Posted by:
elderolddog
(
)
Date: October 11, 2018 12:04PM
Oaks may have been the president when aversion therapy became popular, but according to the record, the vehement anti-gay policies of BYU began after the 1951 appointment of Ernie Wilkinson as BYU President.
Here's the introductory paragraph about Ernie from
"The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature":
A Revised History of Homosexuality & Mormonism, 1840-1980
by Connell O'Donovan
© 1994, 2004
"The single person most responsible for the harsh, discriminatory campus environment that began at BYU in the 1950s was Ernest L. Wilkinson, a rabid anti-Communist and arch-conservative lawyer, who became BYU president in October 1951. He could be a vicious and tyrannical man (he himself admitted that he was "too blunt, not tactful with people, and impatient"), disliked by many of his faculty (who pejoratively called him 'Ernie the Attorney' behind his back), and who especially delighted in humiliating women, harping ad infinitum on the length of their skirts. He was notorious for giving bone-crushing handshakes to young female students, bringing them to their knees in pain, as over-compensation for his extremely small stature. A child of his vice president Earl Crockett recounted to me in 2002 that sometime around 1970 Wilkinson and then church president Harold B. Lee were at a formal dinner in Hawai'i. Wilkinson held out a chair for his wife, Alice, to sit on, and then as she started to sit, as a 'joke' he pulled the chair out from under her so that she hit the floor and was thoroughly humiliated in front of all those important people in attendance. President Lee was 'horrified and held it against him forever afterward' and Wilkinson in essence hit a 'glass ceiling' with the church. When Wilkinson left BYU in 1971, the well-known lawyer expected to help set up the new J. Reuben Clark Law School on campus, but instead he was asked only to write a centennial history of the school. Wilkinson therefore privately retained three out of five of his BYU secretaries to help him write his memoirs and to keep 'track of all the dirt on the general authorities that could be unearthed', ostensibly to help advance his own 'career'. Wilkinson obviously learned the power of keeping exhaustive files on his 'opponents' during his years at BYU baiting homosexuals. While subsequent BYU presidents have later become General Authorities, Wilkinson tellingly never joined their ranks."
O'Donovan's record of Homosexuality's history in the church has to be viewed as concrete support for the proposition that some of the finer elements of Christianity become more scarce the higher up one climbs the ladder of mormon success. I consider it to be required reading for those who wish to comprehend just how mortal an organization it is. Surely you all have a feeling for how flawed mormonism has been and is, but it's nice to have some practical knowledge in this regard.
http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.htmlIt is a document that overwhelms...