BYU’s newly updated Honor Code is at odds with LDS Church’s LGBTQ rules (Salt Lake Tribune, August 30, 2023)

If you don’t want religious bigots, you probably shouldn’t be going to a religious school.

LGBTQ students at Brigham Young University celebrated three years ago, when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ flagship school quietly deleted from the Honor Code a ban on “homosexual behavior.” For the first time, many students began holding hands or kissing in public. Others took the moment to come out as queer.

Then, a month later, the Church Educational System administrators who oversee BYU’s campuses issued a statement clarifying that despite the deleted language, “same-sex romantic behavior” wasn’t compatible with the Honor Code.

Last week, CES restored language to the code explicitly prohibiting LGBTQ affection — now called “same-sex romantic behavior.” Though the ban had never really lost its effect, for some students the official restoration of it still felt like a gut punch.

“It’s heartbreaking to see it repeated over and over again that queer students aren’t welcome,” said Gracee Purcell, a BYU psychology major. “Every time they reinstate and repeat it, it hurts a little more.”

The Honor Code, a set of guidelines that employees and students are expected to follow, is enforced by the administration on the main campus in Provo, as well as BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii and Ensign College in downtown Salt Lake City. It instructs all community members to live “a chaste and virtuous life, including abstaining from sexual relations outside marriage between a man and a woman.” The new language adds that “living a chaste and virtuous life also includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behavior.”

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