LGBTQ students and staff have a long, documented history at Brigham Young University (BYU), and have experienced a range of treatment by students and school administrators since its founding in 1875. Large surveys of over 7,000 BYU students in 2020 and 2017 found that over 13% had marked their sexual orientation as something other than "strictly heterosexual", and another that 0.2% had reported their gender identity as "transgender or other". BYU is the largest religious university in North America and is the flagship institution of the educational system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)—Mormonism's largest denomination.

Historically, experiences for BYU students identifying as LGBTQ have included being banned from enrolling due to their romantic attractions in the 60s; being required by school administration to undergo therapy in the 1970s, including electroshock and vomit aversion therapies in "special cases"; having nearly 80% of BYU students refusing to live with an openly homosexual person in a poll in the 1990s; and a ban on coming out until 2007. Until 2021 there were not any LGBTQ-specific resources on campus, though there is now the Office of Student Success and Inclusion. BYU students are at risk of discipline and expulsion by the Honor Code Office for many expressions of same-sex romantic feelings like same-sex dating, hugging, and kissing, for gender non-conforming dress, and students and faculty are still banned from meeting together in a queer-straight alliance group on campus.

Several LGBTQ rights organizations have criticized BYU's policies around queer students and The Princeton Review has regularly ranked BYU as one of the most LGBTQ-unfriendly schools in the United States. Although BYU policies specific to same-sex romantic expressions have existed since the 50s, these were only available to administrators, and the first publicly available explicit mention of homosexuality in the language of the school's code of conduct was not publicly published until the fall of 2009. The first LGBTQ-specific campus-wide event was held in April 2017. Though faced with this historical and current environment, LGBTQ individuals have continued to enroll in and attend BYU with many participating in unofficial LGBTQ BYU communities.

Ban on gay students

Before 1959 there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration, but by 1962 a ban on homosexual students was enacted, though not mentioned in the media or in literature provided to students. On September 12, 1962, apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Peterson and BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson agreed on a university policy that "no one will be admitted as a student ... whom we have convincing evidence is a homosexual." They agreed to share information about individuals cases of homosexual members between general church administration and BYU administration. This policy was broadcast in Wilkinson's address to BYU in September 1965 when he stated "we [do not] intend to admit to this campus any homosexuals. ... [I]f any of you have this tendency, ... may I suggest you leave the University immediately .... We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence." The next month general authorities again privately decided that the "University does not permit any known homosexual to enter or remain at BYU", though they decided "for the purposes of admission or retention at BYU" that masturbation (or "self abuse") was "not considered homosexuality." The decision by top leaders forbidding the enrollment of homosexuals at BYU was again repeated in meetings on January 27, 1966, and January 25, 1968, and was codified in the 1967 version of the Honor code available only to administrators. The approved version read "homosexuality will not be tolerated", while the proposed sentence banning "masturbation" was removed in committee.

The complete ban on any students with a homosexual orientation was softened a decade later by Wilkinson's successor, Dallin H. Oaks, in an April 19, 1973, Board of Trustees meeting. There it was decided BYU administrators would allow for students who had repented of homosexual acts and forsaken them for a lengthy period of time. Additionally, students guilty of infrequent sexual behavior (not including fornication or adultery equivalents) who were repentant and showed evidence that the act(s) would not be repeated would be admitted while those still suspected of current same-sex sexual behavior would still be barred from remaining and enrollment.

Surveillance and police efforts

From the mid-1960s through the early 1980s BYU police targeted gay people both on and off campus. Under Oaks, a system of surveillance and searches of dorms of problem students, including suspected homosexuals, was implemented. This included electronic recording devices which BYU Security Chief Robert Kelshaw confirmed in 1975 had been planted on students to gather information. In reference to the widespread campaign to find homosexuals among BYU students, Oaks stated, "Two influences we wish to exclude from the BYU community are active homosexuals and drug users, and these subjects are therefore among those with which our security force is concerned."

Four years later BYU's newspaper reported Oaks asking BYU security to be "especially watchful" for any student homosexual infractions. BYU's security force conducted stake outs looking for license plates of BYU students at gay bars in Salt Lake City. They also placed fake contact advertisements in a gay Salt Lake City newspaper to entrap gay students. This resulted in the arrest of David Chipman who was no longer a BYU student at that time. The director of public relations for the university stated that by 1979 Oaks ordered BYU security to stop surveilling gay bars and to cease posting entrapment advertisements. According to one source the "gay purges" by BYU police continued through the early 1980s.

Values Institute

In September 1976 top church leaders on the BYU Board of Trustees approved BYU president Dallin H. Oaks's Institute for Studies in Values and Human Behavior dedicated most heavily to search for evidence supporting church views on homosexuality. The primary assignment was writing a church-funded book on homosexuality to be published by a non-church source (in order to boost the book's scientific credibility). BYU psychologist Allen Bergin acted as the director and book author. Institute member and church Social Services director Victor Brown Jr. wrote, "Our basic theme is that truth lies with the scriptures and prophets, not with secular data or debate." Several dissertations were produced by the Values Institute before it closed in 1985.

Payne Papers

In 1977, gay BYU student Cloy Jenkins and gay BYU instructor Lee Williams coauthored an open letter to refute the anti-gay teachings of BYU professor Reed Payne. The anonymous letter was later published with the help of Lee's gay brother Jeff and Ricks College faculty member Howard Salisbury as the "Payne Papers" pamphlet (later titled "Prologue"). This was anonymously mailed to all high-ranking LDS leaders and most BYU and Ricks College faculty causing a controversy. This elicited a response from apostle Boyd K. Packer in the form of his "To the One" 1978 BYU address on homosexuality and an article from the recently formed BYU Values Institute.

Policies and punishments in the 1990s and early 2000s

In the late 1990s an explicit reference to "homosexual conduct" was added to the publicly available text of the BYU Honor Code for the first time. In 1997 Honor Code Office director Rush Sumpter stated that BYU forbade actions of verifiable, overt displays of homosexual affection, but does not punish attractions. One student stated she tried to pray her feelings away, and another said her parents sent her to BYU to straighten out her homosexual feelings.

In 2000 a reported 13 students were kicked off campus when caught watching the TV series Queer As Folk. Also archived here. The next year two gay students (Matthew Grierson and Ricky Escoto) were expelled under accusations deemed "more probable than not" of hand-holding or kissing. The Associate Dean of Students Lane Fischer over the BYU Honor Code Office stated in a letter to those two students that it was "inappropriate" for a BYU student to "advocate for the [homosexual] lifestyle" by publishing material or participating in public demonstrations as well as advertising one's "same-sex preference in any public way" reinforcing the existing honor code ban on coming out for lesbian, gay, or bisexual students. He also required homosexual students facing discipline to refrain from same-sex "dating, holding hands, kissing, romantic touching, showering, clubbing, ets., as well as regular association with homosexual men."

Current policies

BYU continues to ban same-sex romantic behavior such as dating, holding hands, and kissing as of August 2023. In 2007, BYU changed the honor code to read that stating one's sexual orientation was not an honor code issue while removing the phrase that "any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code." The change also clarified the policy on advocacy of LGBTQ rights or romantic relationships. Several students, including those identifying as LGBTQ, thought that the previous wording was confusing and unclear.

While both homosexuals and heterosexuals must abide by the church's law of chastity (i.e. no sexual relations outside of marriage, no crude language, and no pornography), the Honor Code additionally prohibits all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings (e.g. dating, hugging, hand holding, or kissing) . There is no similar restriction against expressing heterosexual feelings. The policy on homosexuality was not noted in the online version of the honor code available to students until the fall of 2009. Both this version and the 2010 versions contained a clause banning homosexual advocacy defined as "seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable."

In early 2011, BYU quietly removed the clause prohibiting advocacy. However, in 2021 BYU fired Sue Bergin and the next year BYU's sister school BYU-Idaho (also run by the Church Educational System) fired two employees Lindsay Call and Ben Buswell all for allegedly expressing concerns over church teachings around LGBTQ people. BYU continues to ban LGBTQ student groups from meeting on campus . During an off-campus September 2022 BYU LGBTQ student "Back to School Pride Night", 100 protesters (many also BYU students) gathered and yelled slurs at the 300 LGBTQ BYU students and friends in attendance.

A 2021 BYU-conducted survey of its students found that 74% of the 13,000 respondents experienced or witnessed "derogatory remarks about LGBTQ+ people" within the past year, and one in four LGBTQ students surveyed said they did not feel safe on campus. Carolyn Gassert, president of the LGBTQ BYU student group USGA, said most of the queer students at BYU are used to the vitriol and "hear these comments in the classroom."

Policies around gender expression