Yahoo asked former Boy Scouts, leaders and scouting families to react to Monday’s news that the Boy Scouts of America organization is considering removing its ban on gay members and leaders. Here’s one perspective.
COMMENTARY | At my new home in Cary, N.C., I haven’t seen much of the Boy Scouts program that my dad and brother used to be involved with. I don’t donate to or buy from the kids selling popcorn outside grocery stores, however. I still won’t even if they revise their ban on LGBT kids and scout leaders and leave it up to local organizations to decide, like NBC’s Pete Williams reported they’re “actively considering.”
This is for two reasons (besides the fact that their popcorn’s darned expensive).
First, the ban was never about protecting kids.
If it were, the BSA would have addressed how gay young men are several times more likely to be bullied for their orientation, instead of showing them the door as soon as they come out. It also wouldn’t throw out lesbian Cub Scout moms like Jennifer Tyrrell, featured in a video on the NBC News article.
If anything, the Boy Scout organization is a haven for child molesters. An exposé last year by Kim Christensen and Jason Felch of the Los Angeles Times showed how BSA officials repeatedly covered for molesters, letting them escape prosecution and burying evidence to protect its own reputation.
My brother went to a church-run Boy Scout camp in the ’90s. One of the adult leaders, who was there multiple years in a row, was arrested later for molesting kids there. What do you expect, when the adults have power over so much of the kids’ lives and they’re taught to obey unquestioningly, like in so many conservative churches?
Second, the proposed change probably isn’t about welcoming gays.
I feel it’s more likely about welcoming money — the money pulled out by big donors like UPS and Intel. But with the gay-hostile Mormon Church making up a huge chunk of its membership, the BSA knows it can’t reverse the policy without tearing itself apart.
Instead, we get this North / South compromise. Without any talk of what happens when LGBT Scouts or leaders get bullied at cross-group meet-ups. Or whether trans boys and atheists will ever be allowed.
It’s cynical, self-serving, and unprincipled.
