I realize many long time posters are aware of this history but it's worth remembering or learning what BYU did to gay men in the 1970s: using electrical shocks to try to force them not to find gay porn erotic.

This story from ABC in 2011 really lays out the details and also discusses other controversial therapies such as forced vomiting.

https://abcnews.go.com/health/mormon-gay-cures-reparative-therapies-shock-today/story?id=13240700

That's what happens when you reject scientific reality in favour of religion...

“ . . .and then they gave you a device to administer shock treatments to yourself. Electricity. Electricity at painful levels. They were kind enough, however, to let you choose your own level of agony. You could dial it up or down. Thoughtful, no?

“The projectors came out, the screen came down, and then they showed you gay pornography. There was no popcorn,” Mark said, deadpan.

“Most of the kids had never even seen pornography before, except for some older brother’s Playboy, which of course didn’t interest them much. but here they were, suddenly looking at men doing things to each other that many of these innocents either knew nothing about or had always dreamed about. and for the first time in their innocent lives, they would learn about their sexuality in this charged way, devoid of the innocent exploration that is the luxury of normal youth.

It was arousing. You cannot control your dick in the face of that if you are gay. as soon as the arousal measuring device on the penis indicated that they were hard, they were instructed to shock themselves. The shock was to the arm or hands, I think. It was excruciatingly painful and frightening on even the lowest level, and some who went to the highest level passed out. They say it left burn marks, and I heard that the boys were told to wear long-sleeve shirts.

“But here’s the catch: if you only selected the lowest level on the pain dial, this was noted by the technician, and it would be concluded by those reviewing the case that you were not sufficiently motivated to change. In that case, your original situation still remained. This was made pretty clear—though always through innuendo. You want to get your life back? Turn it to high. Dial it to excruciating and take it like a man. It wasn’t rocket science.


“And...and it was no secret that this was dangerous to the health, not just the psyche. So the gay kids had to sign a waiver
release form of some kind indemnifying the university or church of any responsibility.

-------Excerpt from "Free Electricity"


"Or, we notify your family and kick you out in disgrace."



The younger generation may not know what it was really like for gay people back then. Of course we are about to have a majority on the Supreme Court who would like to take us back to those times,

Deeply, deeply touching.

Here's the source I send people to for 'all things mormon gay', and they say, "Marvin Gaye?" and I respond, "No, mormon gay, Marvin's younger brother about whom no one ever speaks."

The really weird thing is how gay friendly the church was for much of its early history. Then it's almost as if some self-loathing closeted gays got into power.


http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.html

Clockwork Orange

I had never thought of that before.

Yes, Burgess was unwittingly querying the moral implications of what BYU would in a decade's time be doing. The university tortured innocents to make them hate sin (which was really love) while Big Brother tortured people so they would hate violence (inadvertently Ludwig Van). Perhaps if the church had read Clockwork Orange they might have understood the moral quagmire into which they were descending. But no, the story goes to show how Mormon arrogance prevents them from seeing the moral dimensions of their doctrines and actions

You provide valuable perspective, my droog.

Branom looking at Brodsky with what seems a real trace of concern, Brodsky says it can't be helped.

DOCTOR BRODSKY: Can't be helped. Here's the punishment element perhaps. The governor ought to be pleased. (He calls out to Alex.) I'm sorry, Alex! This is for your own good! You'll have to bear with us for a while.

400 MS Alex in the chair at the front of the theater. (1:18:12)

ALEX: But it's not fair! It's not fair I should feel ill when I hear lovely, lovely Ludwig Van.

401 CU Dr. Brodsky. (1:18:19)

DOCTOR BRODSKY: You must take your chance, boy!

402 CU Dr. Branom. (1:18:22)

DOCTOR BRODSKY: The choice has been all yours!

"The choice has been all yours!" Exactly.

They hold your future to your throat while you make the choice. Clever, that.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "The choice has been all yours!" Exactly.
>
> They hold your future to your throat while you
> make the choice. Clever, that.

Lucifer doesn't want you to have free agency, but neither does TSCC. :/

Thank God that people can't be programmed that easily. I feel sorry for whoever had to go through this. If I was gay back at BYU then I would be very quiet about it.

Oh. We were. Quiet. I was there for the hay day of the BYU With Hunts in the seventies.

You had to be more than quiet. They employed decoys to trap the gay kids. They went to SLC to look for BYU parking stickers near the gay bar. At the Y students could get actual credits for posing as gay decoys. They called it the Justice Administration 299R course. Some took it—hard to imagine, but true. You cannot imagine the level of panic and fear going through these young brainwashed gay kids' minds when caught in the machine. They still believed in the church that was doing this to them.

It Happened to my cousin and I mentioned it here a few years ago.

He left the church, moved to San Francisco and was living

happily ever after with his husband.

News article on this very topic, if you can stomach reading it:

https://www.qsaltlake.com/news/2020/02/01/byu-electro-shock-therapy-doctor-dies-the-day-before-utahs-ban-on-lgbtq-conversion-therapy-goes-into-effect/

Excerpts:
“Former Brigham Young University psychologist Dr. Robert Duane Card, who put many LDS gay men through horrific electro-shock aversion therapy to “rid them of their homosexual desires” died Tuesday, Jan 21, the day a ban on anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy took effect in Utah.”

“In 1985, Card… stated… that, while he was saddened that many gay men were traumatized by the electro-shock procedures, he was under guidance by the leaders of BYU and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to find a way to eradicate one’s homosexual orientation.”

The final sentence in the article:
“LDS leaders have denied that such atrocities were ever conducted.”

12345 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The final sentence in the article: “LDS leaders have denied that such atrocities were ever conducted.”

Hmmmmmm. Perhaps then they should have the study/thesis removed from the Harold B. Lee Library on the BYU campus = http://catalog.lib.byu.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=YbqI1wjP9l/LEE/X/2/1000

Used to be able to read the study online from this link. Doesn't look like you can do that anymore.

Of what was done to her as well. I'm keeping some confidences (easier to do the older I get), but I consider posting that information one of the finest things I've done on this board.

It was credible, graphic, and horribly unsettling.

'Nuff said...

I’ve never forgotten that sad sorry. I cried.

TG

Crazy, I wonder if the rooms where the shock therapy was done, is haunted. Them crazy mormons again obsessed with sex. Too bad for the kids that went there because of their low IQ parents sending them there.

“Too bad for the kids that went there because of their low IQ parents sending them there.” Yes, but this was not the only possible scenario.

Some gay young men (and like SL Cabbie indicated, a few young women as well) had been programmed, by the LDS church and society, to feel such overwhelming shame that they WANTED to be “cured”, just to fit in. Some bishops, especially those outside the Mormon corridor, had been told by someone in the church hierarchy that “there is a program at BYU that can help.” With that in mind, those bishops thought they were being helpful by recommending the program to the relevant young person. Most (not all, but most) would have been horrified had they known that the program entailed electric shocks to one’s privates!

But how would they know? TSCC deliberately hid the details, as it always does with anything that might tarnish its (supposedly) squeaky-clean image.

It's profoundly Orwellian: indoctrinating people to the point where they punish themselves for their normality. Hard to imagine something more evil than that.

I use to watch porn, boy on boy didn't do much for me except make me feel under sized. Boy on girl and girl on girl was more to my liking.

Actually got boring after a few hours.