Gays At BYU

To: Abbottsville Stake
From: Mitchell Knightly, Abbottsville Stake President
Subject: What causes people to be gay

In honor of Valentines Day, I am sharing the following excerpt from Gays at BYU, a lengthy academic study performed by scholars at Brigham Young University:

What Causes People To Be Gay?
The Academy for the New Understanding of Sexuality (ANUS) has observed seven predisposing factors that are common in the backgrounds of men with same sex attraction. These factors are as follows:

1. Bad Mothering
A mother can wound young boys by smothering, criticizing, and abandoning her sacred role as a female. By working outside the home, for example, or expecting her boys to make their own beds, or insisting that she and not her son is head of the household when Daddy is away.

2. Inappropriate Early Childhood Fashion Choices
While this is also the result of bad mothering, it deserves a separate mention because every gay man's family album includes at least one picture of him wearing a satin polkadot onesie.

3. Distorted Concepts of Gender
Unhealthy childhood relationships with females can distort a man's view of the female gender, affect how he sees himself in relation to women, damage his sense of masculinity, and leave the individual without a sense of the opposite sex as complementary and attractive. This can occur if a boy is exposed to inappropriate female role models, such as lady policemen or women who wear pants to church. Or if he is guilted into asking the really really fat girl in the ward to dance.

4. Problems In Relationships With Other Males
During childhood, a boy might stray across the playground to socialize with the girls, leading him to accept the negative stereotype that girls can be smarter than boys. This leaves his normal need for same-sex superiority unmet, resulting in longings and cravings for male closeness.

5. Sexual Conditioning
Sexual desire can be conditioned through pairing specific stimuli with sexual arousal. Exposure to male pornography may create or intensify homosexual arousal for some boys, also extended viewing of HGTV and the Food Network.

6. Certain Biological and Physical Issues
Research on direct biological and genetic causes of homosexuality is inconclusive. But our experience suggests that certain biological factors can have an important indirect impact by affecting other parts of the developmental pathway. For example, limp wrists, long eyelashes, high-pitched voices, or a flair for floral design.

7. Certain Emotional and Psychological Problems
Certain emotional and psychological issues may increase the likelihood of becoming a homosexual. For example, if a young man develops the irrational notion that he is attracted to other young men.

ANUS also mentions that many with same-sex attraction have painful life histories, especially those who are raised in the LDS Church.

If you would like to stop receiving these emails, we invite you to reread the Valentines Day guidelines. (Straight couples only, of course.)

--Message from blog owner--

This past week I received two Brodie Awards over on Main Street Plaza. My book, False Prophet won Best LDS Themed novel--a true thrill given who the other nominees were. (Jeff Laver, David Larkin, Lawrence Pratt, Ryan McIlvan.)

But even more astounding, Ward Gossip won Best Humor/Satire Site or Blog. I've been up for that award before and have never come close to winning it. Thanks to our wealth of material, there is such excellent competition out there. This year my fellow nominees were The Utah Honeypot, a site I admire so much that I actually nominated it myself, and a new blog I'd not heard of, The BunYion. I voted for myself, of course. (No false modesty here.) Then I wandered over to the new site to check it out. 

After an hour-long coffee-spewing session--I can only conclude that the reason The BunYion did not win in the Best Humor/Satire category is because it hasn't been around very long and not enough Main Street Plaza readers have had a chance to read it. That won't be the case next time around. With the tagline, "The campus is our world," the site spoofs all things Mormon, but especially the crazy existence that is BYU student life. After enduring so much supercilious nonsense from the academics at the "Lord's University" (for example, the bullshit study that inspired my above post), it is a true joy to read the work of these brilliant and talented individuals who are confident enough to poke fun at their own culture. Check it out here.

And thanks to everyone who voted for me!