Editorial: A plea for Scouting’s true ideals
by Matt | March 22nd, 2008 |My Editor’s Note from the March 22 issue of Q-Notes, the leading LGBT news source of the Carolinas.
A plea for Scouting’s true ideals
by Matt Comer . Editor, Q-Notes
In my last Editor’s Note (“Perry, Huckabee and the piss-me-off meter,” 3/8/2008), I wrote briefly about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s new book, “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For,” in which he outlines his argument for why the Scouting organization should be able to continue their discrimination against gay members and leaders.
I noted that Gov. Perry and other defenders of the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) anti-gay membership and leadership policies often downplay the Scouts’ discrimination against gay youth members. Sometimes, they take their obfuscation a step further.
In an interview with New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon, Gov. Perry said, “Well, the ban in scouting applies to scout leaders.” While his statement isn’t a lie — the policy does, indeed, apply to Scout leaders — it does imply a fallacy. Namely, that the BSA policies apply only to adult leaders.
Hans Zeiger, a 23-year-old Pepperdine University grad student and author of “Get off My Honor: The Assault on the Boy Scouts of America,” continues the shell game in a guest column in the Mar. 10 issue of The Waco Tribune in which he commends Perry’s book.
Not once does Zeiger — whom I had the pleasure of debating when we were younger — mention directly the affect of the BSA’s policy on youth members. He does, however, claim that the Boy Scouts are “under attack by the secular left, particularly by the American Civil Liberties Union.” He also boldly claims that “to change or delude the Scout Oath and Law would be to part ways with a century of successes in Scouting.”
Read the rest at Q-Notes Online…
5 Responses to “Editorial: A plea for Scouting’s true ideals”
Do not voluntary organizations have the right to determine membership qualifications? I, too, was a Boy Scout and while I might not like their discriminatory practices, I would still maintain that as a voluntary organization they have the right to be restrictive in membership.
By Rev. David R. Gillespie on Mar 26, 2008
Reverend, I think you miss my point in the editorial. Have you read the entire piece? Just making sure. I don’t want to proceed any further in any conversation without knowing you’ve had the chance to read the full piece. Click the read more link in the post.
By Matt Comer on Mar 26, 2008
Here’s a link to PFLAG’s “Scouting for All”-themed March newsletter:
http://community.pflag.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=869&srcid=194
By Adam R. on Mar 26, 2008
Matt, you wrote “It’s sadly ironic that the Boy Scouts of America teaches boys and young men to be “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent” while they force members to turn their backs on a whole segment of fellow Scouts. They shred the very ideals upon which they are founded.”
Matt, believing that homosexual acts are sinful does not contradict being “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.” One can be all of those things and still maintain that belief. I don’t see the position of the BSA as “forcing members to turn their backs” on their fellow scouts or in anyway “shredding” the ideals of the movement. To uphold the ideals of the BSA does not require approval of homosexual acts, which is what your editorial, which I read in full the first time, seems to be saying. BSA is not being hypocritical, self-righteous or contradictory.
What bothers me most, as a queer man of faith and religious professional, is that some queer folks seem to think that all voluntary organizations do not have the right to be discriminatory in their practices. Whether we like it or not, they do. And BSA is one such organization. While you and I might long for the day when they are not so, that does not imply that it is “best for the organization” to not be so.
By David R. Gillespie on Mar 31, 2008
I, too, was a scout…and an Eagle Scout as well. I was gay when I was a youth member in the BSA program, I was gay when I became one of their leaders, and I am still gay now that I am no longer affliated with the program. Many of my gay friends, when we were youth, continued in scouting as leaders, even though we knew ourselves to be gay.
I think what I have issue with Perry’s book is that he doesn’t cover, sufficiently, his reasons for excluding gay adult leaders. I don’t think he ever met a gay youth in scouting before and saw what scouting taught us. Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean all that is lost.
I no longer support scouting because of the ban.
By juanito on Mar 31, 2008