A little more than three years after delivering his “musket speech” at Brigham Young University, Latter-day Saint apostle Jeffrey R. Holland has acknowledged the pain the address caused others and him.
“Now, if anybody was hurt, and I know some were in that exchange, then I was hurt,” Holland told Sheri Dew, chief executive officer of Deseret Book, in a podcast published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “And I have wept. I have wept for those three years.”
Nevertheless, the former president of the church-owned school doubled down on the 2021 talk’s overriding message, which was for faculty to get in line behind the church’s teachings regarding gender and sexuality.
Holland said he doubted “anybody has had more people in an office, in a chair, weeping with them than I have in that administration building, with kids who were struggling with gender issues. No one can say that I do not love them.”
He continued: “But I am also and was then responsible for the direction of a university. I just wanted to get the supporting doctrine of the church across.”
[Read the transcript of Holland’s 2021 talk.]
Stressing that the speech, now required reading for all incoming BYU students, was delivered at a conference reserved for university leadership, Holland went on to describe the Provo school as a “safe” place for “every student.”
He and Dew skirted around the most scrutinized portion of his 2021 address — the call for BYU faculty and staff to take up their intellectual “muskets” to defend the church, especially its “doctrine of the family and ... marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
Neither did Holland talk about his decision at the time to deride former student Matt Easton’s 2019 graduation speech in which Easton declared he was “proud to be a gay son of God.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) In his 2021 address, LDS apostle Jeffrey Holland singled out Matt Easton, who had come out as gay in his 2019 graduation speech. Holland later wrote Easton's parents, the graduate recalls, apologizing for any pain Holland's remarks had inflicted on them. The senior apostle did not, Easton says, extend the same courtesy to him.
Nonetheless, this willingness by a leading church leader to acknowledge harm inflicted by his previous statements is rare, although hardly unprecedented.
In 2019, when the church reversed the controversial 2015 same-sex couple exclusion policy, President Russell M. Nelson noted that it had “created concern and confusion for some and heartache for others.”
“Whenever the sons and daughters of God weep, for whatever reasons,” Nelson said, “we weep.”
While many LGBTQ Latter-day Saints expressed gratitude for Holland’s willingness to address the heartache his words caused, others expressed frustration that his remarks fell short of an apology.
A missing apology
Easton, who has since left the church, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by Holland’s lack of an apology.
Not long after Holland’s talk, the apostle wrote a letter to Easton’s father, an active Latter-day Saint, Easton said. In it, the church leader apologized for any pain he may have caused the graduate’s parents.
“He did not,” Easton explained, “attempt to make contact or restitution with me.”
Gracee Purcell, a lesbian BYU student, also noted the absence of an apology — adding that, for all his expression of concern, Holland focused a great deal on his own experience.
“After three years, I would have hoped for less focus on his personal hurt,” said the president of the RaYnbow Collective, a nonprofit that supports BYU’s LGBTQ community, “and more on meaningful growth and accountability.”
A lasting impact on LGBTQ students
Purcell disputed Holland’s assertion that LGBTQ students are “safe” at BYU.
She pointed to a 2022 pride event in Provo, where gun-wielding protesters flung slurs and displayed signs with the tagline “musket fire.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Counterprotesters wearing visible firearms arrive on the scene where the RaYnbow Collective was hosting a Back to School Pride Night for BYU students at Kiwanis Park in Provo in September 2022.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sabrina Wang joins other “angels” for the RaYnbow Collective’s Back to School Pride Night for BYU students at Kiwanis Park in Provo in an effort to block counterprotesters in September 2022.
“On campus,” she said, “the sense of fear, loneliness and insecurity is palpable.”
Maddison Tenney, a queer former BYU student currently attending Harvard Divinity School, agreed that the speech worsened the environment for LGBTQ students.
“While the intention of his speech may have been one to strengthen BYU,” she said, “... his word choice resulted in discrimination, violence and division on campus.”
(Maddison Tenney) Queer Latter-day Saint and BYU alum Maddison Tenney says Holland's speech contributed to greater hostility toward LGBTQ students on campus.
Jaclyn Foster, a nonbinary lesbian who no longer attends church but still identifies as Mormon, added to this list of harms, citing the issue of students being called to the Honor Code Office for “simply for being honest with their bishop about their struggle to reconcile faith and their sexuality.”
Foster, who uses they/them pronouns, serves on the board of The OUT Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ alumni and current students at BYU. Through this work, they said the organization has also observed “a marked decrease in faculty members who are willing to engage with LGBTQ student organizations or otherwise visibly support queer students.”
Burying muskets
Nate McLaughlin, an gay Latter-day Saint studying at the University of Utah, said while he appreciated Holland’s efforts to “‘mourn with those that mourn,’” church members also covenant to bear one another’s burdens.
“This talk was a burden, and right now bearing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints’ burdens looks like apologizing for the harm caused regardless of the intention,” said McLaughlin, who explained that he was the victim of slurs and threats while at BYU-Idaho. “It means abandoning this speech and choosing to protect LGBTQ BYU students.”
(Nate McLaughlin) A student at the University of Utah, Nate McLaughlin applauds Holland's efforts to "mourn with those that mourn," while also calling on the senior apostle to remember his covenant to bear on another's burdens. An apology, McLaughlin suggests, would be one way to lift the burden created by the church leader's remarks.
And that, he said, “will not happen unless we have the strength and faith to bury our muskets.”
David Doyle, a gay Latter-day Saint living in Florida, seconded this, explaining “it’s important for queer individuals to … feel hope that the future is going to be better.”
Indeed, Holland seemed to acknowledge as much, telling Sheri Dew, “we will keep trying. We will keep trying to do better.”
In the meantime, transgender woman, Latter-day Saint and recent BYU graduate Makoto Hunter isn’t letting mentions of muskets weigh her down.
“I consider myself too busy experiencing happiness as an out transgender woman … to think all that much about what Elder Holland said three years ago, how he said it and what he feels about it,” she said. “The joys and sorrows of LGBTQ folks, Latter-day Saints and non-Mormons alike, are much bigger than any one person or controversy.”
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