federal funding can claim a “religious faith” exemption
to Title IX, which provides women with equal access to
educational services but has been expanded in recent
years to protect LGBTQ students. BYU has a legal right
to discriminate.
But some LGBTQ rights advocates believe other
universities should be grappling with the same
questions that faced their predecessors after the
Black 14 story put the Latter-day Saints church’s racial
prejudice into the national spotlight 40 years ago.
Instead of answering those questions — or even
asking them — universities across the nation, including
the UO, are lining up to do business with BYU. A review of
dozens of contracts between BYU and the schools it has
contracted to compete against on the gridiron shows
millions of dollars changing hands between institutions
with strict non-discrimination rules and a university
that openly and actively discriminates against LGBTQ
individuals.
And who will be doing the most to enrich BYU in
coming years?
That would be the University of Oregon.
READY FOR
SOME FOOTBALL
The UO prohibits discrimination “on the basis of
race, color, sex, national or ethnic origin, age, religion,
marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual
orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in
all programs, activities and employment practices.”
No school can make rules for other schools, of
course. But institutions of higher education can choose
the conditions under which they will do business with
others. Indeed, Oregon requires both contractors
and subcontractors to not only commit to non-
discrimination but also “to take affirmative action to
employ and advance in employment individuals without
regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation,
gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran
status.” The school apparently thinks this is important,
as this section of the general “University Standard
Terms and Conditions” contract is the only part of the
document in boldface.
Under those terms, Oregon could not hire a janitorial
company to clean Autzen Stadium if that company
refused to employ people who are in gay relationships.
It couldn’t hire a concessionaire to sell hotdogs at Duck
games if that company fired people for getting married
to someone of the same sex. If Oregon tried to staff its
athletics contests with a security firm that maintained
the same policies as BYU, the contract would likely be
turned down.
But the contract the UO signed with BYU in 2015
discriminatory organizations of all sorts to continue
doing business as usual without fear of repercussions.
“Unfortunately, being anti-queer in America isn’t a
‘bad enough’ thing yet to, say, justify turning down an
organization or turning down
money,” she says. “A lot of
organizations actively donate
to anti-queer causes and other
organizations do business with
them all the time.”
In the midst of all of the prob-
lems faced by queer students at
universities across the nation,
Cannell says, a football game
against BYU probably isn’t on a
lot of people’s radars.
“Non-allies don’t likely care.
Allies probably don’t see it un-
— CHRISTA CANNELL,
BOARD MEMBER AT LOGAN PRIDE
less it’s pointed out,” she says.
“The priority is football and en-
tertainment. That’s the status
quo. I’m not sure what would
need to happen to change that.”
‘I’ve had friends
kicked out of BYU
for being queer.
That’s a very real
and very harmful
practice.’
A COMPLICITY
OF CHOICE
Being gay isn’t a choice. Playing football against BYU
is.
BYU isn’t in the Pac-12, like the UO. In fact, BYU’s
football program isn’t in any athletic conference. It
has been independent since the 2011-12 season. And
although it has openly sought to join a major conference
since then, the university’s record on gay rights is one
of the factors that seem to have prevented the major
conferences from asking BYU to join.
In 2016, when the Big 12 appeared to be entertaining
the idea of inviting BYU into its ranks, 25 LGBTQ
advocacy organizations signed onto a joint letter
urging the conference to think twice. “As organizations
committed to ending homophobia, biphobia and
transphobia both on and off the field of play, we are
deeply troubled by this possibility,” the letter read. “We
feel it would be extremely problematic to include BYU in
your conference expansion.”
The invite from the Big 12 never came, and no other
major conference has shown any public interest in BYU.
That means that BYU can’t rely on a conference to set
its schedule. So, when UO officials decided to compete
against BYU in football, they did so as the result of a
voluntary and independent negotiation for revenue
sharing.
That negotiation would seem to be an outlier for a
school that has worked hard to be inclusive.
At BYU today, a so-called 'honor code' specifically bans from the university students who
engage in acts of physical intimacy with people of the same sex, even when those acts are
completely non-sexual. Gay students worry they can be kicked out of school for things that
heterosexual students don’t have to think twice about, like holding hands in the quad, cuddling
in the student center, or sharing a kiss at the campus duck pond.
for a Sept. 10, 2022 game at Autzen Stadium doesn’t
include a non-discrimination clause. That would seem
to give Oregon room to do business with a school that
encourages students, faculty and staff to report on
members of the college community who are suspected of
homosexual behavior and other honor code violations.
(There’s even a convenient web form to make things
easy for snitches.)
“I’ve had friends kicked out of BYU for being queer,”
says Christa Cannell, a board member at Logan Pride,
which advocates for LGBTQ students in northern Utah,
where one of BYU’s historic rivals, Utah State University,
is located. “That’s a very real and very harmful practice.”
Cannell laments a social environment that allows
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
The university ranking organization College Choice
has the UO as number 11 on its list of the best LGBTQ
schools in the nation. The UO has been out front with
coming out support, LGBTQ scholarships, gender-
inclusive housing and simplified processes for name
and gender changes.
Why would a school that works so hard to be
inclusive sign a contract to play football with a school
that consistently appears on lists of the most anti-gay
campuses in the nation — ranking fourth, for instance,
in The Advocate’s 2017 list of the “20 colleges most
hostile to LGBT students”?
Hudson Taylor, the executive director of Athlete Ally,
an LGBTQ advocacy organization that helped push the
Big 12 to reject BYU, isn’t surprised by the disconnect
between the stated principles of individual institutions
and their practices.
“There are a lot of schools within the NCAA that are
supportive of their LGBTQ athletes and fans, but that
isn’t necessarily evident through their actions, such as
who they play,” Taylor says. “There is still a culture of
looking the other way.”
MONEY BALL
While Oregon is one of the most prominent
universities to sign on to play football against BYU since
the Latter-day Saints school went independent, it isn’t
the only institution that has roundly ignored BYU’s anti-
gay policies. It takes a lot of schools to fill out a football
schedule, after all.
It takes a lot of dough to make that happen. For
coming to Provo to play football at BYU, other schools
usually get a check for $250,000. BYU generally gets
a similar part of the take when it goes on the road,
according to the contracts.
Such contracts are typical between schools of similar
sporting merit. But, like many large sports programs
scheduling non-conference opponents, BYU pays larger
“body bag” fees to schools that agree to come to Provo
for a likely whupping. It has agreed, for instance, to pay
Utah’s Dixie State University, another public university,
$425,000 for a game scheduled for 2022.
Such arrangements work the other way, too. Oregon
will put $1.1 million into a BYU account to get the
Cougars to come play football in Eugene in 2022. That’s
by far the largest check any school will write to BYU in
coming years.
That doesn’t sit well with Liz Sauer, the communica-
tion manager at the LGBTQ advocacy organization Basic
Rights Oregon.
“It’s really curious and, frankly, disappointing that
the University of Oregon, which has generally done
quite a good job of supporting LGBT equality, has gone
out of its way to support and play BYU when it has such
discriminatory policies,” Sauer says. “I would hope the
university is open to criticism and open to discussion
with the community on its policies.”
Sauer wants Oregon to answer some basic questions
about the contract it signed.
“Like, why is this the case? Why is it important? Since
BYU is not in the same conference as the University of
Oregon, and they’re not required to play them, what
is the point? What’s their purpose here?” she asked. “I
would hope they listen to students and the community
on why BYU’s policy is problematic to students.”
And she hopes Oregon students, faculty and staff
will make their voices heard on this issue.
If that were to happen, maybe athletic directors
would think twice before signing contracts like the
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