You are spot-on. Here's a long excerpt from the article I cited above about BYU's many decades of spying on suspected homosexuals:
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.[133]
Another large role in the persecutorial campus atmosphere was certainly played by the BYU Security Office. That office's first two chiefs, Leonard E. Christensen (from 1952 to 1961) and Swen C. Nielsen (from 1961 to 1974) had come to BYU from the Los Angeles Police Department. (Nielsen's successor in 1974, Robert W. Kelshaw, was a local man and graduate of BYU but had started his career as a Military Policeman at the age of 17.) The LAPD during their time in service (the 1940s to early 1960s) was nationally notorious for their illegal, immoral, and unethical persecution of Gays in the Los Angeles area. Members of the LAPD routinely harassed and entrapped Gays, made thousands of unwarranted arrests, refused to acknowledge the constitutional right for Gays to assemble, and on at least one occasion beat an unarmed, unresistant Gay man to death in front of several witnesses (but were not held accountable for it). These actions prompted Gays in southern California to become more radicalized than elsewhere in the nation, forming the country's first Gay liberation ("homophile") organization in 1948 (the Mattachine Society), the first Gay news magazines, and organizing protests and encouraging rioting, specifically in response to LAPD harassment. LA police entrapment also prompted California Gays to take their cases to trial, leading to the first ever Gay legal victories in US courts. News of this pioneering resistance spread across the country and abroad, and laid the foundation for the modern international Gay rights movement. In like manner, the unethical means used to persecute campus homosexuals at BYU by the administration in general (and LAPD-trained Security in particular) led to increasing acts of personal, political, and ecclesiastical resistance. Campus Gays then began to organize collectively and so experienced a deepening sense of "community" with other LDS homosexuals in the same situation that is still felt in Utah and throughout the LDS Church today.[134]
In 1957, a Gay Mormon named David Chancellor Martin entered BYU as an undergraduate student. He soon discovered that his homosexuality "wasn’t isolated, but a universal practice, found everywhere, even in Provo at BYU". In an autobiographical letter he wrote in 1982, Martin explained that in 1957 "the basement of the old Grant Library [on the BYU campus] was an active meeting place for gays, frequented by students, faculty and townsmen alike." By 1958, Martin had made about a dozen close Gay friends at BYU who were all students (and knew several more gay faculty members). Eventually most of them were "outed" (including Martin) by another Gay student. Martin reports that "we all had to go see Brother [Kenneth A.] Lauritzen [head of University Standards], we all 'repented' and were much more cautious after that." Soon thereafter Martin writes that the Gay student "who had 'snitched' on us...was mysteriously beaten one night on campus, and dropped out of school." By the summer of 1959 these dozen Gay men had all left BYU for missions to Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Denmark, and other countries, but they all kept in touch by mail, exchanging both typical "inspirational missionary stories" and "information on gay life we managed to find there" in the countries where they proselyted. [135]
On May 21, 1959 BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson met with the executive committee of trustees. He asked the committee "whether the Dean of Students should send questionnaires to bishops asking whether students had a propensity for stealing or immorality or anything of that kind", effectively breaking the confidentiality of the confessional; and he also wondered about "the growing problem in our society of homosexuality".[136] Wilkinson recorded that "these two problems interested the Brethren very, very much" and that church president David O. McKay had recently voiced "his view [that] homosexuality was worse than immorality; that it is a filthy and unnatural habit." Wilkinson was instructed that unless homosexual students were "really repentant and immediately working out their problems", the school "should suspend them". Administrators then wondered if they should record on transcripts that the student had been expelled for homosexuality. The executive committee recommended avoiding the possibility of law suits and so no such notation would appear. Wilkinson was also told to come up with a "better plan to find out from bishops the information requested by the Dean of Students." Although progress on Wilkinson's questionnaire was temporarily halted, he would eventually receive permission to implement it.
President Wilkinson and Vice President Earl C. Crockett on May 17, 1961 interviewed Carl Fuerstner (a non-Mormon, 1912-1994), who had been professor of music (piano) at BYU and had been terminated some weeks earlier by Crockett merely for suspicion of being Gay (although Fuerstner was not informed of the reason for the termination). Wilkinson had heard that Fuerstner was being openly critical of the administration for firing him, so Wilkinson wanted to interview him to get a confession out of him to justify the firing. After more than an hour of being drilled by both Wilkinson and Crockett, Fuerstner finally admitted he was Gay but had not acted on his sexuality while teaching at the Y. Wilkinson smugly concluded in his journal that night, “we will have no further trouble with him over his dismissal because he does not want any publicity over the matter any more than we.” Earlier that same year, Dr. Fuerstner published his "'Valse' from Little Dance Suite, Opus 39" in BYU Studies (3:2:50). Fuerstner went on to become conductor and opera coach at the Indiana University School of Music and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra from 1981 to 1987. He also composed the opera Berceuse and trained the opera divas Jessye Norman and Ghada.
On September 12, 1962 Wilkinson, himself a lawyer, met with the school's general counsel, Clyde Sandgren, the new Dean of Students, J. Elliott Cameron, and apostles Spencer Kimball and Mark Petersen "on the question of homosexuals who might possibly be a part of our studentbody". They decided that the number of homosexuals on campus was "a very small percentage of the whole" and therefore administrators "ought not to dignify it by meeting with the men or women of the university in a [public setting] but handle each case on its own." They then worked out a cooperative plan whereby Mormon general authorities and other church administrators would give BYU any information they obtained about homosexuality on campus, and BYU would give church administrators information about homosexual church members. They decided "as a general policy that no one will be admitted as a student at the B.Y.U. whom we have convincing evidence is a homosexual."[137]
However BYU started finding more homosexuals on campus than initially anticipated. First, Apostle Spencer Kimball felt compelled to condemn homosexuality in his "Love versus Lust" address to the assembled studentbody on January 5, 1965. Then in the fall of that year, Ernest L. Wilkinson reversed the decision of 1962 and finally went public with anti-Gay policies during an address to the student body. As part of his speech hypocritically titled "Make Honor Your Standard", Wilkinson indicated that BYU does not intend "to admit to our campus any homosexuals. If any of you have this tendency and have not completely abandoned it, may I suggest that you leave the university immediately after this assembly; and if you will be honest enough to let us know the reason, we will voluntarily refund your tuition. We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence."[138] By resorting to the metaphor of viral contagion, Wilkinson voiced his own - and presumably others - fear of the "homosexual within" himself which merely needed the presence of another homosexual to activate it. His unfortuante rhetoric also ironically underscores a profound sense of Mormon weakness and susceptibility to this alleged contamination. Our mere physical presence terrifies Wilkinson.
David C. Martin returned to BYU in 1962 to finish his undergraduate work, graduating in 1964. However Martin soon discovered that although he had "confessed" and been absolved by the church and school, the school administration had not forgotten. In fact, his name was on a list of "known perverts", and upon his return to BYU, he had been spied on. At the time of graduation, BYU sent a campus police officer to Martin's home to speak with his wife, telling her that her husband "IMMEDIATELY" needed to speak to the Dean of Students (J. Elliott Cameron), or he would not be allowed to graduate. After their meeting, Cameron then sent Martin to Salt Lake City where he had to be interviewed by Apostle Spencer Kimball "and literally beg to be allowed to graduate". He lied to Kimball, telling him that he was "cured" and promised Kimball that he and his wife would move out of state to avoid sullying the church's image. [139]
The Suicides of 1965
A 1975 article that appeared in the national Gay newsmagazine, The Advocate, recounted that Gay Mormon Robert McQueen had met five young Gay BYU students a decade earlier. All in their 20s, three had recently completed missions for the LDS Church. Four of these men "had been trapped in the on-going homosexual witch hunts at BYU and subjected to the church's disciplinary program", McQueen wrote. The fifth young man had confessed voluntarily to church leaders that he was Gay. Each one was interviewed in 1965 "by the counselor to homosexual problems", Apostle Spencer Kimball. McQueen felt that "they wanted to be better people, but believed in their church more than they believed in themselves". Unfortunately, "when their church rejected them because they were gay, it destroyed them." McQueen knew, after his own soul-searching, that because they had been unable to "reconcile...the opposing forces of a rigidly homophobic religion and homosexuality", the five students killed themselves. Two of the students committed suicide by over-dosing on drugs, one hung himself, another blew his own head apart with a gun, and the last jumped seven storeys to his death. These horrific deaths profoundly influenced McQueen and started him on his own crusade to hold the Mormon Church and its leaders accountable for its actions. [140]
The "Witch Hunts of 1968"
Finally in 1967 Wilkinson received approval to ask Mormon bishops at BYU to provide the BYU Standard Office with lists of students who were "inactive in the church" or who had confessed to "not living the standards of the church". The numbers of students visiting the Standards Office subsequently rose dramatically. The first year of the new policy, Standards counselled seventy- two students who were "suspected of homosexual activity". The report of this high number "flabbergasted" BYU and church leaders, spurring them to action. [141] The administration began to keep security files on suspected Gay students, facutly and staff, school officials collaborated with local police to entrap campus Gays, student spying was encouraged and expanded [142], and expulsions from the school increased significantly. Even prospective teachers at the Language Training Mission on BYU campus had to be interviewed by a General Authority, because a "homosexual ring" had seemingly infiltrated the campus. Church leaders wanted to be assured that no Lesbians or Gay men were teaching the missionaries at the language school for missionaries.[143] On campus entrapment by local and campus police reached a peak in the late 70s (see the Chipman case below) and continued well into the 1990s: in 1992, a Gay PhD candidate named Don R******** was almost entrapped at the Harold B. Lee Library bathrooms by undercover Orem City police officers. [144]
As part of the student spy program initiated by BYU administration in 1967, Gay student E. Donald Attridge was recruited to be an informant after he was outed by another student he had been intimate with named Brent. Don Attridge had befriended a "flamboyant costumer" in the Drama Department named George. After kissing each other, George told Don that he had "passed the test" and began introducing Don around to the social network of Gay students. This group would usually meet at the step-down lounge in the Wilkinson Center and then go out to socialize, sometimes even driving the sixty miles north to visit the Radio City Lounge gay bar in Salt Lake. Around January of 1968, Don met Gay anthropology student Brent while studying in the library. Brent was apparently a 17 year old freshman, although Attridge did not realize his age. Eventually they shared "affection and a form of sexual intimacy" with each other, but then Brent disappeared. Around early March, Don was called in to see Kenneth Lauritzen, head of the Standards Office. Brent's girlfriend had found out he had been intimate with Attridge, and in turn she told her bishop who then informed Kenneth Lauritzen. Don Attridge denied all charges and left Lauritzen's office, hoping for the best. Unfortunately his nightmate was only beginning. Lauritzen interrogated Attridge a second time, now threatening to press charges for statutory rape of a minor...that is, unless Attridge would provide a list of names of other homosexual students. Then Attridge was immediately expelled from the University, lost all his college loans, and was fired from his campus job as a janitor at the Harris Fine Arts Center, leaving him "broke financially and emotionally".
After being suspended from BYU, Attridge was manipulated into spying after a heavy-handed meeting with (and several follow-up phone calls) from Apostle Spencer Kimball, who promised Attridge that the reason he wanted a list of Gay students from Attridge was "to help them". Don later recalled, "I imagined a discussion group with all the gay group attending with Apostle Kimball helping us all". He trusted the church leaders and felt that they would help him to understand that, "If I were so repulsive to God maybe now the leaders could show me how to change? Maybe there would arise a plan to help all of us work out the situation of being homosexual and being members of the Church." Indeed there was a plan involved, but through it the lives of many people were destroyed, not assisted. Attridge almost single-handedly instigated the devastating "Witch Hunts of 1968", as they came to be called. Sometime towards early spring of 1968, Attridge attended a large party of Gay students at a private home in the Provo area. Although he knew almost no one there, he tried to introduce himself to everyone there, carefully noting their names. Attridge also snooped into a Gay friends "little black book" and noted many of the names therein, adding them to his list for Kimball. Although he was to turn this list into Kimball at his Provo apartment, Kimball called and told him instead to meet him at the basement lobby of the Wilkinson Center. Knowing that Attridge was financially destitute now because of the church and school's reaction, Kimbally gave Attridge a loan of $30 and Attridge gave Kimball the list of names, believing that the end would be the loving assistance promised by Kimball. Instead a devastating storm of scandal and controversy broke out with far-reaching consequences for all involved.
Kimball contacted those people on the list, told them that they had been caught, informed them that Don Attridge had turned them in (which could have seriously endangered Attridge's life and physical well-being, but graciously all those on "the list" remained very sympathetic toward Don despite what happened as a result of his spying for Kimball), and demanded to know more names of campus homosexuals, or face school expulsion, church excommunication, etc. The relative of a General Authority of the LDS church, who was caught in this witch hunt, recalled ten years later, "It was always the same. The initial approach was the expression of a desire to help. Conditions for remaining at B.Y.U. were their supplying of additional names and the approval of [Elder] Kimball." If the student cooperated and supplied more names, there was little castigation. If the student did not cooperate, however, "interrogation procedures were put into effect, threats of immediate expulsion or worse, being confined in a room alone (solitary) to think about it, a barrage of insistent questions,....Some reported that even after being detained for hours they had still refused to supply additional names, only to later seem to disappear from campus, apparently forced to leave so suddenly that friends did not know when they had left or where they had gone." Some gave fictitious names or only the names of others who had already been reported. Many of those on Attridge's list were expelled from school. One man had his transcripts "permanently altered" resulting in a "serious curtailment" of his career choices. Another man, up for an ROTC officer promotion lost his commission and his entire scholarship, and another Gay man had his teaching credetials denied. A man on the list named Jason, who was the relative of another General Authority, escaped from being expelled by denying all the accusations. Yet another man caught via Attridge's list , Brad G. Lauritzen (apparently no relation to Kenneth Lauritzen) was hospitalized by his family in a mental institution but later escaped and ran away to San Francisco, where he tragically committed suicide just before Christmas, on December 18, 1971. [145]
These claims of spying, "security" lists, expulsions, and a ubitquitous surveillance network during the "witch hunts" are verified in a BYU inter-office memo sent by Kenneth Lauritzen to Ernest Wilkinson on June 18, 1969. This memo indicates that one year earlier, on June 1, 1968, a man on "the list" namd Frank H***** was expelled from BYU because of this "security report indicating he was a homosexual". Five days after his suspension, Frank was sent a letter from Lauritzen detailing that he was restricted from "BYU campus at all times unless he received permission from the Dean of Students" or Lauritzen himself. During the intervening year, Frank had been to see Spencer Kimball but had "not received clearance from him to return to BYU" and had denied to Kimball that he was "homosexually inclined". Frank had also informed Kimball that "he could supply the names of a hundred students and faculty at BYU who were involved in homosexual activities", however Kimball had informed Laurtizen that ultimately H***** had provided no such list. On April 30, 1969, Frank "was observed on campus without permission" so a complaint for trespassing had been filed against him by BYU, and he was to appear in Provo City court on June 20, exactly one week before the infamous "Stonewall Riots" in New York City would initiate the Gay Liberation movement nationally. Frank H***** also had called Lauritzen to tell him that H***** would be taking this matter to LDS president David O. McKay, since Frank was a hair stylist and had cut the hair of McKay's daughter-in-law many times. H***** had arranged through one of his female clients to get an appointment with McKay for June 18, 1969. This revealing memo always leaves me amazed at the ability of BYU Security and the campus administrative machinery to recognize and respond so quickly to the presence of a banned student a full year after his expulsion. [146]
Ten years later, Attridge would write a lengthy, anonymous letter (using the initials LML for "Let Me Live") detailing some of these events from the Witch Hunts of '68. The University of Utah's campus paper, the Utah Daily Chronicle ran it as a front page feature at the end of January, 1978. This unleashed virulent public debate in subsequent editorials, with several Mormons questioning the accuracy of Attridge's tale. A week later however, one of the men actually from Attridge's list who had been caught and punished by BYU wrote to the Chronicle and confirmed all the details of those tragic days at the "Y". This former student (another relative of a General Authority) had chosen to leave school at the end of the term rather than see Kimball. However when he tried to transfer his credits elsewhere, he discovered that "B.Y.U....coded my records so that I could not obtain an official transcript...because of a problem with Standards which had not been cleared." Some months later, this same student learned that BYU had released his hold though and he was eventually able to attend another university. [147]
According to BYU Board minutes of 1973, in January of 1969, the BYU Board of Trustees (usually comprised of several General Authorities and the University President) ruled that Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual students "would not be admitted or retained at BYU without approval from the General Authorities".[148] Three years later, 1972 Board minutes reveal that Apostle Marvin J. Ashton was asked by trustees to help further define a clearer policy on homosexuals at BYU because the new president of the university, Dallin Oaks, was concerned about what to do with those students or school personnel who had homosexual desires but were not "overtly" homosexual. [149] Six months later, the Trustees ruled that those who were not "overt and active homosexuals" could remain on campus at the university's discretion and upon recommendation by the "ecclesiastical leader having jurisdiction over the case". However, those who were "overt and active" would still be automatically expelled unless a General Authority recommended otherwise. [150]
In 1973, David C. Martin tried to return to BYU for his graduate work. Prior to admission though, he had to be interviewed again by both the Dean of Students and Apostle Kimball. He and his wife now had six children, so he was able to convince them that he was indeed "cured" of his homosexuality and apparently signed a statement testifying to that. After getting his graduate degree, he moved his family to Nauvoo, Illinois, where he started the Mormon Miscellaneous newsletter and became well-known in the "Mormon Underground" of scholars, collectors, and dissidents. Unfortunately, David contracted HIV during the 1980s and died of AIDS in San Diego in 1992. [151]
Two other Gay BYU students were caught in 1973 and threatened with expulsion from the school. However, they were then informed that they could remain if they would "work for security as spies", to entrap other Gays attending the school. The were told that if they refused the assignment, they would be expelled. According to a 1982 interview with Dave, who knew these two men, "Security was obnoxious and knew how to push people into things they didn't want to do". Apparently a few other people who had been coerced into spying "became fed up" with their treatment by BYU and went to TV stations in Salt Lake City with their tales. With such negative publicity focused on the Y in 1973 and 1974, the Security Office became less aggressive in their tactics. Dave admitted that "After that blew over things were quiet for a while". Joseph Morrow, a BYU security guard in 1973, testified that BYU security investigations of off-campus Gay spaces were commonplace in the early 1970s. He stated in an interview that once he ws asked by his supervisor, Paul Tanner, "to go to Salt Lake City to check for BYU parking permits on cars gathered around specific bars. The bars...were known homosexual haunts". When Marrow expressed dismay over the assignment, he was told "it was a regular weekend practice". [152]
The "Witch Hunts of 1975"
In the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, Gay and Lesbian rights rhetoric finally reached BYU by the early 1970's, inducing many students to come out of the closet, despite fears of academic and ecclesiastical repercussions. In January 1975 BYU administrators sent its security officers to quash an alleged "homosexual ring" on campus. Security officers descended en masse on the Harris Fine Arts Center and took all male drama and ballet students out of their classes to interrogate them in hallways and in front of other students, humiliating them publicly. BYU security also apparently sent undercover officers and volunteers to Gay bars in Salt Lake City to record the license plate numbers of cars with BYU parking stickers on them. Rev. Robert Waldrop reported that he had seen men recording license plate numbers outside gay bars on several occasions and upon approaching one of these men, the stranger refused to explain his activities, jumped into a car with a BYU parking sticker and left. Joe Redburn, the owner of the Sun, Salt Lake's most popular Gay bar, also had witnessed BYU security officers actually come into his bar quite regularly, trying to catch Gay students in compromising situations.
Ben Williams reported to me that in November 1975, Security began intense surveillance of the men's bathrooms in the Wilkinson Center, where students met each other for sexual encounters. Williams was caught in the Wilkinson bathrooms by a Security officer named Shephard (probably BYU detective Malin Shephard, later involved in the arrest of David Chipman, below), simply for witnessing Shephard entrap a Gay American Indian student (whom Williams recognized as being from the BYU performance group for Indians called the Lamanite Generation, who had just returned from their first international tour to Central and South America). Shephard hauled Williams to the Standards Office, where Shephard told Williams that "there is a problem at BYU and you are part of the problem". He also informed Williams that he had arrested another Gay student earlier in the day, but that student had been very rebellious and had told Shephard that BYU was the problem, not the Gay student. (Williams was subsequently disfellowshipped on April 10, 1976 by his branch president at BYU, Paul H. Thompson, who became president of Weber State University in 1991; Williams was then expelled from BYU).
In a humorous moment of open dissent, some of the students who were caught in the witch hunt or "Purge of '75" got some assistance in the design of a t-shirt from a Gay art student named David N-------; they then had the shirts printed up at the BYU bookstore. The T-shirts read sarcastically, "I'm on the list - are you?" Their audactiy was even reported in the New York Times. [153]
Not all Gays on campus could respond to this situation with such audacitous humor however. As the purge continued into 1976, in a joint effort between Utah County Sherriff's officers and BYU security during March 1976, fourteen men were arraigned in Pleasant Grove (near BYU) on charges of "lewdness and sodomy" at two nearby freeway rest stops. During surveillance of these rest stops, police and campus officers documented more than 100 men, many of whom were from BYU, who were "believed to engage in homosexual activity" there. [154] One married student named Larry C--------- was arrested on March 28th at the rest stop. He attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of aspirin and then showed up at the door of his boyfriend, Ben Williams. When Ben noticed Larry getting drowsy, he drove him to Utah Valley Hospital. Medical personnel there pumped Larry's stomach and then illegally reported Larry's suicide attempt to BYU Security without his permission. Security already had a file on him due to his recent arrest at the rest stop, so they in turn informed his BYU branch president and his wife of the situation, again without his consent. This devastated the already emotionally fragile man. His wife showed up at the hospital but refused to stay with him, so Ben was asked by one of the nurses to remain with Larry to help him through his first hours of recovery. Larry was soon threatened by his branch president with excommunication unless he provided the names of other Gay students. Larry gave the bishop a list of names, omitting only Ben's because he had been so helpful and in fact, they were in love. Larry was then "watched like a hawk" by Security so Ben never contacted him openly again.
Another of these men arrested at the rest stop was 54 year old BYU professor of music, father of five, and World War II Army veteran (of the Pacific Theater), Carlyle D. Marsden of Kaysville, Utah. Humiliated and distraught over his arrest, Marsden left his home in the morning, drove down the street just a short distance from his home, and shot himself in the heart with a pistol on Monday, March 8, 1976, two days after his arrest. Marsden had served a mission to the New England States and then attended the College of Southern Utah for two years but received his bacherlor's degree from BYU, a master's degree from the University of Utah, and had done more graduate work at Claremont College, Occidental, and California State LA (now UCLA). In 1944 he married Adelaide Lund in the Salt Lake Temple. He was the member of the bishopric and Stake High Council in Pomona, California and was a Sunday School superintendent in Salt Lake. As a gifted musician, he later served as a Music Regional Representive for the church, stake and ward organist and choir director. By career, he was a music teacher at both Brigham Young University and Eisenhower Junior High School in the Granite School District in Salt Lake. His death was a tragic loss for his family and the many social, religious, educational, and musical communities in which he circulated. Oddly, only the Ogden Standard Examiner carried notice of his suicide. The Daily Universe at BYU and the Provo Daily Herald did not even mention that he had died, let alone killed himself. [155]
The public outcry against these tactics and their results led to President Oaks giving an interview to the Salt Lake Tribune in March 1976. Oaks was asked 'if BYU security agents checked known homosexual haunts looking for BYU students". Oaks cautiously replied that he personally didn't know but "he wouldn't be surprised if security officers made such investigations over a period of time". BYU Security Chief Robert W. Kelshaw admitted in 1982 that "in the past we have gone off campus to seek [Gays]" and also confirmed that "we do communicate with other law enforcement agencies and check court records periodically." Efforts were also being made on campus to find and spy on suspected homosexuals using ecclesiastical channels. For example, Larry M****, a closeted homosexual and member of BYU's 71st Ward, was given the assignment by his bishop and his Elder's Quorum president to spy on a certain other man in the ward whom the bishop suspected was a homosexual. Larry and the Elder's Quorum president were to relate to the bishop anything suspicious and not tell anyone about this "special assignment". [156]