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POLICY - CHRONOLOGY OF POST-1955 LDS HOMOPHOBIA (1958-1976)


1958 - Salt Lake City police begin "morals drive" with highly-publicized arrests of same-sex crimes. Decoys and surveillance used at gay meeting places.

1958 - Salt Lake Tribune Catholic editor calls for judicial restraint in response to arrests, urging suspended sentences and professional counseling.

1958 - Mormon Doctrine is published. Bruce R. McConkie lists "homosexuality" among types of "lewdness, lasciviousness, and licentiousness." No earlier church authority can be quoted for anti-homosexual teaching. Leviticus' death penalty is invoked. McConkie also equates Catholicism with the "church of the devil." First Presidency stops the book's distribution; revised version allowed by Presidency removes Catholic equation to "church of the devil" but retains homosexuality references.

1959 - Three days after the death of First Presidency counselor Stephen L. Richards, apostolic members of the executive committee of the church Board of Education  discuss "the growing problem in our society of homosexuality." (Richards was known to be lenient towards homoerotic behavior.)

1959 - Allen Drury's novel "Advise and Consent" enters the New York Times best-seller list, where it remained at number one for thirty weeks and second place for a year. It becomes the best selling book of 1960 and wins the Pulitzer Prize. A character in the book is a Mormon senator from Utah, portrayed as a good, clean-cut Utah boy, who is blackmailed for homosexual activities in his youth - the senator, faced with public humiliation, commits suicide, as does his youthful lover. Upon learning that Otto Preminger planed to make a movie of the book, Apostle Richard L. Evans, Utah senator Wallace F. Bennett and Mormon millionaire J. Willard Marriott began campaigning non-LDS friends in the broadcast industry to "get Preminger on a person-to-person basis" to "at least make sure there is no identification of this character with the Mormon Church." The efforts failed.

1959 - BYU begins aversion therapy, to "cure," "repair," or "reorient" same-sex desires of Mormon males, who were referred to the program by BYU mental health counselors, LDS bishops or stake presidents, mission presidents, general authorities, and BYU's office to enforce student standards. The treatment consisted of showing increasingly erotic pictures of men and women to students, who were told to fantasize and/or masturbate to the pictures of women. When a student became erect at a picture of a male body, a 1,600 volt impulse was delivered to the right arm for eight seconds.

1962 - Apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Petersen inform BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson that "no one will be admitted as a student at the B.Y.U. whom we have convincing evidence is a homosexual."

1962 - Apostle Mark E. Petersen begins requiring missionaries to sleep in separate beds in Britain and western Europe.

1962 - Church president David O. McKay issues letter to stake and mission presidents that prospective missionaries "found guilty of fornication, of sex perversion, of heavy petting, or of comparable transgressions should not be recommended until the case has been discussed with the bishop and stake president and the visiting [general] Authority.

1968 - the Church's General Handbook of Instructions adds "homo-sexual acts" to the list of sins for which excommunication is appropriate.

1970 - Church president Joseph Fielding Smith sends latter to stake and mission presidents: "There is much concern on the part of the brethren concerning the apparent increase in homosexuality and other deviations, and we call to your attention a program designed...to counsel and direct them back to total normalcy and happiness."

1970 - Letter from Presidency directs local leaders to "ask direct questions" about homosexuality in pre-mission interviews.

1973 - First Presidency (Harold B. Lee) statement: "homosexuality in men and women runs counter to...divine objectives and, therefore, is to be avoided and forsaken...Failure to work closely with one's bishop or stake president in cases involving homosexual behavior will require prompt Church court action."

1975 - Three days after the first publication of The Salt Lake City Gayzette (a gay newspaper), the First Presidency (Spencer W. Kimball) issues a statement about "the unfortunate problem of homosexuality which occurs from time to time among our people."

1976 - Homosexuality becomes a central argument of the Kimball presidency against the ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1976 - "homo-sexual acts" replaced in the General Handbook with "homosexuality" as grounds for excommunication.

1976 - Apostle Boyd K. Packer encourages young men to physically assault any male who tries to "entice young men to join them in these immoral acts," and to feel no regret for engaging in gay-bashing.

- some items and chronology from Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, D. Michael Quinn, Univ of Ill. Pr., 1996