Below is a timeline of major events, media, and people at the intersection of LGBTQ people and topics and Brigham Young University (BYU). BYU is the largest university of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Before 1959 there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration.

1940s 1948 – Gay BYU students Kent Goodridge Taylor and Richard Snow, who were in love visit with church president George Albert Smith who tells them to "live their lives as best they could" in their companionship. Smith writes the words "Homo Sexual" in his appointment book. Earl Kofoed, who went to BYU from 1946 to 1948, similarly reports a "live and let live" attitude of leaders towards LGBTQ Mormons, and describes a thriving gay community at BYU. He states that there are no witch hunts, excommunications, or pressure to change one's sexual orientation at BYU like there would be in later decades.

1950s 1959 – BYU begins their on-campus electroshock and vomit aversion therapy program for males experiencing same-sex sexual attractions.

1960s

1962 – The apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Peterson tell BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson that no student suspected of experiencing homosexual feelings should be allowed to attend BYU. 1962 – BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson states in a speech to the student body that people with homosexual feelings will not be allowed to enroll or remain as students, since they contaminate the campus. 1963 – Elouise Bell begins teaching in the BYU English Department. Bell lived with and was in a long-term relationship with Provo High School teacher Margo E. LeVitre for many of her years at BYU, which she apparently kept secret from the university administration. In 2015, after her retirement, Bell married Nancy R Jefferis. 1964 – Apostle Kimball addresses seminary and institute faculty in a July 10 speech on BYU campus titled "A Counselling Problem in the Church", in which he calls homosexuality a "malady", "disease", and an "abominable and detestable crime against nature" that was "curable" by "self mastery." He cites one lay bishop (a businessman by trade) assigned by the church to administer a "program of rehabilitation" through which there had been "numerous cures." He says "the police, the courts, and the judges" have referred "many cases directly" to the church. 1965 – Kimball again addresses homosexuality in his January 5 BYU speech "Love vs. Lust." He calls it a "gross", "heinous", "obnoxious", "abominable" "vicious" sin. The text states that those with homosexual "desires and tendencies" could "correct" and "overcome" it "the same as if he had the urge toward petting or fornication or adultery", but that "the cure ... is like the cure for alcoholism, subject to continued vigilance." In the speech he states BYU "will never knowingly enroll ... nor tolerate ... anyone with these tendencies who fails to repent", and that it is a "damnable heresy" for a homosexual person to say "God made them that way." He also states that sometimes masturbation is an introduction to homosexuality.. Transcript reprint with permission by the Mental Health Resource Foundation at mentalhealthlibrary.info. Note: References to homosexuality were removed in the reprinted version of the speech in the 1972 book compilation of Kimball's speeches "Faith Precedes the Miracle." 1965 – Five suicides of gay male BYU students are reported in one year. 1967 – After a policy change allowing BYU bishops to share confidential information gained from the students during interviews with BYU administration took place, a dramatic rise in students suspected of homosexual activity is reported, totaling 72 recorded by BYU administration by the end of August 1968. Security files are kept by BYU on students suspected of being gay and students are encouraged to spy on other students. 1969 – BYU alumnus and Mormon painter Trevor Southey joins BYU's faculty teaching art until he is fired in 1979. He had attended the university as a student from 1965 to 1969, and divorced his wife and came out as gay in 1982. He died in 2015 at the age of 75.

1970s 1971 – Jim Dabakis enrolls at BYU after serving an LDS mission, but leaves and comes out at as gay at the age of 23. He was elected to the Utah State Senate in 2012. 1971 – Kenneth Mark Storer is a gay Mormon BYU graduate student. He would later become a pastor in the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church in Salt Lake, Boise, and Tacoma, and a leader in an AIDS-victim advocacy group in the 80s. 1973 – It is decided by the BYU Board of Trustees that the ban on people attracted to those of the same sex will be lifted, and they may enroll at BYU with local church leadership permission as long as they are not sexually expressing their attractions. 1973 – BYU psychology professor Allen Bergin publishes an article in the July New Era portraying some homosexuals as "psychologically disturbed persons" who are "compulsively driven to frequent and sometimes bizarre acts." He cites two clients with "compulsive or uncontrollable homosexuality" caused by intense fear of the opposite sex, a lack of social skills for male-female relationships, and seeking security exclusively from the same sex. Bergin discusses the behaviorist sexual orientation change efforts he used in an attempt to change their same-sex sexual behavior and attractions.

1974 – BYU president Oaks delivers a speech on campus in which he speaks in favor of keeping criminal punishment for "deviate sexual behavior" such as private, consensual, same-sex sexual activity. The speech is later printed by the university's press. 1974 – Church president Kimball addresses the BYU student body, stating that sex reassignment surgeries are an appalling travesty. Alternative youtube.com and archive.org links. 1975 – As part of the ongoing BYU security homosexual entrapment campaigns, BYU security claims that an agency director for the US Department of Social Services man was caught soliciting sex by tapping his feet in a bathroom stall next to an undercover officer while visiting the campus, but the man denies the charges and calls the security sting harassment. BYU bans the man from campus after he refuses to meet with campus officials. 1976 – BYU begins a purge in January to expel homosexual students as part of president Oaks' widespread campaign to curtail the influence of homosexual people on campus. The purge includes interrogations of fine arts and drama students and surveillance of Salt Lake City gay bars by BYU security. These activities were reported in the Salt Lake Tribune and the gay newspaper Advocate. 1976 – BYU music professor Carlyle Marsden takes his own life two days after being outed by an arrest for alleged homosexual activity. 1976 – A 20-year study by a BYU Sociology professor is published showing that 10% of BYU men and 2% of BYU women indicated having had a "homosexual experience." In 1950, 1961, and 1972 Wilford E. Smith conducted a survey of thousands of Mormon students at several universities including many from the BYU sociology department as part of a larger survey. He found that "the response of Mormons [at BYU] did not differ significantly from the response of Mormons in state universities." 1977 – After hearing anti-gay rhetoric from BYU professor Reed Payne, BYU student Cloy Jenkins and gay BYU instructor Lee Williams produce the Payne Papers (later called Prologue) outlining information and experiences in defense of homosexual Mormons. It is later anonymously mailed to all high-ranking church leaders. 1977 Stephan Zakharias (formerly Stephen James Matthew Prince) and a group of other lesbian and gay Mormons and former-Mormons organize the first official LGBTQ Mormon group under the name Affirmation: Gay Mormons United on June 11 in Salt Lake City at the conference for the Salt Lake Coalition for Human Rights..

1978 – The apostle Boyd K. Packer delivers a sermon at BYU on March 5 entitled "To the One", which went on to be published by the church as a pamphlet. Packer characterizes homosexual interaction as a perversion and presents the possibility that it had its roots in selfishness and could be cured with "unselfish thoughts, with unselfish acts." He states that the church had not previously talked more about homosexuality because "some matters are best handled very privately" and "we can very foolishly cause things we are trying to prevent by talking too much about them." 1978 – In November, BYU Security begins placing entrapment ads in a monthly Salt Lake City LGBTQ newspaper to ensnare BYU students. This results in the 1979 arrest of David Chipman, a former BYU student, who made a romantic advance after being taken on a drive by undercover BYU security agent David Neumann posing as a gay BYU student. Chipman's controversial conviction, due to the security officers making an arrest outside their jurisdiction for an entrapment case, goes to the Utah State Supreme Court. 1979 – Under the guidance of BYU president Dallin H. Oaks, BYU security begins campaigns to entrap any students participating in same-sex sexual behavior and expel them from the university. 1979 – BYU's newspaper publishes a series of articles in April quoting BYU and church leaders and gay students on homosexuality. The series includes comments by Maxine Murdock of the BYU Counseling Center and Ford McBride, a former psychology student who conducted BYU electroshock aversion experiments on fourteen gay BYU students. McBride and Murdock estimated that 4% of BYU students (or around 1,200 students) are homosexual. See footnote 71. Additionally, commissioner of LDS Social Services Harold Brown states that homosexuality is not biological or inborn, and that church leaders just want to help them overcome their problem. Victor Brown Jr. compares it to an alcohol addiction that can be cured.

1979 – A BYU alumni sign among others is held aloft by the Affirmation group at the Los Angeles Pride Parade in what is called the first out gay Mormon presence at a pride parade. One of the participants is interviewed on camera wearing a BYU jersey. See also Videos: The L.A. Pride Parade Through The Years, Defiantly Marching On .

1980s 1982 – The Church-owned television station KBYU refuses to air the third segment of a documentary on homosexuality in Utah, partially because it contains interviews of anonymous gay BYU students. The producer, Kevin Mitchell, states their faces were not shown, as he believes they would be expelled from BYU if their identities were revealed. 1982 – In an address to BYU on August 28, then president of Ricks College Bruce C. Hafen counsels students to avoid homosexuality "at all costs, no matter what the circumstances." He further cites the 1973 removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM as an example of something gone wrong "deep within our national soul." 1986 – BYU publishes a study by BYU professor and area Church Welfare Services director Victor Brown Jr. stating that people can eliminate homosexual feelings. 1986 – Church Seventy Theodore M. Burton implies a link between a "selfish indulgence" in pornography and homosexuality in his address to BYU on June 3. 1986 – An article is published referencing a gay BYU student who had been preparing for an opposite-sex temple marriage in the 80s under counsel from BYU professor and stake president Richard H. Cracroft. A few months into the marriage, the man shot himself, and Cracroft stated that "Admittedly, not many of us know how to counsel homosexuals." 1988 – BYU psychologist Allen E. Bergin is published in the October Ensign stating that homosexuality is "caused by some combination of biology and environment."