CES just issued a letter attempting to clarify its removal of the Honor Code section entitled “Homosexual Behavior.” To further clarify BYU’s position, its Honor Code office posted a Q&A, which included this:
Can members of our campus community who identify as LGBTQ or SSA be disciplined for going on a date, holding hands and kissing?
Elder Johnson in his letter counsels, “Same-sex romantic behavior cannot lead to eternal marriage and is therefore not compatible with the principles included in the Honor Code.” Therefore, any same-sex romantic behavior is a violation of the principles of the Honor Code.
This raises a handful of questions, and I’d love it if the BYU Honor Code office could answer them:
- When I was at BYU (years and years ago), I learned about NCMO (non-committal make-outs). The non-committal part suggests that it cannot lead to eternal marriage. Therefore, is it not compatible with principles included in the Honor Code?
- For that matter, most dates and relationships aren’t going to end up in eternal marriage. So is most heterosexual dating incompatible with the principles included in the Honor Code?
- For that matter, hanging out with member of your own gender is unlikely to lead to eternal marriage. So are girls’ nights incompatible with the principles included in the Honor Code? How about guys hanging out playing Xbox?
- What about members who date and marry nonmembers? Those relationships are at best unlikely to lead to eternal marriage. Is dating a nonmember incompatible with the principles included in the Honor Code?
Ok, let’s be serious for a minute, BYU Honor Code Office. I get that eternal marriage is important. I really do. I’m married in the temple, so I 100% get it. And it’s definitely a worthy goal.
But it’s not the only goal. It’s not even the only goal in dating. Sometimes people date because they don’t want to go to the restaurant alone, or because they want to make friends, or because their mom/roommate/brother set them up. Sometimes people hold hands because they want the warmth of human contact. Sometimes they kiss because they’re stupid 18-year-olds who just went to college and learned the acronym NCMO. That people do these things without eternal marriage in their future does not make these things sinful. It doesn’t even make them bad.
And look, even if we want everything we do to lead toward eternal marriage, our gay and lesbian (and, I assume, transgender) brothers and sisters are not headed that direction as long as we continue to limit temple marriages to opposite-gender couples. (Our bisexual brothers and sisters maybe can.)
And what’s more, we don’t want them to. We’ve stopped encouraging our gay and lesbian members to get into straight marriages as some kind of cure: in a significant number of cases, those marriages are damaging to both partners. So it’s not like by holding hands and kissing, BYU’s LGBTQ students are going to accidentally miss out on temple marriage. Most of them (again, with the possible exception of the bisexual students) don’t have that as an option.
A couple weeks ago represented a step forward, granting permission to LGBTQ BYU students to live in their identity. It did not give them permission to have extramarital sex. It did not give them permission to sin. And honestly, I can’t think of a single reason for taking that away from them again.
So, BYU Honor Code Office, please reconsider this. The reasoning you use is deeply flawed, and the outcome is hurtful to the very people who most need our love and pastoral care.