Orr said she was ready to “get to the finish line” and graduate so she wouldn’t have to shield her identity on campus, a process made easier when she was attending classes virtually. Orr, who was on campus during the whirlwind of celebration and subsequent letdown, called the announcement a “kick in the knees.” Then came the apparent reversal: Two weeks after students celebrated what they believed was a major change to the honor code, the church clarified that “homosexual behavior” was still “not compatible” with the school’s values.
#GAY PRIDE RAINBOW PICTURE CODE#
In 2020, weeks before the pandemic would halt in-person classes, BYU administrators removed a passage from the university’s honor code that explicitly banned “homosexual behavior.” At the time, LGBTQ students were cautiously optimistic that this meant they could be more open about their relationships on campus. In the last two years, LGBTQ students at BYU have seen their school seem to bend to inclusion, only to then double down on exclusion. LGBTQ students were affected by honor code changes “The church didn’t give me my relationship with God the church didn’t give me my spirituality,” she said. She felt confident, after speaking with her best friend and mentor, that her faith and her queerness weren’t at odds with each other. People I knew could turn me in if they knew. “The only people who knew were my immediate family. “I did keep it hidden,” she said of a past queer relationship. (The church holds that sex is “reserved for a man and woman who are married.”) Orr spent time reconciling her bisexuality with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which holds that gay, lesbian and bisexual people can “fully and worthily participate in the Church” so long as they don’t act on their same-sex attraction. “It created this inner turmoil and despair, because they’re both so important to me.” “I felt like I was forced to choose between my spirituality and sexuality,” Orr said. Orr said she had been comfortable at BYU until she felt attracted to another woman. To Orr, her faith and identity aren’t at odds
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“I wanted to do this to be honored, to be seen,” Orr told CNN. Orr said she didn’t intend her rainbow reveal, her younger sister’s suggestion, to stand as a rebuke to her alma mater. The Honor Code Office may investigate reported students and choose to take action against students for perceived offenses, including expulsion from the university, according to BYU. It was a quiet moment of recognition for the years she spent hiding her LGBTQ identity at a school where, Orr said, she feared school administrators and classmates might have turned her in to the school’s Honor Code Office if they discovered she’d been in a same-sex relationship.
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“I hope more people will support this trend of removing legal barriers.She took a breath, smiled and opened up her graduation gown to reveal a rainbow Pride flag, which one of her sisters had sewn into the gown’s lining.
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“More and more municipalities have adopted ordinances to offer special partnership certificates for same-sex couples,” the man said. The central government, however, has made no move to legalize same-sex marriages. The court was the first in Japan to hand down such a ruling. The Sapporo District Court said in March 2021 that denying same-sex marriages is unconstitutional. They held up placards and banners saying, “We want to be a family legally,” and “I want to have more options in the future.” Participants wearing rainbow-colored masks, T-shirts and raincoats paraded in the drizzling rain. The event was held online in 20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People walked through the streets around Yoyogi Park in Shibuya Ward on the last day of the three-day event, which is one of the largest in Japan. “Originally, this was a ‘special’ gathering for sexual minorities to make their presence known, but now, families come to the event like it is a festival,” said a 45-year-old gay man from Warabi, Saitama Prefecture. About 2,000 sexual minorities and their supporters walked through the streets of the capital on April 24 as Tokyo Rainbow Pride returned in person for the first time in three years.