Calhoun's Cannons for May 25, 2013
Dear Baden-Powell,
Sorry, old chap, but no merit badge for you. Well, O.K., to be fair, half a badge. For years, your fine organization, the Boy
Scouts of America, has officially banned gays, which, you must admit is kinda
funny since a whole lot of people think that Scouting itself is soooo gay. I mean, running around in the woods with a
bunch of boys wearing knee socks, and sashes with embroidered merit badges on
them? And neckerchiefs? Really? Neckerchiefs?
But, O.K., I know that Scouting has helped many young boys
to grow up to become fine young men and now the organization has finally voted
to allow gay boys to officially remain a part of scouting. That's something the Girl Scouts of America
figured out some years ago when the issue of gays in Scouting began coming into
public awareness. Unlike the BSA, the
GSA did not confuse "being" with "behaving," and welcomed
all girls into their fold providing they minded the rules and didn't misbehave
(gay or straight). Since girls mature
more quickly than boys, I suppose the BSA's being so late in figuring this all
out is perhaps perfectly natural.
However, My Dear old
Powell, your organization has made a hash of things with their recent vote
because they only allow The Gays to stay in Scouting until they turn 18. And when that happens, it's out the door with
them. No matter how much of an Eagle
Scout they are, no matter how talented, brave, thrifty, honorable they are --
OUT. Like a Werewolf at the full moon, they
suddenly become persona non grata and are not allowed to become Scoutmasters or
be part of running your fine organization?
Think about what kind of message that sends to gay
kids: You're one of us for seventeen
years, three-hundred-sixty-four days.
Then you turn into a child molester?
And there, my Dear old Chappie, is where you and your
organization went off the rails years ago and which allowed molesters to
flourish in your midst doing untold harm to kids and to your organization. You
failed to understand that there are three kinds of people in the world: 1. Straight people. 2. Gay people. 3. Child molesters. And # 2 and #3 are NOT automatically
interchangeable. Indeed, Scouting's secret files have revealed whole swaths of
happily married men, fathers of three children, owners of picket fences,
station wagons and a dog -- child molesters all, hidden in plain sight and
unsuspected because they weren't "gay." And there was the
problem. They weren't gay, they weren't
straight: They were predatory child
molesters.
So, no merit badge for you, my dear fellow. After all, if you're learning bushcraft and
you don't know the difference between the tracks of a deadly predator and a
field mouse, you have no business being out in the woods with anybody, let
along a pack of young kids.
Naturally, many conservatives are up in arms about all this
gay stuff. And I sympathize. Many Scout programs are closely affiliated
with various Christian churches as sponsors, and so the secular and religious
have traditionally (and often uneasily) meshed in Scouting. With this new vote,
various conservative denominations are vowing mass exoduses and pulling their
support from the BSA. Indeed, John
Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, has vowed to create
an alternate youth group, one that has "timeless values," one that would
continue to ban gay kids.
Which, my dear Powell, sounds like a wonderful idea! Since Scouting is a private organization,
members are free to break off and form all kinds of different
organizations. Heck, we could even see an
All White Christians Scouts of America, a Gay Scouts of America, a Black Scouts
of America, even a Bi-Sexual/Transgendered Girl/Boy Scouts of America. The possibilities are endless.
In the meantime, Old Sport, the official BSA might as well
finish what it started. If you're a
Scout you're a Scout, whether you're 6 or 86. If Scouting has timeless value
and is meant to turn good boys into better men, then that's always going to be a
work in progress, a work that doesn't end in seventeen years, three hundred
sixty four days.
Posts
3 comments:
You've hit on the basic problem of the anti-gay bigots. They're operating on a false premise: that gay people are child molesters. Actually, the opposite is true. Many, many more child molesters identify as straight than gay. If the BSA were actually worried about young scouts being molested, they would ban straight people from the club and insist that all scoutmasters be gay.
Couldn't agree more with the Ann(e)'s. We have so much to learn about the dark recesses of a mind that harms children. But what we do know is that homosexuality is not a precursor to criminal behavior.
Sadly, our misunderstand (or genuine ignorance) of what the hell creates and sustains child molesters has kept us vulnerable to their predation. Our refusal to deal honestly with human sexuality is part of the cause, certainly homophobia and other sexual phobias, and denial play a huge part. I mean, who wants to believe that sweet little old Uncle Fred is a sick monster? And, there's the sad fact that predatory sociopaths of any stripe are masters of disguise and so are very hard to detect and stop, whether it's in the boardroom, the bedroom, the classroom, or the summer BSA camp.
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