Thursday, March 10, 2011

BYU honor code & homosexuality



Two blog posts, one from Pat Griffin's LGBT blog and another from Outsports, both discuss the recent situation with Brigham Young basketball player Brandon Davies being dismissed for the team for having sexual relations with his girlfriend. They also discuss and speculate the possibility and experiences of a homosexual student-athlete at BYU.

As far as we know, there haven't been any — at least that have come out publicly. As both posts touch on, such a person would probably risk being removed from their team and possibility the University, let alone face the ostracism that would come with being gay at a Mormon school that imposes a strict honor code upon its students. (As a side note: I have no problem's with BYU's honor code, since students agree to it before they attend the school.)

Thus, with those possible consequences in mind, it's not surprising at all that no athletes have publicly come out as homosexual at BYU.

The following comment is from a BYU student who responded to the Outsports blog post that identifies as homosexual:
"I’m confident that no athlete will come out anytime soon. At least, not if they want to play. Based on my experience, BYU would clamp down on anyone who came out ridiculously fast, whether they had broken the honor code or not. Even if BYU didn’t take any action, their fellow students certainly wouldn’t be up for the idea of a gay athlete representing the school."

This type of a reaction really wouldn't surprise me either. Rarely do athletes in general come out as homosexual and risk losing playing time, being outcasted, and more, let alone athletes at a school like BYU. The University — and the Mormon religion itself, obviously — is very conservative and it's hard to predict what kind of backlash would be in store for a student-athlete that was openly gay. My guess is it wouldn't be good.

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