BYU Honor Code Debate: Tactics

Last week, I had posted the article entitled, Gay Students vs. BYU Honor Code (archived here), to my Facebook account. This, along with my opening comments on the article, caused quite a debate (you can read more about this on my previous blog post). What really struck me were the tactics being used by those in favor of BYU’s honor code (and by extension, LDS morals). What I mean by “tactics” is the way in which they presented and ‘justified’ their argument, not the argument itself. Some of these tactics are somewhat universal, in that most people use them regularly, including myself (though I’m trying to improve in this area). However, I’ve noticed certain ones being extremely common among Mormons specifically.

BYU Honor Code Debate

Last week, I came across a news article entitled, Gay Students vs. BYU Honor Code (archived here), which was an editorial showcasing three cases of how gay students were being discriminated against by LDS-owned Brigham Young University’s honor code. I found this article to be interesting since it touched on a few of the same issues that I have with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“the Church”).

After reading the article, I made the decision to share it on Twitter and Facebook (something I do regularly with articles I read). After clicking the “share” button, it asked me to add my own comments to the link, so I wrote the following:

Post-secondary education should be about challenging the status quo, pushing boundaries, innovation, exploring the world with new eyes, and free-thinking. Yet BYU’s Honor Code represses all of that, and is simply “about controlling the production of the next generation of Mormons”

(Note the last line being a quotation from the article itself.)

I knew that what I wrote would be provocative – especially for my LDS family and friends who would be certain to see it on Facebook – but this was kind of the point. I wanted the article to get people’s attention, because I feel that such discrimination happens all too frequently and shouldn’t be tolerated, let alone institutionalized, by a prestigious post-secondary institution. At the time, I didn’t expect to get much of a response from posting it on my Facebook wall, seeing as I post numerous other articles on a daily basis, with only a few comments here and there. This one, however, gained a lot more attention than I could have imagined, and turned into a large 4 day debate.

Response from the Church, part 3

I received another letter from the Church last night. This time it was from my bishop, who had called me a while back. The letter simply stated that he has forwarded my request on to the Stake President. So, I still have some waiting to do.

I’ll keep you posted.

——–

UPDATE: Response from the Church, part 4

Tonya Miller: Ex-Mormon LDS Christian Bisexual (OUTspoken March 10 2011)

Tonya Miller, speaking at OUTSpoken (a LGBTQ week long event consisting of many public events and forums in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada – March 10, 2011

This is a touching speech from Tonya Miller about her struggles with the LDS Church and her bisexuality. I find this particularly interesting in that it deals with a topic that I have been in a heated debate over on Facebook for the past several days. (Ill have a post on that later.) Tonya is also from my own province of Alberta. The LDS stance on the LGBTQ community is not one of compassion as some might suggest.

Atheism vs Agnosticism

Does God exist?  Can we know God? — These are the questions that philosophers have been debating for millennia, but I have only recently started to truly ask myself.

Since I disclosed my disbelief in the LDS Church, I’ve had many friends ask me what my current belief is regarding God in general. My friends are curious if my disbelief is isolated to the LDS Church as an organization, or if it extends to include Christianity or God in its entirety. Because I can’t see how the fallacies of the LDS Church are much different than those of other religious organizations, I’ve made the determination that God (as I have been raised to define Him) is a man-made concept. This has lead me to answer their question by saying I’m an atheist. However, my use of the term atheist, is only based on a simplistic definition. As I continue to read and learn more about philosophy, I find that my friends’ question is more complicated than I originally thought.