Better at BYU?

What do you people think about this?

12 responses to “Better at BYU?”

  1. AWB says:

    It made me sad, I guess, because it really doesn’t sound like it gets much better at all.

  2. Dave says:

    Yeah. It gets better when you leave, IMO.

    And it’s progress that there are this many queer kids at BYU willing to go on camera and talk about their identity. But when the club can’t even have words like “gay” in its name, and has to call itself “Understanding Same-Gender Attraction”??!? I always thought it was more or less the first principle of a liberation movement that you take control of the language that is used to refer to you. (And most of the kids in the video do that.)

  3. swells says:

    I guess the most hopeful part were the straight kids in the end who are going against the church’s beliefs so they can support the queer kids. It wasn’t convincing, though, that it gets better–the very opening frames made it clear that it’s pretty doubtful. LIfting a ban against “advocating homosexuality”–only TWO years ago??? As recently as that they treated it as something into which you could be talked?

    Sigh.

  4. AWB says:

    One cannot help but notice that every single one of those students in the video is a total honey for whom things would get better immediately upon self-introduction into a non-Mormon queer community. What is in the BYU water tank?

  5. josh k-sky says:

    That Hawkins girl has awesome hair.

  6. FPS says:

    “Understanding Same-Gender Attraction” is, indeed, awfully apologetic, but I guess that’s what happens when you stick around too long in a club that emphatically does not want you as a member. Meanwhile, it’s not even a good acronym. How about “Tentative Mormon Inquiry”? That’d be sort of cute, and maintains the sheepish aesthetic.

    It’s very sweet, of course, and hopeful, but part of me insensitively wants to say “go find a religion that doesn’t hate you, or better yet, no religion.” And yet…Mormonism isn’t going anywhere, so I suppose it’s grand if they stay and fight, and really that fight for acceptance is an exciting thing to be a part of.

    AWB I was actually going to say they were rather plain for Mormons. Except for the one who does sarcastic jazz hands when he says “and I’m GAY.”

    In closing: FREEDOM RINGS?! That is adorably 1992.

  7. AWB says:

    FPS, you live in NYC. I haven’t seen a good-looking adult in a long, long time.

  8. J-Man says:

    Yeah, I want to see the video those kids make in a few years, to find out which ones left the church, and which ones stayed and tried to go straight, etc.

  9. PB says:

    Honestly, it gets better for most kids with some sort of difference or intellectual curiosity or any curiousity or any life to them at all when they leave BYU. I was just an odd kid and I was miserable. I can’t imagine what it is like for these kids. They need to get the hell out of there.

  10. josh k-sky says:

    Huh, apparently this is part of a movement to end anti-LGBT discrimination on campuses using accreditation as leverage. Pretty awesome. (I didn’t watch til the end — was that in there?)

  11. Dave says:

    I think the video was not made for the website you link, k-sky; USGA/TMI has its own agenda. I also suspect there are too many conservative religious colleges and universities to make accreditation depend on anti-discrimination. But it’s not a terrible idea.

  12. farrell fawcett says:

    Watching that video kind of got me teared up. (damn you, stupid uplifing music!) As a former BYU student, I couldn’t believe that the university would, one, EVER allow gays kids to come out, and two, ever allow a club to exist like this. WOW! I’m so stunned. And so happy for them. Twenty years ago the Student Review newspaper (the unsanctioned BYU newspaper that was responsible for bringing together me, Bryan, Rachel, Dave, Cedric, Pandora, etc…) ran an infamous issue about homosexuality at BYU. It was really brave journalism. And it might have been the story that ultimately doomed the paper–it closed down a years later. Fast-forward twenty years, and now there’s a sanctioned fucking club for LGBTs! Awesome. I never imagined this was possible. It *really* does get better. Onward…