice any more than being heterosexual is. We understand sexual orientation as existing on a spectrum rather than a binary. We see it as natural that people want companionship and love, regardless their sexual orientation. The problem is that we have old wineskins that appear ready to burst–in some cases–if we try to add in this new wine. And that’s the age old innovator’s dilemma. What are those “old wineskins”? Things like the doctrine of the nuclear family (let’s be honest, that wasn’t the same thing that was preached as core doctrine in 1880) and of course temple liturgy.
Back when I did a lot of project work, we used to talk about the likelihood that a change would succeed using the following formula: quality of idea x buy-in = success. It was an important reminder to include the user experience into design, but also the psychology of the organization. Why would people fight the change? If you could design something that was easier to use than the existing system with as short and easy a transition time as possible, your chances of adopting the new product or process were much better. I was listening to the podcast, Cautionary Tales, and one of the episodes talked about the engineer who designed tanks for the first time during WW2. The British army was not equipped to incorporate the game-changing military technology into its existing structures. As if in protest, generals continued to assign cavalry horses to those assigned to tanks. I’m not sure how they were supposed to get the horses into the tanks, but that’s how skeptical the generals were of the new idea! Ultimately, the engineer was fed up with how unwilling the British army was to take his ideas seriously, and he went across the pond and shared his designs with the Germans who were enthusiastic and ultimately used the tanks against the Brits. Now, that’s a cautionary tale.
If you try to create an organization that wants to accept both white supremacists and people of color, you will end up with an organization of only white supremacists. Why would people of color want to be in such an organization? They may for a while, but only until there are any better alternatives. If you really want to change the makeup of the group, you have to take a convincing stand against racism. You have to take actions to disallow its extreme proponents. You have to create an intolerance among the mainstream for racist comments to be given air. That’s a minimum. When people say that the Church wasn’t ready to allow black people to hold the priesthood until 1978, what they are really saying is that God cared a lot more about racists than about people of color.
Early Adopters vs. Dinosaurs
We are at that same moment again, and right now, the Church (or BYU-P at least) is testing the old wineskins to see how much they can hold before they burst. Right now, it looks like they are holding, but we’ve barely put a few drops in, just the smallest amount possible, really. We’ve only presented the idea that gay students (many of whom probably entered BYU before admitting their own sexuality, even to themselves) should be allowed to finish their education without being persecuted and having their educational investment put in jeopardy simply for being who they are. Can the Church allow room for both homophobes and homosexuals? There only seems to be enough air in the room for one of these groups, and for too long, it’s been the wrong one.
But you can also be too early to adopt such changes. Timing is everything. 1978 was incredibly late in race acceptance. Growing up, I often wondered why there weren’t more black people at Church and why a Church with ongoing revelation would take so long after the Civil Rights movement to eliminate the Priesthood and Temple Ban (14 long years after 1964 if you’re counting). It would have made sense to me if the Church had a large presence in the southeastern US where racial religious segregation was common. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me until I went to BYU and lived in Utah for the first time. Nearly everyone was white, and their ancestors had lived in Utah for multiple generations. Utah wasn’t (at the time) a place that had many outsiders immigrating in (which has changed in the subsequent decades). The invisibility of the experience of other races was enough to keep it off the radar. It was easy to avoid racism in theory, to feel as though there was no real racial strife when everyone in the room was the same race. Nobody was claiming to be a racist; they just didn’t know they were because they weren’t being confronted by diversity.
Racial diversity challenges that thought process. For example, one of my roommates was told by a proctor in the testing center to raise her hand if she needed any help on the math test she was taking. She thought this was weird. Why was it OK to ask for help on the test? Did this guy know a lot about math? When she asked why he offered help, he slowed down his speech and explained with animated gestures that he meant if she needed help understanding the words. Because she appeared to be of Asian descent (she was Hawaiian), he assumed English was not her first language. She shared this story which was both funny and cringe-worthy, and hearing her experience helped others check their assumptions. Nobody wanted to be that guy.
Likewise, seeing LGB(sorry T) students who are doing normal behaviors for their age range while still living the same standards as other students makes it easier to understand their experience. When you outlaw innocuous behaviors, they appear more suspicious and nefarious. The lack of familiarity creates an empathy vacuum.
Conclusion
The most recent change to BYU’s honor code is an attempt to remove some of the structure that was harmful to a large population of students, putting them in the cross-hairs of fellow students who see their attendance at the Y as an impurity to be removed. Some students have pushed for the changes to be made more clear, but I wonder if a little ambiguity might not be better. The more we codify, the more we have to break down later as we figure things out. However, at the same time, we need to block the cow trails of the homophobes who dislike the changes. The current “loophole” appears to be reporting a gay student for dating with intent to marry, a claim that is pretty impossible to prove or disprove. I’d like to see that kind of rule being enforced among heterosexual students:
HCO: Brad and Janet, we needed to talk to you about your behavior. We understand that you may be dating with the intent to marry.
Brad: Yes, that’s right!
Janet: Eh, not really.
HCO: Uhm, awkward.
So what do you think?
- Do you see other examples of innovations or changes in the Church that threaten the structures?
- Do you think the wineskins will hold as LGB(and maybe T) policies evolve?
- Are there additional structures that you think are threatened by more open acceptance of LGBT members?
- Is the Church designed in such a way that it can handle new ideas better / be more structurally flexible based on ongoing revelation being a foundational principle? Defend your answer.
Discuss.
[1] A little ironic given how the Church has still codified things he didn’t necessarily intend to be used that way such as the PoGP version of the First Vision, the procedures around administering the sacrament, the Articles of Faith, the temple ceremony that wasn’t written down until decades after his death, etc.
[2] Obviously, Mormonism wasn’t the only innovating Church at the time, just one of many during the Second Great Awakening. Others include Seventh Day Adventists (roughly 21 million church members), Disciples of Christ (a movement which boasts three US presidents despite current membership at around 380K), Churches of Christ–non-denominational (roughly 2 million members worldwide), and many others.
[3] I know this was enforced when I attended there, but I’m not convinced it was explicitly written into the code. I had a roommate who was called in for writing “BS Ticket” (she spelled out the word) in the memo line of her check to pay a campus parking ticket. She had to apologize to the cashier. Cow trail solution: PROVIDE MORE PARKING!
Wheat & Tares 
Good analysis, but:
“When people say that the Church wasn’t ready to allow black people to hold the priesthood until 1978, what they are really saying is that God cared a lot more about racists than about people of color.” Nope. Some people who say that are really saying God had nothing to do with the failure to make a change earlier. (Never mind DOM’s reported interpretation of divine silence as a “not now” answer to his alleged prayers on the subject.)
“the D&C version of the First Vision” No such thing. I think you mean PofGP.
“Is the Church designed in such a way that it can … be more structurally flexible based on ongoing revelation being a foundational principle?”
Not really! There is an organizational loyalty tradition — varying, but mostly authoritarian interpretations of “sustain”* — and leadership calling and succession practices that cut as strongly against change as in favor of change, The question of structural flexibility is deferred largely to whoever is the [usually geriatric] president — “unleashed” to put his culture and thought into practice whether it facilitates or impedes or is confused with revelation.
*“Our sustaining of prophets is a personal commitment that we will do our utmost to uphold their prophetic priorities. Our sustaining is an oath-like indication that we recognize their calling as a prophet to be legitimate and binding upon us” (RMN on “Sustaining the Prophets,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2014, 75).
But now I wonder if I misunderstood the question.
Your exchange at the end is missing a part on this line (I added it in):
Brad: Yes, that’s right! God told me.
Sorry if that is poking fun. I just remember praying like crazy for months asking if my wife was “the one”. After a few months I just had to accept, “well I don’t seem to be hearing anything that says I shouldn’t”.
I don’t see the church generally being very risk-taking. So many of the innovations over the last century were tested at a local level before rolling out church-wide. But I think the pace of change has dramatically increased and that MO is just not working like it did 50 years ago.
I just can’t see that the current policies are going to hold and maybe BYU-P knows that. Maybe they are thinking they take these few steps and maybe over a few years the homophobic population of BYU will self-select out of going to BYU-P (blocking the cow trail as you referred to it). After a while another step can be made. Or it could be that it cases a backlash and they step back from this small step forward. We shall see.
On your point how those in Utah in the 70’s just didn’t have much exposure to other races, especially African-American. It took a lot of outside pressure to get people to really think about their prejudices as by default it was easy just to not deeply think about it.
I think on the LGBT arena it is different. Generational Mormons are finding out they have LGBT children and grandchildren. I think that is one reason LGBT acceptance is advancing so quickly – even in Utah. Now that it is more acceptable to come out, the more people are having to really face the issue of their prejudices.
Policies about LGBT people have been built on a foundation of ignorance and misinformation. When you think that there are exactly two sexes and people who deviate from typical straight and cisgender orientations/identities have chosen to do so and are rebelling, these policies make sense.
After reading the OP, I find myself wondering, “How will the Church’s market share be affected by the fact that it is clearly not the first or second adopter?” The Episcopalians, some Lutherans, and many non-denominational religions are early adopters.
Great thoughts.
I’ve been wondering if this isn’t about moving the burden of dealing with LGB restrictions away from the university and onto the church (for legal purposes…?). So under the HC, LGB students can date. But they still can’t under the church rules. So rather than tattling to the HCO, other students tattle to the couple’s bishops. Then the bishops remove/restrict their endorsement. Which effectively does the same thing as the HCO having a rule.
Along these lines of distinguishing between a policy or doctrine and an institutional structure, I like the contrast between the Honor Code and the Honor Code Office. It’s not the principles of the Honor Code that are the problem, it’s the institutional enforcement practices and power of the Honor Code Office. I know there has been a change of leadership and focus in the office of late, but for several decades they have acted like the Gestapo. I’ll bet that selective and misguided enforcement atmosphere pushed more BYU students out of the Church than any of the anti-Mormon stuff the Religion Dept. sees as Satan’s frontal assault on young Mormons. We have met the enemy, and it is us. It is discouraging to see the SaveBYU group emerge, as if they felt someone had to fill the fascist vacuum left by the newfound moderation of the HCO.
The leadership could change some of this if they would just address relevant issues directly in General Conference. They generally don’t, and I suspect the explanation would be something along the lines of the leadership being too tied to traditional Church structures and practices. Within the Church, innovation happens slowly and painfully and a generation or two too late.
A good solid year of dialectical behavior therapy wouldn’t hurt anybody in this church.
Also: baby-steps in the direction of LGBT inclusion are necessary for BYU-P admission to Big 12. This is very important to leadership, top to bottom. The power of BYU sports amongst LDS males can’t be overestimated – a source of great pride or (currently) angst. They – myself included to be 100% honest – justify all this as a “missionary tool” but that of course is total BS. We love/live to win. It’s evolutionary (smiley face here)!!! Interestingly, certain LDS females – my wife for instance – are every bit as rabid as the males.
Wondering: Thanks for the D&C / POGP correction. I’ve updated the post.
MTodd: One reason the Church may be cautious about being too early to adopt social change is what happened when the RLDS / CoC ordained women in the 1980s. They hemorrhaged members initially and underwent a schism. Conservative leaders will look at that as a cautionary tale. Thing is, back when that happened, most of our current crop of Church leaders were already deeply retired. I was a teenager. That’s, IMO, the hardest thing to overcome in our Church’s conservatism: being led by a gerontocracy. It has a few good points, but many many bad ones as well.
RetX: I’ve heard smarter people than me float that same idea, that this shift just gives the Church cover to discriminate on a different basis, but I’m not convinced. After all, dating, kissing and holding hands aren’t a violation of the Law of Chastity or else my mom should be turned in for mouth kissing her dog. (Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration). Now, as far as I can tell, it’s possible that a bishop could capriciously refuse the ecclesiastical endorsement for a variety of reasons, but dating is not explicitly called out. All that a student is asked per the questions is whether she obeys the Law of Chastity, right? The HCO has previously opened cases and amassed files on gay students because other students informed on them to the HCO. The HCO has always been run under the assumption that the accused must prove her innocence, not a presumption of innocence. Bishops don’t generally amass files or conduct investigations. So bishop roulette applies as always, but if the HCO is suddenly refusing to dig up dirt on gay students, I see this as a huge change in the right direction.
E: I have often wondered how much gender dysphoria is created by hard-line gender roles. If we just let people be who they are without trying to prescribe who they are, maybe this is suddenly no longer a cause for distress. But it’s been going on for a long time, and almost always for socially manipulative reasons. If you want men to overcome their fear and fight your wars you tell them feelings are not manly and only women and children cry, so hide your fears and pick up a gun! If you want women to have a lot of babies to replace all the citizens you just killed in your war, you tell them it’s feminine to stay at home with their snuggly, sweet kiddos, cooking delicious meals, and being adored by their doting husbands. These aren’t some eternal principle or factual reality; they are propaganda. That should be obvious, but since we’ve been fed it since birth, it’s hard to overcome that programming.
Happy Hubby: Your observation about gay children being born into Mormon families is germane to understanding why this tipping point is happening so much faster. If people of different races were being born into caucasian families back in the 60s and 70s, it might have caused a different flavor of marital discord, but it would have forced that reckoning with unstated racist assumptions to happen much earlier.
A couple of you have mentioned the idea that BYU allows something that a bishop might not allow, thus preventing an ecclesiastical endorsement of a gay dating student. This would likely result in a law suit. Imagine your university telling you that a certain behavior (gay dating) is allowed and then your bishop preventing you from going to that university for the same reason, even though both are owned by the same entity. See you in court.
Which brings me to my main point: I think the Church / BYU has dodged a bullet so fat by not being sued for discriminatory practices. No need for us to debate here what private universities are allowed and aren’t allowed to do. There’s enough gray area to suggest that in this day and age the Church needs to make changes. You can keep someone out of the Church but I don’t think you can keep them out of school for this kind of behavior if the school’s policy doesn’t forbid it.
Dave B is right, and the concept of morality enforcers feels like the Saudi Morality Police. What happened to: I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves?
Consider the woman taken in adultery. Who sounds more like the savior and who sounds like the crowd that dragged the woman in front of everyone to be executed?
Andy: The current HCO just feels like something that got out of control over time. BYU likes to claim that the students created the Honor Code. I mean, whatever, maybe they did…at some point in the distant past, literally the mid-1970s, almost 50 years ago! The changes to the code since then are not student-created. If they did an annual student referendum on the code, I suspect it would look very different than it does.
But I do believe that it would still include some things that are pretty restrictive such as Word of Wisdom observance and BYU-housing standards. I suspect most students like that they can be in a “clean” environment at school free from the distractions of students and roommates living other standards, leaving a sock on the doorknob, puking in the sink, etc., and they don’t have to be the heavy. They can just point to the code and let the school have the tough conversations. They can feel morally superior, not feel like a narc.
The truth of student behavior is really somewhere in the middle. Some students take delight in using the HCO as a weapon against other students. Some use it to avoid dealing with what they see as other students’ nonsense that makes them uncomfortable. A homophobic student being made uncomfortable by a celibate gay person feels over the line to me (and many others). You can’t control everyone around you. Just because you are uncomfortable that another person exists doesn’t mean you have the right to harass them. At least not anymore, thanks to this change.
Angela—you make a good point. The CoC lost 25% of their tithing members and the fall out from that is such is that without the LDS buying historical items they turned down before the CoC pension fund would have failed.
As a cautionary tale it really has legs.
As it is, schisms in churches over marriage equality has been surprisingly common.
I was surprised to see it in denominations where I thought it would go smoothly and uncontested.
Stephen, your comments made me think that it is possible that the way the entire LGBT issue is being handled isn’t creating a schism via a splinter group, but somewhat the same issue with people leaving without being part of a group that leaves. It isn’t a dramatic and visible, but it can reach a point where it has the same effect on those that stay.
I am surprised how strong the reaction is to this when it is such a small change. Over at Millenial Star the comments show such outrage. People saying they will stop paying tithing etc. when all this does is ease the many reasons that gay students may have to be in the Honor code office. If you are openly gay at BYU this makes it possible to attend without worrying about being reported for even normal social interactions with same sex people. I hope we can continue to be more and more tolerant and accepting. It would be great if my gay daughter felt like this church was welcoming enough to attend again.
BG, thanks for pointing me to the M* post and comments. It sadly amusing to watch them fall apart over this–but, are we really surprised by their reaction? I’m not in the slightest.
On the other hand, I think you’re wrong. This is not a “small change.” It’s a game changer, and the people are M* are correct to make a big deal out of it, precisely because it shuts down their worldview and opens the future to something truly beautiful. And they are correct, the world is watching–not only watching BYU, but also watching such absurd reactions to the change by the “faithful.”
The hand-wringing over at M* reminds me of the hand-wringing I witnessed prior to and in 1978, though this honor code change, read together with the new handbook’s provisions on same-sex relations, is not nearly as big a change as the 1978 change was to what we had previously been taught about blacks and priesthood.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, clarification comes as to what same-sex behaviors are acceptable on campus
Wondering: Exactly. The Church really hasn’t approved of any kind of doctrinal changes. If you are gay and celibate, you haven’t broken the LoC as it was explained to me, even if you have dated someone, held hands or kissed. The fact that these students had their academic status in jeopardy and large files amassed on them and had been hauled in to be interrogated repeatedly is reprehensible is what should be shocking to people. If that’s not the shocking thing, wow, I just don’t know what to say to someone who doesn’t see how terrible that is to treat people that way.
I saw BG’s comment and mixed up M* and T&S in my mind and went over to T&S and read some excellent essays by Steve Smith that were shat upon by Jon Miranda who thinks more about gay sex than any gay person I’ve ever known. These essays weren’t even about LGBT stuff exactly. I think he has an algorithm that alerts him whenever a Church member talks about anything to do with homosexuality. Then he pops up like the proverbial bad penny to say that gay sex will literally kill you and is physically harmful. Mm’kay. Now I don’t want to go look at the M* train wreck. Maybe after I’ve had a few more diet cokes.
“…who thinks more about gay sex than any gay person I’ve ever known”
This cracked me up! Reminds me of the stake presidency counselor who came to our old HP group week after week to harangue about pornography. He claimed the Church had done research and discovered that 75% of all active HPs had a serious problem with pornography. Eventually, the stake president put a stop to his harangues on the subject, but only after I had remarked that it seemed as if this was his way of going after vicarious pornography! I wonder what JM’s obsession is all about.
It’s a bit tangential to Angela’s post, but I’d like to give a brief nod to the BYU administration for what they’re doing here. There’s no way this change could happen without the active support–and very probably the initiative–of the senior leaders on BYU-Provo’s campus.
Consider the magnitude of the task. It would begin with a years-long process of gaining trust and advocating gradual change. BYU leaders would need to work with the Church leaders on the level above (i.e., the board of trustees), analyzing the university’s needs and arguing for the possible benefits of change. They would also need to work with (or against) people inside the university–especially the powerful Honor Code Office, which embodies the paternalistic, punitive side of BYU’s culture. Because of the Church’s tacit requirement that changes must appear to be uncontroversial, all of the politicking and organizational groundwork associated with reform must go on quietly, beneath the surface. Reform of the honor code and the Honor Code Office would be one of the most challenging problems any BYU administration could take on, and it would have to happen essentially in secret.
It happens that now is a good time to push for honor code reform. The Honor Code Office has put BYU in serious legal jeopardy by engaging in illegal activity through the abuse of police records. That scandal is two years old, but it’s not fully resolved, and I’m sure it’s still very much a live issue within the administration of the school and the Church. That situation must have led people to question the value and the values of the HCO.
It seems likely that this slight (but potentially profound) policy change is happening because some clear-sighted leaders at BYU understand that there’s no stopping the new wine from maturing, so we’d better start working on those new skins. I’d wager that Church leaders honestly don’t know where this will lead. They probably disagree among themselves about where they want it to take us. Our expressions of gratitude, hope and love can only help.
So why isn’t this also implemented at BYU-I and BYU-H?
Wise words Loursat.
Loursat’s comment also goes directly to why BYU-H and BYU-I haven’t figured this out yet. From Twitter discussions, it appears that students at the different BYU campuses have sought clarification. At BYU-P, they received the clearest response from faculty and HCO personnel; they were told that if a complaint is made about a gay student doing normal dating things (not sexual, but possibly affectionate), the HCO will not create a case or conduct an investigation. Only if the informant (let’s call a spade a spade) has knowledge of a violation of the Law of Chastity, meaning an actual sexual act, whether it is hetero or homosexual. Because that’s what college is all about…ratting out your friends for sex.
At BYU-I, the HCO personnel seemed to be terrified to say anything of substance, even paranoid they were being recorded (only by the angels, pal). My own guess is just that BYU-P is the flagship and will always be the one to figure these things out first. Also, for whatever reason, BYU-I believes it is outrighteous-ing BYU-P by adding even higher hedges about the law on various matters. There’s a lot less mistrust of the students there, and a heavier-handed administration at least. BYU-H, I have no idea and have seen no discussion that was specific to that campus. Perhaps the tendency is for a more controlled environment when the student body is smaller and more isolated. Hard to say.
At BYU-H they have better things to do, like head to the beach. I wouldn’t mind being there right now.
Hawkgrrl,
I appreciate your distinction between (1) the law; and (2) hedges (or fences) around the law. I wish more among us could tell the difference. The law of chastity is as it has been explained — the act itself. The other stuff is not a violation of the law (other stuff might still be improper or ill-advised, but is not a violation of the law).
There are proper times and places for hedges, but they are still hedges.
I am wholly unsurprised by the BYU adjustment. BYU is not endorsing or encouraging same-sex relationships, and is not caving to the homosexual lobby. I think the matter is much more mundane: BYU has taken a step to help avoid a hostile environment. The law of chastity is unchanged. All persons on campus are still expected to obey the law of chastity. And I suppose persons can still be expelled for violations of the law of chastity — but not for leaning on a hedge. We have to be able to tell the difference between the law and the hedge. No doctrine has been changed, waived, lowered, or otherwise diminished. What was is before is still sin.
With the campus environment being less hostile to campus denizens, BYU as an institution will be better able to retain accreditations, join PAC-12, avoid lawsuits, and so forth. And campus denizens will be less troubled by the real or imagined duty to report violations by others, as only violations of the law (and not leaning on a hedge) are reportable. Everyone will have more liberty to live and study in the campus environment. I think the BYU adjustment is small step in adapting to current realities, not any sort of sea change.
ji – I expect the lived experience from a gay person attending BYU can be more than just a “small step.” I think looking at it from an outsider I do think they might very well say it is a small step and maybe done just to keep out of hot water legally and otherwise.
But I don’t know if you have been to BYU the last few years, but your comment of ” I suppose persons can still be expelled for violations of the law of chastity — but not for leaning on a hedge”. I don’t know about the hedges at BYU-P campus, but you had better stay clear of the grass.
http://www.thebunyion.com/2015/04/21/byu-landscapers-resort-to-landmines-to-keep-students-off-grass/
Who knew that the straight and narrow path was campus sidewalks? 🙂
I wonder if this is part of a strategy to make gay marriage acceptable by steps, so that when it is announced it is less of a shock to conservative members.
Once it is acceptable to date??? where does that lead?
So after say 12 months of gays dating at BYU, and I assume stake dances etc. It has become acceptable, and announcing that gay marriage is approved will seem like the obvious next step.
I hope so.
As a gay Mormon, I must confess I enjoy witnessing TBM homophobes squirm and feel uncomfortable. How does it feel to be on the receiving end of something that challenges your faith?! I’ve read the comments on W&T, BCC, T&S, and M* with much delight. To the LGBTQ members, their allies, and the greater gay community, I support you as you continue to ‘kick against the pricks.’