Shame on you BYU by K. Ian Shin
The recent decision not to rehire part-time instructor of philosophy Jeffrey Nielsen as a result of his dissenting editorial on gay marriage in The Salt Lake Tribune reiterates issues of intellectual oppression at Brigham Young University and in higher education generally. Four years ago, in the fall of my senior year of high school, BYU brought me to its Provo campus on a recruitment trip along with a number of other high-achieving applicants. Even before that trip, I had become familiar with “the Y” on my many family vacations to the university to see my cousins and brother off to college. In high school I ranked in the top 5% of my class at a competitive public preparatory high school, earned a near 5.0 GPA by BYU’s weighted standards, played on the varsity tennis team, won league and state championships in speech, and served on the board of education of my local school district. I was a seminary graduate, an Eagle Scout and senior patrol leader of my troop, and a former president of the deacons and teachers quorums of my ward; my bishop’s ecclesiastical endorsement, it
Stephen Holbrook by Ben Williams
ben@qsaltlake.com
Holbrrok that none of Utah’s radio stations would allow a counter position to the government’s stance on the war. Holbrook and others, including Joe Redburn, brought people together to discuss forming a public sponsored radio station where different points of views , especially the disenfranchised voices of Utah’s minorities, could be heard. He called this concept: “Listeners Community radio”. Holbrook arranged a meeting with then apostle Gordon B Hinckley of the LDS Church to discuss the need for a music and information station for minorities. Holbrook was able to persuade Hinckley that this was a good idea and Bonneville International Corporation, which is owned by the LDS Church, then donated used radio equipment for Holbrook’s project. KRCL FM 90.9, also known as “Radio Free Utah,” was thus born. Holbrook served as first general manager of the radio station which operated out of a space located in the old Blue Mouse Theater on 100 South. While not identified publicly as Gay, Stephen Holbrook as a Gay man was committed that the Gay community was to have a voice over the KRCL airwaves. For over 26 years KRCL has provided the Lambda communities of Utah with local informational programming. In 1996 KRCL name their Annua Award “Thel Stephen Holbrook Visionary Award” in his honor. I, myself, as probably did 100’s of others, came out of the closet while listening to Concerning Gays and Lesbian on KRCL. KRCL has served as a friend to many closet men and women whose only contact with the Gay Community has been through the supportive voices heard over its airwaves for nearly three decades. As Holbrook became less involved in KRCL and with being a politician, he sought
talent in this country. Their most brilliant and dedicated scholars young and old will never achieve their full potential. And the members of their community who recognize and oppose this system of heteronormative oppression will continue to regard the university as a miserable confining place. That is not the way the Lord imagined schools, and that is surely not the way the Lord envisioned education. I know full well that I do not have the academic or professional credentials to make some grandiose claim about the philosophy of education. I write only as a recent college graduate who loves education and enlightenment, who has experienced firsthand the pain of a fascist and misguided “moral” policy, and who cringes at the thought of the two being combined in a university. The BYU administration’s response to Professor Nielsen’s editorial as well as the reception given the Soulforce Equality Riders in spring 2006 demonstrate just how unwilling supposedly “Christian” colleges and universities are to at least listen to, if not engage in, any real dialogue about the discrimination that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students face. Scholarship at “Christian” schools has hidden long enough under the intellectual squalor and hypocrisy of bad religion. It is time for the disguise of academic respectability to finally give way to real learning.
to make beneficial changes for all citizens of the Wasatch Front by working within the “establishment.” In 1995 Stephen Holbrook, became the executive director of the Coalition for Utah’s Future where he worked “behind-the-scenes”, bringing together a who’s who of Utah leaders of widely differing viewpoints to seek consensus on issues facing the state. Holbrook’s Coalition for Utah’s Future was a springboard for two highly recognized visionary organizations; the Utah Quality Growth Public/Private Partnership and Envision Utah. The Utah Quality Growth Public/Private Partnership, was co-chaired by formerGov. Mike Leavitt and businessman Larry H. Miller. As Executive Director of Envision Utah, Holbrook brought developers, local political leaders, and environmentalists together to develop
building codes to discourage sprawl and to increase public transit to within one half mile of every resident along the Wasatch Front. Holbrook retired from Envision Utah in 2004. Stephen Holbrook has donated an important collection of documents of his work to the Utah State History Archives which reflects the many important and controversial issuesof Utah from the 1960s through the 1980s. It is the first of its kind in State History’s holdings. Utah activists Stephen Holbrook as a championer of civil rights for all people as well as other important causes truly is an over looked and unsung hero within Utah’s Lambda Community. All of Utah, Gay and non Gay owe Stephen Holbrook a “thank you for a life well lived.”
Shin lives in Cambridge, Mass.
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In the early 1960’s Stephan Holbrook was a young Republicans who worked for Rep. Sherman P. Lloyd (R-Utah), but later “was radicalized” when he became involved with black voting rights in Mississippi. Upon returning to Utah he became “an offand-on political science student and one of the self-styled “radicals” during the 1960’s” that was raising hell with the establishment. As earth ecology began to become part of the anti-establishment movement, Holbrook helped organize Utah’s First Earth Day Rally in 1970. Stephen Holbrook was also an anti war activist and he seized upon the free-speech atmosphere at the University of Utah as a forum to challenge the war in Vietnam. Holbrook in addition to leading antiwar marches in Salt Lake City, founded and managed agencies to serve the homeless, and became a vocal political activist. Having shaken off his Republican roots, Holbrook was elected a delegate to Democratic National Convention from Utah in 1972 and in 1975 was elected to the Utah House of Representatives from Salt Lake City’s District 2, where he served three terms in the Utah House of Representatives. He was instrumental in bringing together diverse elements from the Latino community, African American community, the Gay community, the Feminist Community and other members of Utah’s counter culture. As an anti-war activist it bothered
is fair to say, was glowing and unabashed. I received my offer of admission from BYU only two days after I submitted my application online: The letter was dated November 22, 2001, and I had submitted my application on November 20. Along with the offer came a Millennium Scholarship from the university, which was a very attractive package considering my family’s financial situation at the time. Nevertheless, I passed on BYU. Over my last four years at Amherst College in Massachusetts, I have come to the conclusion that it was the best decision I could ever have made and the same decision that I would recommend to hundreds, if not thousands, of other students. You see, even when I was visiting BYU, I already knew that one thing about me would never fit in (besides the fact that BYU’s predominantly blond-haired, blueeyed student body made me feel racially marginalized as an Asian-American): I am gay, and I am not ashamed of it. In the field of history and American studies that I have decided to pursue, nothing is more important than the ability to engage evidence critically and analytically. History and humanities in general require a healthy dose of skepticism and, implied in that skepticism, a degree of toleration for the viewpoints and lived experiences of other people.
This was a kind of progressivism that I knew I would never find at BYU, and thus BYU was the least academically attractive of all of the schools I applied to. To confirm this point I needed only to look at the school’s “Honor” Code: “Advocacy of a homosexual lifestyle (whether implied or explicit) or any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code.” Aberrant behavior includes, among other things, cross-dressing. Would BYU then shy from working with William Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night because of its gender-bending themes? Academics at “Christian” institutions like BYU will never be challenging or serious enough because it cannot be a real pursuit of knowledge until the administration is willing to relinquish its stodgy control over what is and is not a kosher interpretation of the world. Writ large, institutions such as BYU cannot truly advance until all of their students are allowed to live and learn in the full creative energies endowed them by God. True education requires at least a minimal degree of acceptance and liberalism; it requires room to make and learn from mistakes. These institutions allow no such room for intellectual curiosity and experimentation, and they suffer for this narrow-mindedness. These universities will continue to produce theoretically second-rate work. They will continue to lose out on the best secondary academic