BYU Removes Hallmark's Same-Sex Marriage Greeting Cards

by Brig Bagley

20 August 2014

Hallmark has apparently stared providing two small greeting card sections for weddings of two grooms or two brides, likely due to the growing acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage in the US.

BYU has a Hallmark Greeting Card Section in its student bookstore, and when the Hallmark stocks-man came to update the shelves, these standard sections were added just like at any other location. 

Up Tuesday of this week, students started posting pictures of the sections in the BYU bookstore, alerting school staff/officials of the addition. The sections were promptly taken down and the situation labelled "an accident". Although BYU will not end its ties to Hallmark, it notified the company that any such cards or similar are to not be sold to the school. 

BYU is operated by the Utah-based LDS Church, which officially opposes same-sex marriage and reprimands any members that support or promote it. It even disciplines members that associate with groups that approve of same-sex marriage. It's not a surprise that it condemned the cards and had them removed from campus. 

Carri Jenkins, a BYU spokesperson, stated, "Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex," it states, "but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings." Students who participate in these behaviors are punished and usually expelled from the school if they don't take steps to repent.

Attraction to people of the same gender is not against the honor code anymore at BYU. But considering this incident and past gay witch hunts at BYU, that policy isn't encouraging anyone to come out anytime soon.

This isn't a surprising story for BYU. In the future, it might suffer alienation for its outdated religious policies.

Read more here: http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile3/58317715-219/byu-cards-marriage-bookstore.html.csp