The Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed their longstanding policy of excluding gay kids from their ranks recently and the Family Research Council is, of course, praising them for it. In an email sent to their followers, the FRC said this:
Why is the homosexual movement targeting the Boy Scouts?
Here’s the reason:
Because the Boy Scout Oath talks about honor, duty to God, and moral uprightness, which necessarily excludes sinful lifestyles.
Really? Would you care to make a bet on what percentage of the teenagers in the Boy Scouts masturbate and fantasize about all kinds of nasty things? It will be very near 100%. And yet that “sinful lifestyle” does nothing to impede their ability to complete the program, earn badges and reach the highest levels of achievement in the organization. They might as well give out merit badges for bigotry, which is not a moral value.
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muadib
July 27, 2012 at 10:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As a Eagle scout myself, and being 100% in favor of equality I was glad to see this comic from surviving the world.
http://survivingtheworld.net/
Below the comic Dante has this to say.
“Basically, the policy has been stated by the overseeing body. But they do not speak for everyone, it does not reflect on work done by Scouts everywhere, nor is this policy followed everywhere within the BSA. Just like many members of political parties do not follow everything issued by the national chairpersons, or like Catholics do not agree or follow everything that comes from the Vatican. There’s a long list (in desperate need of updating) of individual troops/councils that reject or protest the rule, that currently operate with their own non-discrimination policy. When you only hear about what comes from the national office, these other troops and councils are going to be completely ignored in comparison. Scouts returning their Eagle badges may make for sensational news – and may have some effect, considered in total – but isn’t going to add up when the national office has taken two years to come to their latest conclusion. Pushing for change – and getting it, to some extent! – from within the BSA is working; it’s just not very well-known and will be a slow, long process.
That’s tough for some people to hear. Many people believe that separating and leaving the BSA would have far more effect, that’s your absence would have more voice. I disagree. By leaving, you are making the group far more insular and less receptive to your voices – a good strategy if the group is small or likely going to fall apart in the immediate future, a poor strategy if it has sustained size. And our efforts within the Scouts is making serious headway. I worked alongside openly gay Scouts, many of whom reached high positions at the camp. The pattern of rejecting the national policy follows geographic patterns that are somewhat familiar, but there is change being made, and I do not expect the policy to last, even if it takes a while longer to correct nationally.
If you disagree with me, I understand. Even my brief comments last week outraged some people enough to the point I was accused by several people who’d never been affiliated in any way with the BSA of promoting a bad organization and of ’tilting at windmills’, and when I tried to reason with them, was accused of attacking them. But I hope that in the four years I’ve been running STW, pushing for non-discrimination and for equality time and time and time again, that you are assured which side of the issue I am on, and that given the determination on the issue I hope I’ve repeatedly expressed, that you would accept that I would only pursue a path I believed had a good chance of succeeding.”
And I agree fuully
Larry
July 27, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m very pleased to hear of former scouts who earned the Eagle scout rank returning the award in protest of the Boy Scouts’ bigotry. That is not a meaningless gesture as those achieving that rank are justly proud of the accomplishment. They obviously took home the lesson of what it means to be a Boy Scout unlike the adults who currently are in control of the organization.
Sastra
July 27, 2012 at 10:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No, the point isn’t that the Boy Scouts are sinning anyway.
The point is that homosexuality is not a sin.
The values of honor and moral uprightness conflict with the Boy Scout policy. That’s our argument. They can’t reframe it in their terms when their terms are the entire point of contention.
Frankly, if God existed then fighting and arguing against the Boy Scout exclusion of both homosexuality AND atheism would be part of my “duty to God.” A God which was good by definition would have to be good by my definition or I wouldn’t have good reason to think it’s God, would I?.
gshevlin
July 27, 2012 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The strawman in that Boy Scouts email is so enormous that if I set fire to it I could warm an entire stadium’s worth of people for an hour or so…
raven
July 27, 2012 at 11:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Will the BSA accept gays or atheists first?
That is a hard one to call.
Discriminating against atheists makes no sense. The Nones run around 20% of the population and include the best and brightest our society has produced.
wholething
July 27, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Boy Scouts wear military-like clothing. They wear berets. They wear sashes upon which they have sewn badges. They camp in the woods with other guys. They exclude females from their meetings. If they didn’t speak out against gays, what would people think?
uncephalized
July 27, 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I am an Eagle Scout (now 24) and this policy by the BSA has disgusted me since I was an active Scout.
I also learned recently that one of my fellow Eagles from my troop, who earned his rank a couple of years after me and who I knew fairly well, turned out to be gay. I haven’t seen him since high school but news like that tends to come through the grapevine via my parents, who still talk to a lot of the other Scout parents (my dad was the Scoutmaster for a few years).
My mom told me and my whole reaction was basically “huh, didn’t know that.” I just don’t see it as relevant to anything but his personal life. It certainly didn’t stop him from developing any of the skills or attributes needed to attain Eagle rank–nor should anyone expect it to.
All it did, of course, was coerce him to hide his orientation or risk being kicked out of a group that was important to him, where he had lots of friends (he was well-liked in our troop, a genuinely good guy). And that hurts everybody. I don’t give any money or support to the BSA, even though I believe in the idea of the program and benefitted from it immensely myself, because of this one issue (well, actually partly because of the religious-belief requirement as well, though I see it as basically the same problem).
It makes me mad because I really want to support the Scouts without supporting the bigotry. And right now there doesn’t seem to be a good way to do that.
muadib
July 27, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The discrimination of Atheists is similar. The national office is against atheist scouts but many troops ignore that and allow and encourage atheist membership.
uncephalized
July 27, 2012 at 11:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@wholething we even sit in circles and do girly-man things like weave baskets, and we get a merit badge for learning how to paint pretty pictures! :-D
Of course, we also learn how to make fires and build multistory structures out of nothing but poles and ropes, lash bridges across streams and go on 10-day, 50-mile wilderness trips with nothing but what we can paddle and/or carry.
We also did our fair share of running around in the woods with homemade spears and shit while the adults weren’t watching. Scouting is pretty damn fun for teenage boys. Nighttime capture-the-flag in the sand dunes or the pine forest is pretty awesome too.
Now that I think about it we did a lot of kinda risky stuff on our trips. Must be why we were having such a good time. :-)
muadib
July 27, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also as for supporting the Boy Scouts but not wanting to support bigotry. Look up Scouts for Equality. They are an organization of scouts that is trying to get the official polices against homosexual and atheist scouts removed.
Alverant
July 27, 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If the BSA is a christian organization, why do they allow non-christians to join (like Buddhists)?
Trebuchet
July 27, 2012 at 11:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ #4, gshevlin: To be fair, the email is from the Family Research Council, not the Scouts.
It appears the BSA is between a rock and a hard place, which is to say between the modern world and the Mormon and Catholic churches who sponsor many of their troops.
Bronze Dog
July 27, 2012 at 12:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I understand some people wanting to work inside the organization to bring about change from within. IIRC, one of the reasons the Boy Scouts of America was formed was to counter the alleged feminization of boys by their mothers and thus prevent homosexuality, so, yeah, it sounds like it’s one hell of an uphill battle to me. I’m not in touch on the national or local level, so I don’t know much of the picture first hand, or how likely it is to succeed.
I understand people turning in their badges in protest. Enough people do it, and it’ll hurt the organization and its influence, and hopefully they’ll start to get the message. One other action that comes to mind: Make a new, competing Scout organization committed to upstanding morals. That’s probably quite a challenge in itself. If I were a member and active, I’d probably lean towards this route.
Very yes. It’s discrimination against homosexuality that’s blatantly immoral.
Homophobia is a barbarian attempt to mimic the appearance of sexual ethics by creating arbitrary rules, randomly declaring ‘icky’ things to be immoral with either no basis or a manufactured circular basis. (You’re punished because it’s wrong. It’s wrong because the obligatory punishment needlessly increases the suffering in the world, and you caused that suffering by being homosexual.) It’s cargo cult morality.
Sastra
July 27, 2012 at 1:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I suspect the BSA will allow gays to join before they allow atheists. Too many otherwise liberal people think that ‘having faith’ — any faith — is a sign of virtue, humility, and being the ‘right’ sort of person. If atheists are allowed in it will probably be because someone manages to reframe them as either “searching” for God, or believing in God “in their own way.”
Iirc there was a case not long ago where an Eagle Scout participating in a troop discussion on religion and morality mentioned that although he was an atheist, he believed in virtue, honor, and good deeds. The reaction of the scoutmaster and kids in the group was positive, it was no big deal — but one of the boys told his parents, and they ended up complaining to someone higher up. The Eagle Scout was consequently stripped of his membership over the heartfelt pleas of everyone in the troop — he was one of the best-liked, most hard-working young men in the unit. Everyone who knew him personally wanted to keep him, and cited his good character as evidence he deserved to be an Eagle Scout.
The BSA hierarchy didn’t care. Not believing in God is itself a moral turpitude. You know there is a God and you owe Him a duty to say you know. And besides, as a matter of principle the facts of the matter were irrelevant. What if his good influence lead to a single wavering of someone’s precious faith? The scout was out.
I forget the young man’s name, but I heard him speak at an atheist convention somewhere. He was as poised and intelligent and likeable as all get out.
Abby Normal
July 27, 2012 at 2:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sastra’s worthy comment @3 aside, I wonder what other sins prevent one from being a scout. Can divorcees be troop leaders? If you don’t keep the Sabbath can you still earn a woodcarving badge? Do kids who argue with their parents find themselves looking for a new after school hobby? Can scouts cook plump pork hotdog over a campfire and still wear the kerchief? What about people who vainly subvert God’s authority by passing judgment on people for their sins?
Well, that last one at least we have an answer to.
jefflowder
July 27, 2012 at 7:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hi Ed — FYI: I blogged about the Boy Scouts of America and their policy of discrimination against atheists here:
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/06/where-is-outcry-from-theists-against.html
I thought you and your readers might find it of interest.
Regards,
Jeffery Jay Lowder
dontpanic
July 28, 2012 at 12:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wimp, I don’t think either of my two 50 mile hikes (high Sierras near Yosemite and the Los Padres National Forest) lasted more than 7 days. Maybe my father just pushed us harder than typical.
I did bite my tongue over the religious aspects, both as a scout (life, not quite eagle) and as a leader (my son’s tiger den through 1st year of boy scouts) because I thought there was enough core good values. As Sastra @ 14 says there is a strong `need’ for some to have faith for faith’s sake and to ensure that everyone around them conforms as well. And that’s reflected in the whole 12th point of the law: “reverent” and in the oath “…duty to God…”. Modifying those are going to take some doing. We sort of skated by without issues for most of that time, but I could see problems on the horizon. Not overly religious in the activities, but I worried about the advancement reviews my son would have to endure.
I didn’t see many issues arising about gayness … part of that might just have been privilege on my part … though if any of the kids were gay, they were so deep in the closet as to be in Narnia. As well as not being a great place for gays and atheists, BSA is spotty on how well they deal with those that aren’t neurotypical which is what eventually lead to my son dropping out.
I don’t think calls to start parallel organizations are realistic. I do think there is hope in the two approaches of public shaming, and working from within. E