Harvey Unga Leaves BYU, Maybe Because of Premarital Sex

wow. 

It’s a private school isn’t it?  How refreshing that a private religious school actually expects its students to live up to certain standards to attend there. 

@loulou: At once impressive and quaint.

I dont think BYU is a private school but I could be wrong.  My girlfriend is mormon and I live with her family and mormons are all about rules and being perfect people and when pre-marital sex or something disgraceful happens youre pretty much kicked out of their church and community.  Mormons have to put their nose in everyones business becasue they think their 100% right about their religious beliefs.  Im lucky my girls parents are laid back type cuz i could never live with hardcore mormons.

I love how this has turned into a Mormon bashing session.

First, BYU is a private school—owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All students sign the honor code and agree to live it. If they don’t they know there are consequences.

Second, how are ‘’Mormons putting their nose in everyone’s business"? Your comment makes no sense. Unga is a Mormon who voluntarily agreed to come to BYU and sign the honor code.

Finally, you aren’t kicked out of the Church or community for premarital sex. Its ignorant to even suggest that. But Mormons do believe it is a sin.

I think its pretty laudable that Unga voluntarily withdrew. He certainly could have fought with the university about it, or lied about it, but he didn’t. I also think its laudable that BYU is lose its BEST returning player for premarital sex when other schools let players keep playing after doing much, much worse and even illegal things.

BYU is a private school.  It’s owned a operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons).  My wife attends school there and I will start school there in the fall.  Unga knew that these were the rules of BYU, and he chose to attend school there even under those circumstances..  He had offers from other universities that he wouldn’t have had to live those rules by.  As a BYU fan, it’s very sad to see Unga leave under these circumstances.  All BYU fans will miss him.

People are funny. They always want to see the negative in everything. Harvey Unga is a great guy. He signed an "Honor Code" agreement when he came to BYU. He knew that he had made a mistake. He did the right thing and voluntarily withdrew from the school.
Mormons are never "kicked out of the church" for having sex. That is simply a lie. learn your facts before you look like a fool. The LDS church is not anti-gay. It is a seriously stringent church that believes that any sexual relationship outside the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman is a transgression before God. They also believe that all transgressions can be repented of through the Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Pre-marital sex, homosexuality, infidelity all fall into that category. All can be repented of and forgiven.
Harvey Unga, we will miss you. You were a great player and are a standup guy. rocco.

…and they actually get recruits to go there??!!

"Unga" would have been how they pronounced Felix’s last name if The Odd Couple was filmed in Boston.

I applaud the whole situation.  I’m not Mormon but I am a Christian, and I do live as one.  BYU has every right to have and uphold their honor code and it’s refreshing to see it happen. 

Now as far as I know there have been no comments from Unga (I hope he can get in the supplemental draft) about what really happened , or his opinion, but the writer does try to put two and two together.  What Unga did does not make him an evil person, it was a mistake, a sin.  But sin has consequence.  And if you are a believer there’s no dancing around it.  I hope the situation is true that he copped to it and accepted walking away.  He will only be the better for it, and so will his school.  Great job and I’m looking forward to a great future for you man.

This article is beyond stupid.  The author finds it "lamentable" that these two students wouldn’t fight the rules by which they agreed to live?  If they wanted to go to a school where they weren’t subject to such harsh rules, they had literally thousands of options.  People go to schools like BYU because they want to live by different standards. 

There’s a reason why I never ended up at a school like BYU; it did not fit my personal lifestyle choices.  However, it’s neither "lamentable" nor "quaint" to subject yourself to a lifestyle that forbids premarital sex.  It is, however, quite smug of the author to state otherwise.

@jumbo: It’s not as if Unga and Moeaki are alone in choosing a school that forbids premarital sex, or alone in remaining abstinent, but they are certainly very much in the minority in modern America (http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20061220/premarital-sex-the-norm-in-america), and that’s why "quaint" comes to mind.And it’s lamentable that — I suspect — we won’t hear more about this as Unga and Moeaki move on purely because I’m curious, and want to know more. How did this violation, whatever it is, get discovered, for example, and why is it just now that things have transpired? And I doubt we’ll hear that, which I lament. If you read smug into me being impressed and fascinated that there are willfully abstinent college-age Americans who are in great shape, that’s on you.

Yeah, there is no getting around the fact that they signed an agreement.

The same lies true for any player who signs a code of conduct at any institution, (which is surely all of them).

Its why I have no issues with a player who drinks a beer or smokes a doobage, on a personal choice level regardless of their age…hey I was in college once too.

But when you are on a team, anything you do that can cause you not to show-up and suit-up on game day is an affront to your teammates who are expecting you and everyone to be 100%. Bring results…not excuses…to the table.

Therein lies the offense. But we are all foolish if we dont believe that every year more than a few Cougars get drunk/stoned/laid.

what a cult.  how is that clause about homosexuality even legal today?  and it sure looks to me like that football uniform is shoirt sleeved.  let’s debate the chaste morality of having 16 wives and 70 children.  pedophile predators!

just a different set of nutjobs.

scurds, your ignorance and bias is showing loud and clear. Any sex outside of a marriage between a man and a woman is seen as a sin by the tenants of the LDS faith. It isn’t a focus specifically on homosexuality. I have no idea why this article singles out that behaviour, since the author then says it may have been heterosexual contact between him and his girlfriend Keilani Moeaki.

The honor code says nothing about short sleeved, it says "sleeveless." It’s sad that the clear distinction between the two is lost on you.

You then go on to equate the LDS church with the practice of polygamy, which it hasn’t practiced in more than 100 years. Not done showing your ignorance you equate polygamy between adults (which is what the LDS church practiced during the time it actually practiced polygamy in the 1800’s) with pedophilia. There are a few polygamist religions in the world today that condone marriages with women younger than the US marriage laws, but none of them have anything to do with the LDS church.

Am I the only one here who thinks that this could be a huge boon to Kyle Whittingham’s recruiting efforts?

yeah i must really be a stupid idiot.  where on earth would i get the idea that mormons practiced polygamy. of course it makes perfect sense that 2" of sleeve keeps you holy.  it’s so ovius.  i must be the only person on earth who holds such stereotypical untrue beliefs that mormons are strange.  of course the fact that their entire belief system is based on a myth that has been disproven so many times it is ridiculous shouldn’t enter into this, because in america you are guaranteed the right to be a sucker by the constitution.  I am so lonely as the only person on earth who finds the mormons a bit odd. i need to change my evil ways.

Not that it is pertinent to this article, but to say that all polygamous wives were of age is totally disingenuous.  At least 8 of Joseph Smith’s wives were under 18, even as young as 14.  Brigham Young had at least 5 under 18, even as young as 15.  And I am a BYU alum, but at least I can be honest about things.

Oh Yay here we go, I am about to set the record straight, mind you this is not coming from someone who knows someone, who’s cousin’s roommates, BFF’s neice told them that on the News they heard all of this stuff about Mormon’s must be true.  I am a Mormon, born and raised, as was my mom, & my two uncles.  I know the absolute truth about it. First of all, we do not answer to the name Mormon, we are members of the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints, or for short…LDS. My first point is I don’t see how our church’s name makes us any different than the members of the First Church Of Christ, or The Roman Catholic Church. Second, the members of the LDS Church(the one’s in Utah), gave up pologamy in 1896 so that we could be made a State in the ever growing United States. Third, the Polygamist’s call themselves the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, they are a renegade Mormon splinter group. Forth,  none of the things I have heard about the rules of our church are even remotely close to being true, we are advised to not smoke and drink, because it is bad for our bodies, and we are asked to treat our bodies like a temple, which is a holy place, plus it is suggested that we not use anything that may be addictive, from coffee down to soad pop, but well over 99% of us drink some form of soda, from Mt. Dew to Coke. It has never been suggested that we will be excommunicated, or "Kicked Out" for doing any of these things. My own brother is addicted to drugs, and our local church leaders are right there with us trying to help him see what it is doing to him, and us, and get him into treatment. Family is a very important thing to us, we don’t all have 8+ kids, my mom only had 2. The leaders of the church are very adament about not having more children than you can afford to care for. Fifth point, As I see it pre-marital sex is looked down on from most religions, as it is listed in the bible…yep that’s right the King James version of the bible, as one of God’s 10 commandments handed down to us by Moses, after the Exodus of the Hebrew’s from Egypt to the promised land, don’t believe me? Look it up!!! The Church teaches us to believe that not only is it breaking a commandment, it is highly disrespectful to your spirit, or as you might think of it, soul to do such a thing outside of the family bond of Marriage. Sixth point, we do not, "DO NOT" worship false or misleading idols, we worship the God the Father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Ghost, as do the catholics. We do not worship Joseph Smith as a god, we just choose to believe that when he was somewhere between 12 to 14 he was visited by two Angels, who told him that none of the churches in the area at the time were teaching the right message, basically Joseph Smith is to us, what the Pope is to millions of Roman Catholics across the world. The last thing I have to say to any of you before I sign off for good, is since when is this a story or blog about religion, I thought this was supposed to be comments about what the heck BYU is going to do without the best RB they have had in many years, Can we please keep the comments on here about College Football? If so, thank you very much. 

No disrespect Becki, but the Church must have changed a heckuva lot since I left if fornication and drug use/abuse are no longer grounds for excommunication. I knew a man who was excommunicated for fornication and even his family rarely spoke to him because they were afraid of what other church members would say about them.

As for the First Vision, you might need to check up on the First Version. Joseph and his acolytes claimed not that two angels visited him on that fateful night, but that it was "God the Father" and "Jesus Christ" live and in person there in Palmyra, NY to tell young Joseph that all Christian churches were an abomination and that he should join none of them. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the Bible, even Joseph’s so-called Inspired Version say that Jesus told Peter, "Upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." So how would all Christian churches be in apostasy, unless Christ were a liar?

Further, the relationship between Joseph and the Mormons is nothing like the Pope/Catholic relationship.  I am no fan of the Roman Church, but they are not built upon the infallibility of one man’s story of angelic visitors. The LDS Church, however, is. If Joseph Smith falls then the Church falls, and as a Mormon you know it…or maybe his "special" relatonship with the Church doesn’t hit you when you sing "Hail to the man who communed with Jehovah".

As for why this is a religious story, it’s because the rule that saw Unga leave the Y is a religious one, and people are going to comment on it. How many other private religious schools have such an honor code that they enforce on high profile players such as Unga? But because the rule is religious in nature, then the conversation about said rule is going to take on a religious flavor.

Consult your "South Park" archive for further information on religious whackadoo Joseph Smith. Dum dum dum dum dum.

may i suggest a good deprogrammer becki?  whackjob cultists are brainwashed and can’t really be held responsible for the things they say, only for the acts they commit.  mormons are a sex cult of predator deviants, much like the catholic church.  too often "religion" is simply a means of controlling people, and the morons and catholics continue to prove me right.  why do they all like little kids so much?

that Southpark episode is surprisingly way more accurate than most LDS people even realize.  Unless you go out and read the history yourself rather than accepting the sanitized version of the church’s history taught in sunday school, you would totally think that a lot of it is fabricated.  However, it is not.

All I know is that BYU will not be apart of the PAC 10 and that’s a good thing.

Because it is a private school affiliated with a church that most people do not belong to I guess it is inevitable that the discussion will devolve into bitter religious arguments. Enough already!

Mr. Unga made a decision based on what he believes is right. I applaud him for having the courage to admit that his personal conduct was not consistent with his avowed beliefs. That’s called taking responsibility for yourself. He didn’t blame the school – he just said that he had violated the honor code and would withdraw. He didnt withdraw because the honor code was too restrictive. He withdrew because he had violated his own personal code of conduct. More than likely he did something that he felt was wrong, went and talked to his eclesiastical leader, and then manned-up and took responsibility for his decisions. Considering how rare that kind of attitude is among college and professional athletes, I agree that it seems bizzare by contrast. The sad thing is that it should be common to be mature enough to set your own limits and then admit when you have done something you personally believe is wrong and take the consequences. I expect that Mr. Unga will wind up playing in the NFL and do well. Even if he doesn’t, he seems to be way ahead of most of his athlete peers in things that matter most – personal integrity and maturity. I can only hope that he rebounds from whatever mistake he feels he made and can progress to being a totally upstanding man of impecabble character.