more mormon homophobia

I just happened to read an interesting letter written by one of my former BYU professors to the Daily Universe regarding the treatment of gays and her ridiculous outrage over the censure those who oppose gay rights receive. Here is what she said:

Letter: Alternative compassion

Mon, 07/13/2009 - 19:25

In 23 years as a student and faculty member, I have never heard anyone at BYU make an unkind remark about those who struggle with same-sex attraction. However, I did find a large flier under my office door one evening, indiscriminately accusing Latter-day Saints of causing the suicides of gay people. Maybe we need a different “call for compassion.”

Let’s have compassion on those who have been denigrated, pilloried and belittled for defending traditional marriage. Let’s have compassion on those who have been persecuted for daring to express family values in public. Let’s have compassion on those whose vehicles were vandalized and whose safety was threatened because they voted for Proposition 8 in California.

Let’s have compassion on the Boy Scouts of America whose United Way funds were cut because they would not bow to the sons of Sodom and the gods of Gomorrah. Let’s have compassion for those who are mocked for promoting the Family Proclamation.

It is trendy to make accusations of homophobia when the real problem seems to be home-phobia.

Cynthia L. Hallen
Pleasant Grove

Her incredible self-delusion flabbergasted me, though I suppose I ought to have expected her to be this clueless. Her argument from authority and personal incredulity are unsurprising, but disappointing that a university professor, even one at BYU where censorship is the norm, would be so blind to such obvious logical fallacies.

I've never met a more blindly and vitriolically anti-liberal professor in all my time at BYU. During the time when Cheney came to give the commencement speech, she gave an in-class, highly inappropriate several minute long diatribe against any and all students and fellow faculty members (of which there were many) who dared to defy the prophet and protest that odious man's invitation to speak at BYU. She thought it was somehow important to malign most of her colleagues (many of whom participated in and even help organise the protest) in order to prove her piety .

For the record, she was totally incompetent and ineffectual as a teacher, partly because she didn't even know the material, and partly because she insisted on wasting at least 10 minutes of every class period with praying, singing hymns, and cloying spiritual thoughts during which she would routinely cry, in addition to her inappropriate digressions into her private life. She routinely indulged in disconcerting revelations as to why her personal life has sucked recently which was apparently to excuse her extremely poor performance as a teacher.

I decided I couldn't let her insanity go unanswered, so I both submitted a response on the DU letter thread (which I expect to be censored) and also e-mailed her a slightly more forceful version. Here it is:

Cynthia, as one of your former students (Hist-Comp Ling Winter 2007) I am deeply disappointed in you. I am gay, and attended BYU for 4 years. In just that time, I experienced systematic hate-speech, vitriol and incredible "unkindness" directed at me simply because I am attracted to men and not women.

You are not the victim here. I wonder if you can imagine what it is like to grow up in a culture that vilifies people for who they were born to be, for whom they are able to love. Imagine what it is like for a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person to go to BYU and be surrounded with such intense negativity and total lack of understanding, as you are yourself here evidencing. Your call for "compassion" for the supposed victims of the fight for LGBT equality sounds hollow and is offensive. As one who did almost commit suicide, and had friends who did because of the intense pressure to hide and pretend to be "normal" and lie about who you really are inside, and because of the hurtful, hateful rhetoric you are yourself using in your own protestation of innocence to ever being witness to any unkind remarks, I say you don't know what you're talking about, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

This isn't about you, or your political or religious views. It's about creating a better world for all humans where all are respected and treated with kindness. Calling gays the "sons of Sodom" is supremely unkind. If you can't see how those types of comments denigrate and demean those of us who are gay, then I am unsurprised, but gravely disappointed, that you think you've never heard an unkind comment directed at those of us who are same-gender attracted.

Is more compassion, understanding and tolerance for those who are different really a bad thing?

J. Craig Fitzner

We'll see whether she responds at all. I'm not optimistic she will, but at least if she reads it, she'll know that at least one gay person whom she knows thinks she's absolutely full of shit.