ABOVE: Dallin Oaks. Photo via Oaks’ Facebook page.
Dallin Oaks, a Latter-day Saint apostle and the former president of Brigham Young University (BYU), denied that the college used the discredited electroshock “therapy” on gay students while he was president from 1971 to 1980 during a question and answer event at the University of Virginia Nov. 12. Yet, research shows his statement is false.
“Let me say about electroshock treatments at BYU, when I became president at BYU that had been discontinued earlier and it never went on under my administration,” Oaks said. The video was uploaded to Youtube by Latter Gay Stories, a podcast that focuses on LGBTQ+ Mormons.
According to researcher Gregory Prince’s book “Gay Rights and the Mormon Church: Intended Actions, Unintended Consequences,” Oaks’ statement is false.
Price cites research approved by BYU in 1976 on 14 gay men by then-graduate student Max McBride. In the study, the men were shown pictures of nude men and women. If the subject “experienced sexual arousal from a photograph of a nude male, he would receive a shock in the bicep.”
“A gradual increase of voltage upon repeated arousals was to serve as a negative feedback stimulus that would, according to the hypothesis, ‘reorient’ him from homosexual to heterosexual, whereupon photographs of nude females were supposed to elicit sexual arousal,” Prince wrote.
One of the men from the study, John Cameron, wrote a “harrowing, powerful play” titled “14,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune, which also reported on Oak’s University of Virginia appearance. The “14” refers to the number of men who were subjected to electroshock therapy from McBride.
According to the paper, Cameron hoped he could alter his same-sex attraction. Instead, “the psychological and emotional wounds nearly crippled him, once leading him to contemplate suicide.”
The Church of Latter Day Saints no longer practices electroshock therapy or attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation, according to a statement.
“The church denounces any therapy, including conversion and reparative therapies,” the Mormon Church wrote. “That subjects an individual to abusive practices, not only in Utah, but throughout the world.”
During his visit to the University of Virginia, Oaks also gave a speech that some hailed as a step toward empathy, according to the Tribune. Oaks said he had recently “come to understand better the distress of persons” — including LGBTQ individuals — who feel that some religious people use the U.S. Constitution to deny rights to others.
He also addressed religious liberty and LGBTQ+ rights during the question and answer portion.
“I think we’ve got to live together,” he said. “We’ve got to meet each other. By we I mean this side and that side, we need each other, we’ve got to learn how to live with each other, and the way to do that is not to take hardline positions that we do not have to prevail in every contest between non-discrimination and religious freedom, that there is room to make compromise and accommodations and better understanding. That’s the best understanding I can give tonight.”
Latter-day Saint leader Dallin H. Oaks categorically denied that BYU had used electroshock therapies on gay students during his tenure from 1971 to 1980. Individuals and research say otherwise. https://t.co/Aigc1EB4ax
— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) November 16, 2021
Before the university-sponsored event, the Lambda Law Alliance, a community of law students who support the LGBTQ+ community, gathered in front of the School of Law to protest against Oaks being on the panel.
“Lambda believes that it is dangerous to invite individuals with views openly hostile to the humanity of U.Va. Law’s LGBTQ+ students to speak, particularly on issues of religious freedom and its intersection with LGTBQ+ rights,” members wrote on Twitter.
Lambda believes that it is dangerous to invite individuals with views openly hostile to the humanity of UVA Law's LGBTQ+ students to speak, particularly on issues of religious freedom and its intersection with LGTBQ+ rights.
— Lambda Law Alliance at UVA (@lambdaatuva) November 11, 2021
