Author: Dan Rhatigan

As if I didn’t have enough to do already, I decided to throw together a wee little something about the whole Boy Scouts brouhaha, with a few reference materials pulled from my vast archive of fun stuff.

First, an excerpt from a Boys Scouts of America guide to physical fitness, ©1968:

Another subject about which there is much misinformation is homosexuality. This term is generally used to describe a fixed adult pattern of behavior in which an individual is sexually attracted only to members of his own sex. Many boys before they become interested in girls develop strong friendships with other boys. This is perfectly normal and will lead to many strong friendships for the rest of their lives. It does not mean they are homosexuals or are not manly or will not develop an interest on girls. As they grow and widen their circle of friends and activities, they will become attracted to the opposite sex. If a young man has any questions about this area of friendship, he should certainly consult his parents and spiritual adviser for guidance.

There’s been a lot of hullaballoo about the Supreme Court’s ruling that supports the right of the Boys scouts of America to exclude gays from the organization. Despite my inherent belief that gays should be able to do whatever the hell anyone else can do, I must admit that I’m with the Supreme Court on this one. If the Boy Scouts are willing to stand by the idea that the right to exclude homosexuals from membership is a central part of their mission and their ideological foundation, then they should have the right to do so. The flip side to this is that they have to take a situation that they would probably prefer to ignore and make it a central part of their ideological foundation.

I hope the scouts do make this a big issue, but I really hope that people have the good sense to take them to task for making exclusion — rather than acceptance — a central part of their mission. I hope this is something that forces to the scouts to reevaluate what it is they’re doing. scout literature talks a lot about upholding ethical and community standards, but the organization is acting as if those standards are static, and not subject to evolution or variation from place to place. That’s crap. I wonder if something like this happened to Jewish scouts at some point. I wonder if the scouts will change this as homophobia continues to erode in this country. I wonder if this will cause a splintering of the organization as people involved at the local level who believe in the more humanistic ideals of the organization decide to stand by the gay people they know. I wonder.

I don’t really have anything against the Boy Scouts, except for their reactionary stance on this particular issue. I was a Cub Scout for two years, and I thought it was pretty lame. But I know other guys — gay and straight alike — who had a number of good experiences with the scouts, and think they are better for having joined them. (As a matter of fact, I know guys who had a number of good sexual experiences in the Boy Scouts. Will they have to institute a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy? I wonder.) But I think that now’s the time to ask if the scouts are really doing such good work if their idea of preparing young men to be good citizens is to just out those who don’t agree with them. Or who might — heaven forbid — help them live up to part of their own Oath: “A scout is a friend to all. He is a brother to other scouts. He seeks to understand others. He respects those with ideas and customs other than his own.”