SGA/SSA arenât LGBT+ terms you should be using
In fact, theyâre not even really terms from our community at all.
In this post Iâm going to be talking about two terms sometimes used by some people in our community: SSA (same sex attracted) and SGA (same gender attracted). Note, however, that this post is NOT about SGLÂ (same gender loving) which is a completely unrelated, lovely term created for and by black LGBT+ people. To clear things up, the SGA term is not based on the SGL term; SGA was already an entirely separate term based in violent homophobia, which Iâll speak on below.
So, whatâs wrong with SGA and SSA, and why do I have the right to speak about it?
I was born and raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a church that until recently also went by the nickname âMormons.â (Yeah, I know itâs a mouthful. Donât worry, Iâll be using LDS, Mormon, or The Church for the rest of this post.)
This church has a very long, horrible history of homophobia and transphobia which continues to this day, and theyâre known for using the SGA/SSA terms to describe LGB+ people, to the extent that the SSA and SGA terms are considered fairly taboo in the queerstake community (queerstake being what much of lds LGBT+ call ourselves). I grew up hearing the SSA/SGA terms with lot of negative connotation, and to put it shortly, the church has for a long time âencouragedâ lds LGBT+ people to call themselves âsame sex/gender attractedâ instead of LGBT+.
This statement, by the church leader Dallin H. Oaks (more on him here in a post by a gay mormon) is a pretty good example of the kind of rhetoric they use to encourage this: âWe should note that the words homosexual, lesbian, and gay are adjectives to describe particular thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. We should refrain from using these words as nouns to identify particular conditions or specific persons.â (x)
This kind of rhetoric is repeated so often in the church that âsame sex/gender attractedâ is the way a majority of cis straight lds people refer to LGBT+ people aside from negatively using the word âgayâ or âhomosexual.â  They often use it talking about how we âsufferâ from SSA/SGA, are âafflictedâ with SSA/SGA, âstruggleâ with SSA/SGA. Instead of being gay, we âhaveâ SSA/SGA.
Itâs used as a way to essentially brainwash LGBT+ lds people into distancing ourselves from the LGBT+ community and further envelop ourselves in the churchâs âyou should repent from your homosexual behaviorâ mentality. The two terms are used fairly interchangeably; Iâd argue SSA is used more often, but SGA is starting to get used more as well. In any case, it contributed to my younger selfâs phase of âI wonât label my orientationâ because Iâd been trained to think that if I didnât label it and I kept doing what the church said, my attraction to girls would either go away or I could just ignore it. Which, uh, didnât really work, seeing as Iâm extremely queer now.
A church university called BYU has, in particular, been homophobic to an extreme, actively participating in anti-LGBT+ efforts. In fact, theyâve been ranked one of the least LGBT friendly universities in the entire US! What an incredible achievement! You can read the history of their homophobia (and some transphobia) in this article (including a fairly extensive timeline from the 1950s up to the end of 2018). To sum up some of the really bad parts, though (the sources are in the link):
They repeatedly banned LGBT+ people from their university entirely, then banned students from being openly LGBT+, and are suspected of firing several staff members for being gay, as well as for suspending and expelling students for dating or kissing people of the same gender
In the 60s through 70s, they began administering âelectric aversion therapyâ in order to âcureâ LGB+ students (this âtherapyâ involved showing gay people nude pictures of the same gender and giving them electroshocks in order to make them associate those feelings negatively). This method was ineffective at making the LGB+ people straight (obviously), but the people who underwent it reported extreme decrease in mental health and increased suicidal thoughts. At one point this therapy was required for anyone suspected of being gay. The therapy ended in 1983, but only because of the overwhelming reports that it wasnât working.
In 1965 there were 5 reported suicides of gay Mormons at the university in a single year, and the LGBT+ Mormon suicidality in Utah has continued to be high.Â
In the 70s, when Dallin H. Oaks was president of the school, he created a surveillance system to âcatchâ LGB+ people, including literally spying on gay bars and implementing recording devices to watch for any suspected LGB+ students, as well as posting fake gay advertisements to âensnareâ them.
Dallin Oaks also helped create the Institute for Studies in Values and Human Behavior, which was dedicated to proving that being gay was a choice, in order to re-affirm the churchâs stance on homosexuality at the time. The freaking director of the institution, Allen Bergin, once said that homosexuality was âcaused by some combination of biology and environment.â (thankfully, the church no longer believes being gay is a choice, though they talk about how âSSA/SGA behaviorâ is a choice as often as they can.)
I suggest yâall also read the Payne Papers (aka Prologue), which was written by two gay BYU students in 1977 in response to a homophobic professor at the university.
In 1997 there was a poll where 80% of students said they wouldnât live with a roommate attracted to people of the same gender.
âIn 2000 a reported 13 students were suspended from the University when caught watching the TV series Queer As Folk. The next year two gay students (Matthew Grierson and Ricky Escoto) were expelled under accusations deemed âmore probable than notâ of hand-holding or kissing.â
In 2005, The Foundation for Attraction Research (FAR) was founded, run by mostly BYU professors. In 2009 the organization published Understanding Same-Sex Attraction which advocated therapy to change sexual attraction (evidently they didnât learn their lesson lol).
In 2014, a BYU survey to students only gave the option of âheterosexual but struggles with same-sex attraction" or âheterosexual and does not struggle with same-sex attractionâ for peopleâs sexual orientation. Yâall, this was only a year before same-gender marriage was legalized in the US. Thatâs just bad.
LGBT+ students are currently still facing risk of expulsion from the school if they hug, kiss, or date someone of their same gender. Celibacy is mandatory.
All LGBT+ groups are currently banned from meeting on campus, so thereâs only a single LGBT+ group for the school that meets at a library in the city.
And of course, this is only what happened at a single Mormon university. Youâd be surprised how much power the LDS church has, especially in Utah. Ya know Dallin H. Oaks, the homophobe? Yeah, last October he gave a homophobic and transphobic talk in front of over 4 million church members from all over the world.
During the course of all that homophobia at BYU, âsame sex attractionâ and âsame gender attractionâ were both terms used regularly in this therapy and in the church, alongside âhomosexual.â And as I said earlier, they still use these terms today! In fact, if you wanna see them in action, you can just visit this page on their official website, which has âsame sex attractionâ right there in the title. The entire website continues to follow the implied idea of âweâll tolerate you saying youâre gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but weâd prefer if youâd just say youâre same sex/gender attracted, because being gay/bi/lesbian is a lifestyle, and we donât support itâ and the whole website is basically âitâs okay to be attracted to the same gender, but itâs a sin to ever do or think anything gay!â
You can also just search the internet for âsame sex attractionâ or âsame gender attractionâ and a bunch of christian articles will pop up with rampant internalized homophobia among LGBT+ church members, and a bunch of homophobia from the church itself. Itâs possible this SSA/SGA rhetoric isnât specific to my church, as I havenât researched other churchâs histories as thoroughly, but the church absolutely contributed to anti-LGBT+ efforts throughout history, using âSGAâ and âSSAâ the entire time. This isnât even a thing of the past, LGBT+ Mormons are still freaking here going through all thisâconversion therapy is still not banned in Utah.
So, TL;DR: the âsame sex/gender attractionâ phrase was used in LGB+ conversion therapy, and is still used to perpetuate homophobic rhetoric in the church today. Because of that, a lot of my fellow LGBT+ Mormons are uncomfortable with the terms being used as umbrella descriptors for our orientations. So when someone tells you âSSA/SGA was used in Mormon conversion therapy, please donât use it,â take them seriously. Yes, I understand that theyâre sometimes helpful terms when talking about LGB+ identities, and Iâm (sometimes) more okay with the usage of the terms than others, but in general, if youâre not a person affected directly by the churchâs usage of these terms (read: an active LGBT+ Mormon or ex-Mormon), please donât use them liberally, and donât use them to freaking discourse about who does or doesnât belong in the community. âSSA/SGA and transâ is not how you should be defining our community, I donât care whether youâre an exclusionist or an inclusionist, just donât. And you should never. freaking. use them. to refer to any LGBT+ Mormon who asks you not to.
And, last of all, as a bi person, yâall should not be implying that attraction to the same gender is the only thing about our orientation that makes us LGBT+. Iâm not just LGBT+ because Iâm attracted to the same gender, Iâm LGBT+ because Iâm attracted to multiple genders. My attraction to multiple genders makes me inherently Not Straight. Biphobia and monosexism is an issue that greatly affects mspec people, and itâs time monosexual LGBT+ people recognize that homophobia is not the only type of oppression we face. Not even to mention how SGA and SSA terms are exclusive of nonbinary orientations, which donât always involve even having a same gender to be attracted to.
Exclusionists and inclusionists alike please reblog. Yâall need to listen up. Queer Mormons arenât here to play.
