Homophobia or behavior issues? Ogden man banned from LDS Institute of Religion
Spencer Stevens walks through central Ogden on Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2016. Stevens is gay and Mormon and tries to strike a balance between the two by not being in a relationship. Stevens was recently asked to quit attending LDS Institute at Weber State University.
Spencer Stevens works on his blog at the Weber County Main Library on Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2016. His blog, Potential Sparks, documents his thoughts on being openly gay and passionately LDS.
Spencer Stevens works on his blog while his friend, Camille Condie, watches at the Weber County Main Library on Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2016. His blog, Potential Sparks, documents his thoughts on being openly gay and passionately LDS.
Spencer Stevens walks through central Ogden on Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2016. Stevens is gay and Mormon and tries to strike a balance between the two by not being in a relationship. Stevens was recently asked to quit attending LDS Institute at Weber State University.
OGDEN — Spencer Stevens is openly gay. He’s also happily Mormon.
And that’s led to some drama in the last few months.
In late December, Stevens, 26, was asked by his ecclesiastical leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to stop attending the Ogden Institute of Religion, which is a church-operated building adjacent to Weber State University. The institute offers religious instruction, as well as a place for young adult members of the church to study and socialize.
Stevens claims the ban is the result of homophobia among students, teachers and administrators. The church says it has to do with “behavior issues.”
“I was banned the week after Christmas — I can’t set foot in the door,” the Ogden man said. “Except on Sundays, because that’s where I go to church.”
Stevens admits he’s been very open about who he is — “authentic and raw and real,” he calls it.
“Some people just took it wrong,” Stevens said.
Nathan Hollist, the director of the Ogden Institute of Religion, referred questions about the incident to Doug Andersen of the church’s public affairs department.
“He was asked not to attend, which is not uncommon for someone that’s 26 years old and was not enrolled at the school at Weber State,” Andersen said.
Stevens had been attending the Ogden Institute of Religion for the past eight years. He earned his bachelor’s degree in professional technical writing from WSU three years ago, but he says the president of the church has encouraged young people to attend institute — whether or not they’re enrolled in college.
Andersen called Stevens’ situation “sad,” and referred to “a pretty long laundry list of problems that he had created.”
Stevens was initially called into the institute director’s office in September. He was told some students had complained about his behavior.
“So I decided to dial it down. I did. I tried very, very hard,” Stevens said. “I thought, ‘If you want a lesser version of me, I’ll give it to you.’ “
But over Christmas break, during a ward activity, Stevens was taken aside by his stake president.
“He called me away from the group, and read a letter to me stating that I was indefinitely banned from attending institute,” Stevens said.
Andersen said the reasons for the action have been well-documented, including “inappropriate comments in class of a sexual nature.”
“You can’t go through and start harassing fellow students and disrupting classes and threatening teachers,” he said.
Andersen also suggested that Stevens may have been taken advantage of by LGBT activists.
“You’ve got a lot of people that were advocates on the LGBT side that just latched onto him, and, I think, candidly, used him,” Andersen said. “I think what he’s done is he’s found some friends — or some people that will listen to him, or some people that will engage with him — that are on the periphery, and I think it’s pulling him into spots that are pretty dicey for him.”
Stevens denies that he made any inappropriate comments.
In a six-page letter sent to the Standard-Examiner, Stevens wrote to say he’d been wrongly accused of a number of counts of sexual harassment.
“I have NEVER sent explicit texts to anyone from Institute, past or present, nor have I inappropriately advanced on or touched anyone from Institute, past or present,” Stevens writes.
He says the only things he’s ever done is to offer hugs to others, along with “ordinary, everyday compliments” on others’ personal appearance — such as “I love those shoes! Where did you get them?”
MISUNDERSTANDINGS
Fellow institute students who’ve gotten to know Stevens in the last few years describe a man with a good heart who’s been through a lot and is often misunderstood by others.
Jason Loveless, who now lives in Los Angeles, has been friends with Stevens about six years. They still talk by phone on a weekly basis.
When they first met, Loveless said, he didn’t especially like Stevens.
Stevens doesn’t always understand social norms, according to Loveless, and he’s a bit too “huggy.”
“You can easily misunderstand his actions, but his intention was never to make anyone uncomfortable,” Loveless said.
Serena Bird, of Riverdale, is a student at Weber State who says she’s always gotten along with Stevens. She also mentioned his hugging.
“Spencer gives really good hugs — he’s a good hugger,” said Bird, who’s known him a little more than a year.
But she also understands that men, in particular, might feel uncomfortable being hugged by Stevens.
“You’d have to be pretty secure in your manhood to get a hug from Spencer,” she said.
David Reynoso, of Layton, found an easy solution to the hugging problem.
“I told him I don’t like hugs,” Reynoso said. “I told him I’m not comfortable with that, and he’s extremely respectful.”
Reynoso, who is not LDS, wishes students at the institute had simply taken their concerns directly to Stevens.
“People were just too afraid to say anything, so they went through drastic avenues,” he said.
Ironically, it may have been a phobia about homophobia that precipitated the institute’s action against Stevens, according to Scott McDonald, a sophomore at Weber who lives in South Ogden.
“Nobody wants to come across as homophobic,” McDonald said. “That might be why the students go to their teachers, and not to Spencer himself. They didn’t want to make Spencer feel bad.”
Loveless doesn’t fault the institute or its director for the ban.
“They’re trying to protect the majority of students,” Loveless said. “I don’t think the institute or the director was homophobic. When you’ve got enough people complaining to teachers about someone, of course they’ll say ‘We’ve got to do something.’ “
Nevertheless, Stevens maintains many of the charges stem from homophobia — male students thinking, “I’m afraid if Spencer hugs me, girls will think I’m gay,” and female students wondering if he’s out to steal their boyfriends.
COMING OUT
Born in Layton, Stevens was raised in an active LDS family. He was in denial about his homosexuality for most of his teenage years.
“The only thing that tainted my childhood was the bullying,” he said. “I got called a fruitcake, a faggot, all kinds of things like that. I was hurt and angry at the time; I didn’t even know what that was.”
Stevens says he “came out” in 2013 on Facebook. It was June 10, his sister’s birthday.
“I had a spiritual impression to come out of the closet,” he says. “It was just a post about where I was at, spiritually. It was nothing super-melodramatic.”
He says 99 percent of the responses to that revelation have been positive.
Pursuing happiness
Stevens says he accepts what it means to be Mormon and gay.
“The rule is, no sex unless you’re married to a member of the opposite sex, which I am not attracted to,” he said. “So I have to stay celibate.”
Still, Stevens knows what brings him the most personal happiness.
“And it’s not from pursuing an openly gay relationship,” he said. “From firsthand experience, I know I’m happier — more peaceful –when I stay closer to God and Christ. I feel I’m fulfilling my purpose, too.”
Stevens has been involved with North Star, a South Jordan-based organization for LGBT Mormons. Stevens describes its members as “other people who are gay but want to live the Gospel, like me.”
While he calls it a “very real desire” to have a boyfriend and get married to a man, he knows the reality likely will be a mixed-orientation marriage — finding a heterosexual woman who accepts he’s gay.
PERSONAL ISSUES
Being gay and Mormon isn’t easy, and friends marvel at Stevens’ resiliency. In that six-page letter to the Standard-Examiner, Stevens touches on his mental health issues of the past — primarily clinical depression and bipolar disorder. He was hospitalized briefly last year, but says intensive therapy and new medications have resolved those problems.
Stevens is hesitant to discuss his mental health because he worries some might use it to explain why people reacted so strongly to him.
“I’ve been stable for quite awhile now,” he says. “That has nothing to do with this.”
Stevens sees a silver lining in all this controversy. After being banned from the Ogden Institute of Religion, he began attending the Salt Lake Institute of Religion, adjacent to the University of Utah.
“It was a very dark and hard and depressing time for me, dealing with my support system being taken away,” Stevens said. “But I am so much better down there at the U of U. I’ve been so much more included and welcome in Salt Lake City.”
Stevens has said he won’t let anything or anybody ruin his relationship with his religion.
“I told my mom, through my tears, I said, ‘Mom, this will not in any way, shape or form distance me from the church.’ “
Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.
