The Boy Scouts of America has officially decided to continue its policy of discrimination against LGBT scouts and troop leaders. And they’re offering a completely irrational excuse for doing so:
The Scouts’ chief executive, Bob Mazzuca, contended that most Scout families support the policy, which applies to both leaders and Scouts.
“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” Mazzuca said. “We fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”
Uh, what does that have to do with anything? How would allowing gay kids to be in the scouts deprive parents of their right to address the issue in whatever manner they like? The mere existence of gay people in proximity to one’s children is not a violation of anyone’s rights, for crying out loud.
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Deen
July 20, 2012 at 9:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, because most families who don’t support the policy aren’t involved in the Boy Scouts anymore. Duh.
Jasper of Maine (I feel safe and welcome at FTB)
July 20, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As we all know, gay people babble about their sexuality non-stop. It’s not like you run into gay people without realizing it, or anything like that.
richardelguru
July 20, 2012 at 9:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My mind may be going, but I seem to remember that the latest (or just a recent?) case was them forbidding a lesbian from being a den mother to boy scouts (or something).
Wouldn’t she be about the safest choice possible???
(damn my aging brain)
dingojack
July 20, 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting…”.
Oh I just had an absolute brainwave! The Scouts could institue a policy where nobody was allowed to speak of icky things like sex at all.
They could call it – “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell“!
@@
Dingo
eric
July 20, 2012 at 9:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@1 – exactly.
This is in fact a doubly specious argument. First there’s the self-selection problem, as you point out.
But second, he’s implying this was some sort of majoritarian decision. Does anyone believe this? That if grassroots support for gay admittance among current boy scout families tipped over 51%, the folks in charge would change their mind? I don’t. The moment they are not a ‘vast majority,’ they’ll just switch justifications. Suddenly it’ll be about their christian mission, and what the ‘vast majority’ of their members support won’t matter.
slc1
July 20, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rather surprising that Mr. Mazzuca didn’t raise Jerry Sandusky as the poster child for why gays shouldn’t be scouts or scout leaders. Of course, Mr. Sandusky is not a gay man, he’s a pedophile. The sex of his victims has nothing to do with his actions.
wholething
July 20, 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If a majority of families associated with the Boy Scouts 75 years ago preferred segregation, would there be a merit badge for it?
eidolon
July 20, 2012 at 10:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I worked for the scouts in the Keys some years back. I can tell you there are plenty of gays in the scouts – at all levels. This decision is not surprising, given that:
“Religious organizations host/sponsor over 60% of the approximately 123,000 Scouting units in the United States and use the Scouting program as part of their youth ministration.[6][7] Officials from various religious organizations—including the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches—are included on the BSA National Executive Board, its Advisory Council, and the BSA Religious Relationships Committee.”
I can also tell you that a lot of the scouts do not take the Scout Oath or the Scout Law very seriously either, at least based on the behaviors I observed among the Eagle Scouts. This is just good ol’ institutionalized bigotry. One heartening thing is that United Way has been known to withdraw their funding for this group.
Jeremy Shaffer
July 20, 2012 at 10:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Because if the kids are around gay people, whether as Scout leaders or fellow Scouts, it’ll make it that much harder for the bigoted parents to convince their kids that all gay people are horrible and should be avoided at all costs. That’s pretty hard to do if the kids have more than a few positive examples that counter the claim.
netamigo
July 20, 2012 at 10:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The scouts are using the typical right-wing approach. Keep out those who would disagree with you. They used this approach in taking over the Republican Party; they do it with the scouts. That way they hope to avoid a challenge from within.
gingerous
July 20, 2012 at 10:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/18/politics-behind-boy-scouts-america-anti-gay-ban
Forrest
July 20, 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As an Eagle Scout, I am deeply ashamed, angered and saddened by the Boy Scouts of America. Their decision to continue the ban on gay scouts and leaders shows the organization does not practice what it teaches. Mentally awake and morally straight – nope! Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind – nope! I do not respect the BSA and I will not support them until this injustice is corrected. They’ve made the accomplishment of 2 million Eagle Scouts a worthless symbol of discrimination. I hope to see this policy reversed but if not I hope to see the marginalization of the BSA, as they have done to would be gay members.
Abby Normal
July 20, 2012 at 10:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But they’re perfectly alright with kids learning about heterosexual orientation from whatever random person volunteers? Just what kind of organization is this that requires adult supervisors to teach kids about their sexuality?
anubisprime
July 20, 2012 at 10:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes bigotry is a very important skill…best taught to kids as early as possible to insure that a sufficient level of hatred fear and intolerance is built in to society that will last another generation.
God will be so proud of them!
borax
July 20, 2012 at 10:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
At least the girl scouts are going in the right direction. Fraternal organizations always seem to be regressive.
Zugswang
July 20, 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Because we must protect the right of parents to avoid exposing their children to views that differ from their own.
While I seriously doubt that this is the “significant majority” that the national executive board claims, there’s no doubt that a lot of adult volunteers really think this kind of absurd rationale is acceptable, even for different faiths, let alone differing sexual orientations. When I earned my Eagle medal, I identified as a Buddhist, and when I became an assistant scoutmaster, the troop’s head scoutmaster said that if I was going to be allowed to be a part of the troop, I would not be allowed to share my “alternative” religious beliefs with anyone, and would have to participate in all religious (read: Christian) services. In retrospect, I should have brought this up with the local council, but at the time, I simply decided to leave that troop and wash my hands of the matter.
As a backpacking instructor at one of the national high adventure bases, I was told by a couple of adult participants not to even discuss Buddhism with their scouts if they asked about it, another time an adult leader tried to get a new instructor when he found out I was Buddhist, while also having to diplomatically navigate a couple of crews that tried to convert me to Mormonism on the trail.
This is not to say this is a very common problem. The significant majority of my interactions within scouting have been positive. My personal experience has led me to believe that, while a minority actively oppose the ban on gays and atheists, a slim majority are either apathetic or quietly dislike the ban. Unfortunately,though, those individuals who fear having their shoddily constructed paradigms challenged do volunteer and/or enroll their kids and bring their dogma with them. And that minority is also, unsurprisingly, very vocal.
Cuttlefish
July 20, 2012 at 10:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2012/07/18/be-prepared-to-lie/
janicot
July 20, 2012 at 10:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The question I have and haven’t heard anything about is ‘what does that mean for public funding?’
The scouts use lots of public facilities and (I haven’t looked but I assume) get some government support (even if indirectly). Is any of that at risk? And if so, how?
=8)-DX
July 20, 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My brothers wife made exactly that argument in a fb discussion about the upcoming Prague Pride here in CZ..I was like “How do homosexuals hurt “the family”, how would they effect your family, or your children? How would a homosexual couple with kids living next-door to you hurt your family?” and she was like “That would have a really bad effect on my children, it’s a really bad thing when you confuse children, and of course growing up with gay parents automatically makes them psychologically damaged.”
I facepalmed.
raven
July 20, 2012 at 11:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The boy scouts also prohibit atheists.
Nor surprising because they are dominated by fundie xians and Mormons.
The Mormon troops have a poor track record for both child safety and child sex abuse.
Erp
July 20, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If I’m reading things correctly the BSA tried to avoid stating exactly what the policy is in their statement. Probably because they didn’t want to mention that it excluded youth in addition to adult out gays and lesbians (girls can join the Venturing section of the BSA so there are probably teenage closeted lesbians in the Boy Scouts of America). The policy might also exclude straight allies who are outspoken in trying to change the BSA policy. At least one council has openly spoken out against this policy, Northern Star in Minnesota which issued a press release at http://www.northernstarbsa.org/News.aspx?articleID=1242 (they still discriminate against atheists).
As for ‘spiritual advisors’ doing the advising, when the Unitarian Univesalist Association (UUA) decided that scouts doing the UU religious emblem program should consider discrimination against gays and atheist in the BSA as part of the program, the BSA yanked recognition of the Association’s program (there is a UU religious emblem program recognized by the BSA, it is not recognized by the UUA). So it seems the BSA doesn’t want spiritual advisors advising either.
raven
July 20, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What is a “religious emblem program”? Do you mean merit badge program?
Do they have emblem programs for Wiccans? Pagans? Deists? Jedis? Scientologists? Moonie-ism? Moslems? Voodoo?
I can see that the Scientologist, Deist, Voodoo, or Pagan programs could be a lot of fun.
eric
July 20, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kudos to the GSA, but I suspect this is also partly the result of parental bigotry. Misogynistic parents deciding they will fight it in the boys case but not the girls, because girls clubs and what girls learn doesn’t matter as much as boys clubs and what boys learn.
otrame
July 20, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They discriminate against atheists too. Fuck ‘em.
slc1
July 20, 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re eric
Anti-gay bigots generally don’t care much about lesbians because, in their view, they don’t engage in that icky anal sex. Apparently they are unfamiliar with strapons.
Trebuchet
July 20, 2012 at 11:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sorry for the nitpick, but the organization is “Girl Scouts of the USA”, or GSUSA. I had that drummed into me from an early age by my mother, who worked for the Girl Scouts for many years. In fact, it was taking a job with them which caused her to meet my Dad, during WWII! She always said at least half of her coworkers were lesbians, by the way.
I had a probably-gay scoutmaster. Everyone knew it, or at least suspected it, but nobody seemed to get too bothered about it. He was also a high school teacher.
Abby Normal
July 20, 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Janicot, BSA no longer receives public funding. They can access public resources like any other private organization, such as renting space or disseminating its message through an open forum. Local governments that try to provide them sweetheart deals, like subsidized meeting space, have been successfully sued. That’s not to say no government support filters down to the BSA. But over the past 8 years there’s been a big push, largely successful, to cut those strings.
Or a shorter answer, yes, their discriminatory policies threaten their access to public funds and has already resulted the loss of most of it.
abb3w
July 20, 2012 at 12:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@0, Ed Brayton:
The key phrase is at the appropriate time. Exposure to LGBTs while their sons are in scouting could raise the issue in advance of the time considered appropriate… which for the sort Mazzuca is talking about appears to translate to when hell freezes over.
janicot
July 20, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks Abby N.
Some things I haven’t payed much attention to.
tommykey
July 20, 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The other way the Scouts are discriminatory is against atheists, as Scouts are required to pledge their duty to god. I had my son in the Cub Scouts for a while and tried to find a way to get around the requirement without success. Sure, I could have had my son say the words, but doesn’t that go against the Scouts teaching that a Scout should always be truthful? It also helps to perpetuate the belief that one has to believe in a god in order to be a good American.
Rip Steakface
July 20, 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Have international Scouting organizations (and for that matter the Girl Scouts and Explorers) ditched their discriminatory policies yet? I left the BSA because I wanted, at the time, to play football (this is at about 13 years old, I was in middle school) more than I wanted to learn to swim. A couple years later, I was done with football, but learned about their anti-gay and anti-atheist policies and decided that I shouldn’t have paid my dues in the first place.
dingojack
July 20, 2012 at 1:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here the Girls Guides have dumped a pledges to ‘god and the queen’ from their oaths. No doubt dogs and cats will be living together in the near future (assuming they can find somewhere they can afford).
Dingo
JustaTech
July 20, 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ eric: The GSUSA is also much less religious than the BSA (at least in my experience). When I was a wee scout I was jelous of the boy scouts ’cause they got to do cool things like mini soapbox derbys while I got yet another badge in dental hygiene (ust found it last week). But when my brother started getting Boy’s Life (the BSA magazine) I was horrified to find a big ol’ bible story in every issue.
But it’s stuff like that that kept my best friend’s brothers in scouts after her dad pulled her out of the Girl Scouts because the GSUSA changed the Oath to be to the god of your choosing. Yes, the very thought that somewhere a girl scout might make her oath in the name of Allah or Budda was enough for this man to deprive his daughter of scouting, even though she would never meet one of those girls. That still pisses me off 20 years later. Stupid fundie.
Chiroptera
July 20, 2012 at 1:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Boy Scouts had better be careful! According to another thread, the American Decency Association is against organizations taking part in the “culture wars” and they might get a strongly worded letter!
brentthompson
July 20, 2012 at 2:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think any organization that likes to dress boys in kerchiefs and sashes is suspect.
Pinky
July 21, 2012 at 12:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Before I was injured I was involved in the Cub Scouts. My sons had joined and I felt parents should volunteer where their children are involved. My naivety about parents willingness to help in their children’s activities was soon crushed in view of the passive inertia I saw in many parents.
In my area the Mormons seemed to pretty well own the local BSA and of course I have an anecdote about the experience.
☛Hey! I see you reaching for your mouse to click into something more interesting. Please read this and you can join me on the porn channel later.☚
It was a dark and almost stormy Wednesday night in October when I met with the head scout dude and seven other Cub leaders in the basement of the nice new scouting building for our yearly orientation. As we sat around the small round table, without a drop of coffee in sight, receiving instruction from the local BSA rep one of the Cub leaders asked what the large stack of folders sitting on the table were about. The scout rep said they were for the rest of the Cub leaders who were Mormons and they could not meet on the same night with us low-life non-Mormons because Wednesday night was ‘family night’. Someone pointed out that we had been told via letter to come on a Wednesday night and that any other night would have been fine – except for Monday (football) of course.
There appeared to be about forty or so folders in the stack.
Of course the scouting rep did not call us: “low-life non-Mormons,” but the group consensus, when we discussed it briefly after the meeting was over and the eight of us were in the parking lot away from the scouting rep, was one of being slighted for being treated differently than the Mormons.
The worst thing about being in a Mormon dominated scouting group was that there was never any coffee available☹, even during the all day training events.
se habla espol
July 21, 2012 at 1:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
raven July 20, 2012 at 11:06 am says:
And otrame July 20, 2012 at 11:41 am says:
When I was a Scoutmaster, quite a few years ago, I was known to be an atheist. Nobody cared. Of course, the sponsor of my troop was a secular organization, so there was no one who would care.
Before that, I had been a member of a Pack Committee. A pack or troop committee is the agency appointed by the sponsoring organization to organize and oversee the pack or troop on behalf of the sponsor. Here, too, the sponsor was secular and nobody cared about my atheism. My job in the pack committee was to drop by the local BSA Council office every month to pick up the award badges and stuff for the monthly Pack meeting – I worked right across the street. On those monthly visits was where I got involved with the professional staff and through them, the larger volunteer organization.
I was also a Commissioner of the lowest grade, a volunteer charged with auditing the various troops and packs in the district, making sure they were using the BSA program within their franchise boundaries. The District committee and the (paid) district executive knew me to be an atheist, also. Not only did they not care about my atheism, they kept trying to recruit me into even higher positions. Having reached (or at least approaching) my level of incompetence, I declined.
The pack sponsor was a local public elementary school. The troop sponsor was a US government agency. In our council, the Mormons had their own district organization, so I never worked with any of them, except at the rare council-level events.
raven July 20, 2012 at 11:35 am says:
The BSA, as I alluded to above, franchises its programs to qualified sponsoring organizations. Many, but by no means all, of these are religious organizations. BSA offers many religious medal programs, often called “God and Country”, to the sponsors who wish to incorporate them into their local units. Each program has its standard requirements, with parochial requirements to be defined by the sponsor. Again, my troop’s sponsor was secular, so we didn’t have any such animal.
These awards are not the same as merit badges. Where a merit badge is worn on the sleeve (up to six with long-sleeved shirts) or on a sash (more than 6 or short-sleeved shirt)), the religious badge is worn on the shirt (usually above the left pocket, depending on the program chosen by the sponsor).
—————————————
All this ended for me about thirty-five years ago, when I changed employers and moved to a different state. There, I was too busy with other stuff to be involved in scouting, and so I lost touch with the BSA and its programs. I’m sure there have been changes, so take my report as potentially well out of date in detail, but probably still accurate in the large.
democommie
July 21, 2012 at 7:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“They could call it – “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell“!”
More like, “Don’t ask, don’t think!”
“Apparently they are unfamiliar with strapons.”
That is not a bet I would be willing to make.
Forrest@12:
2M Eagle Scouts? As a former BS’er (I dropped out when our troop was taken over by some paramilitary fuckwad–and it took me longer than about 40% of the troop to do so) I was always a bit in awe of the Eagle and Life Scouts (never actually figured out why they had to have the separate designations).
If there are 2M of you, a significant minority would be a fuckton of people who had proven their “grit” and “character”. You should think about spearheading something like a pro-inclusion group of ex, especially successful ex, Eagles.
dingojack
July 21, 2012 at 8:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Demo – someone put itching powdwer in your undies again?
:o Dingo
democommie
July 21, 2012 at 10:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t need no steenkeen itching powder!
I’m a bit more pissed off than usual after that fuckhead in Colorado taking out about sixty movie goers, killing at least a dozen (several more are unconfirmed as deaths, at this point).
Fundamentalists and other social conservatives are a fucking disease.
dingojack
July 21, 2012 at 10:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hey – I’m not complaining …
Dingo