BYU student Nick Soto knew there was going to be trouble as soon as football season started.
“Every time there was a game on, I couldn’t help but watch it,” said the 21-year-old engineering major. “It was only a matter of time before my roommates caught me.”
His roommates did catch him, and Soto was subsequently suspended from school because of something he says he cannot change: He is a heterosexual.
“This is who I am,” he said. “I’ve always liked women and watched sports. If I weren’t LDS, I would drink beer and read Playboy. I am who I am.”
His roommates, however, could not accept Soto’s lifestyle.
“We’d come home and find him watching ‘SportsCenter,'” said Chad Christensen, one of Soto’s roommates. “We tried to look the other way, but you can only take so much heterosexuality. It makes you sick after a while.”
The last straw, said Christensen, came when he arrived home one evening to find Soto on the couch, making out with a woman. A videotape of “Die Hard” was nearby. Christensen called the Honor Code Office the next day.
“I hated being a snitch, but it was for his own good,” Christensen said. “Besides, we couldn’t live with a hetero in the apartment, exposing us to all his hetero diseases like mono.”
Christensen stressed that he has nothing against straight people. “I’m not a bigot,” he said, adding that one of his roommates is Caucasian and he’s fine with that, too.
Soto is angry at his roommates for turning him in, but angrier at BYU for suspending him for simply being himself.
“I know a lot of straight people here, and they’re all afraid to talk about it openly. As soon as anyone knows they’re straight, girls start trying to marry them immediately. It’s a nightmare.”
“It’s very hard when you see a cherry-red Corvette convertible drive down the street, and you have to be careful not to let anyone see you looking,” he said.
BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said the Honor Code does not make heterosexuality against the rules, only heterosexual behavior.
“If someone has opposite-sex attraction, we sympathize with that,” Jenkins said. “And as long as he doesn’t act on it, he can stay at BYU.”
But what constitutes heterosexual behavior? Soto denies making out with a woman, saying he only held hands with her. And while he admits to playing on the intramural basketball team, he claims he was never very good.
“I went through the motions, really, because that’s what some of my straight friends were doing,” he said. “But I never went all the way — you know, slam-dunks and that stuff. A couple of lay-ups, that’s it.”
Jenkins said BYU does not plan to make the Honor Code any more specific. “We feel students know where the line is,” she said. “We’re not going to make a list saying that Schwarzenegger movies are OK but not Jackie Chan, for example.”
Soto said he plans to move to an area where heterosexuality is more widely accepted. “I’ll probably go to Cleveland,” he said. “They watch a lot of NASCAR there. It’s mecca for straight people.”