BYU professor let go for questioning LDS stand on gay marriage

PROVO - A Brigham Young University adjunct professor who recently called into question the LDS Church's opposition to gay marriage will not be rehired after spring term.
The decision to let Jeffrey Nielsen go was based on an op-ed piece he wrote for the June 4 edition of The Salt Lake Tribune.
"I believe opposing gay marriage and seeking a constitutional amendment against it is immoral," wrote the part-time philosophy professor at the LDS Church-owned school.
In a statement read over pulpits the previous week, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints urged members to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and asked them to "express themselves on this urgent matter" to U.S. senators.


http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3932572

He sounds like a decent guy...good for him!!!

and he was willing to speak his mind anyway.

now looks at all religious institutions as being no better then the
700 club!!
Instead of shooting themselves in the foot once in awhile, they've begun putting the pistol to their own heads!
Is it any wonder that most Americans are starting to see organized religion as irrelevant?

a clear-headed, warm-hearted, big-picture inclusive point of view, the imminent danger would of course be that students at BYU would begin to think for themselves.

Now we can't have THAT, can we? I mean, my god, these are only university students. They must be controlled.

Oppressive, dogmatic, freedom-restricting....

organized religion has had its day and hasn't improved the world for shit. It's time to dump it all.

Religion doesn't work. Period.

people including students thorughout the university and made his objection a conversational imperative. When BYU fired Adjunct prof. Jeff Nielsen, it demonstrated that authority has power but also that authority misuses that power too often.

21-year olds are sitting in coffee shops at this hour asking each other if Nielsen's dismissal was "right." In many of their private thoughts, I bet the answer is No.

Nielsen asked and challenged. And he must have known the higher-ups would throw a shitfit and fire him. And he had the integrity to ask and challenge anyway. Hurray for that.

I hope other DU posters here are right that he'll be in another position soon, and I think they're right, but I love the model he left for his students: challenge authority when you feel it transgresses ethical boundaries, when it appears to oppress or wound for no good reason, and celebrate the truth when there is no good reason not to, that blessings can be diverse and variable.

In the short term it has cost him a job in Utah, but there will be one or two or ten or a hundred students at BYU who are emboldened to do their own thinking as a result.

Pretty good teaching.

(what IMO would appeal to those 21 year olds at BYU, as well as any believing Mormon
experiencing some dissonance on this issue.)

God is not the author of incoherence or injustice, but we humans
often are. We in the LDS Church must be more honest about our
history, including the past and future practice of polygamy in our official
doctrine. This will be difficult, for it will reveal that we have been less
than truthful in our public relations, and it will show our inconsistency
with current statements opposing gay marriage.

We can no longer afford to teach only what is useful and hope
people won't discover what is true. In this day of easy Internet access,
a person can find more real history of the LDS Church in 30 minutes
online than the same person would in a lifetime studying approved
church materials.

This is not right. Too many individuals have suffered a loss of faith
when they were forced to choose between the truth or their family after
innocently discovering the discrepancy between genuine history and
the official story of the church.

who were so miffed at it probably think it's heresy.

This is a tough row to hoe sometimes, and I just hope Jeffrey Nielsen is welcomed in his next position.

I forgot the prohibition against certain things...

Geez, they would be impressed to gurgle down a cup of coffee. Conversation is a lot of fun over a cup-o-Joe.

NT!

the Americas and that the WTC towers fell down because of controlled demolition.

I'm sure Nielsen will find a place more friendly to progressive thought.

Most All LDS members believe that, it's in the Book of Mormon.
Christ visited America after his resurrection I believe.

I assumed it was akin to the number of Christians who believe that Noah's Ark carried two of every animal to safety.

The professor I'm talking about wrote a shabby paper about proof of the visit based on indigenous American artwork.

The Book of Mormon is a religious record of three groups of people who migrated from the Old World to the American continents. These groups were led by prophets who recorded their religious and secular histories on metal plates. The Book of Mormon records the visit of Jesus Christ to the people in the Americas following his resurrection. A two hundred-year era of peace followed that visit of Christ.

http://scriptures.lds.org/gsb/bkfmrmn

that doesn't mean they all believe it's literal, does it?

time reigning in all the inconvenient questions and scientific evidence. For one, iron-clad genetic testing has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the persons in the Americas--those supposedly Jesus visited--DID NOT come from Jewish or Middle East descent. The second biggie is that NOT ONE element of the Book of Mormon can be verified by either biological, anthropological and/or archaeological means. In fact, every piece of evidence pursued tends to point AWAY from the validity and truth of the BOM. That taken into account, the church is in full crack-down mode on anyone diverging from the official line.

And no, many mormons are *quietly* admitting that they don't take the BOM literally, but instead for the "message within."

...(is there any other kind?)...of Mormonism, the only religion still around to have been started by a fraud and charlatan known as such in his own lifetime.

Ex-Mormon here. It's kinda like accidentally kissing your...sister, or something. Not pleasant to remember, especially as a member of the queer food group.

just saying - there's at least one more...

I ask various LDS leaders almost weekly by email and can't seem to get an answer. I told them I think it is about the size of a good-sized Rottweiler puppy while my friend thinks it must be at least as big as a calf. We not only want to know its size, but what it is fed. Why won't they answer us? Pretty soon they'll have us doubting the veracity of polygamy, multiple gods after death and baptism for the dead... If they aren't careful we may even question the Cowfield Revelations. I may even take off my magic underwear.

open season declared on them for their immoral sacrilegious devil worshipping chosen beliefs.

Now that THEY have someone to declare open season on it's all better now.

Bunch of creaky old hard haired busy body fucktards.

That's apparently how it works with reknown professors at BYU who think publicly on controversial matters but don't agree with the LDS church.

So it would seem, the University of Utah gets better academically while BYU (still a good school) loses good faculty and may not attract the caliber of faculty they once could.

A shame for the professor, the school and the students. It was a darned good school back when I was there, 15 years ago, but it sure did change in the early 1990's.

He was not "let go", he was not rehired, as the first paragraph of the article rightly states. Adjuncts in all universities are hired for one semester at a time only, and the university is under no obligation or contract to rehire them. They have no benefits, usually have the worst offices, and get whatever classes nobody else wants. It's one step above a graduate assistant, except that graduate assistants are at least assured of a job for the entire year. An adjunct can be hired and then if the class doesn't make he or she is on the streets looking for another job.

It is a vicious cycle of hustling for classes at the local community college to pick up some extra dough on top of your "real job". It is a new fad in academia. Part of the "business model" of education where students are called "customers."
Adjuncts do have it crappier than grad TAs. They don't have time to research and have a very heavy work load!
My friend just finished his Ph.D. and took a visiting professorship, which is better than an adj. position and they want him back for another year, but he is teaching a summer 6 week class this summer. He graded his finals, turned in his grades and had to find a sublet apt. from someone who was going out of town for the summer as it is too far to drive every day and the classes are 5 days a week for 6 weeks and are not even remotely related! It only pays like $2500 per class...
That is why I will never be one. I left my last job over tenure issues for academic librarians and when I refused to take part in a manual book inventory. That is what student workers are for -- I guess just because I was an asst. it meant I was a peon. Nontenure sucks. Don't ever do it!

They hate that, although they claim she's been influenced by an unethical shrink, and like to drag the fact that she's gay into it.

She wrote a book about a year ago entitled "Leaving the Saints". I highly recommend it, for it's insights into the mormon community and faith, even if you don't believe Martha's allegations about her father, who was one of the most infamous Mormon apologists.

I found the book interesting and parts of it compelling, but overall it was a disappointment. I don't think it's very well written. It's hard to separate fact from fantasy, but then I think that's what the new approach to memoir is, and that's why it's classified as fiction.

But it is an interesting read to get one woman's perspective as she remembers her childhood as daughter of a Mormon icon.