As many of you probably have heard by now the Boy Scouts of America is thinking about allowing gay people to join the Boy Scouts. Their proposal is to allow individual troops to decide and I don’t think that is acceptable. I feel that it is a divide and conquer approach. They can sit back, raise their hands and say it is not us you have to talk to the individual troops. Instead of fighting one battle we will now have to fight troop by troop, instead of one battle nationally we will now have to fight multiple battles in every town.
It also raises many other questions, suppose that a troop is open and affirming and then they get a new scout leader who is not, will that mean all the gay scouts have to leave and find another troop? Or if the open scout troop goes to a Jamboree and it is run by a council that is not open, will it mean that all the gay scouts cannot attend or if they do attend that they have to hide in the closet?
Why is the national Boy Scout organization thinking about this change in policy? Well one reason might be that they are losing corporate sponsors and maybe they feel that by doing this they can claim that they don’t discriminate. Since the Supreme Court case where the court ruled that the Boy Scouts is a private organization that is allowed to discriminate they lost not only corporate sponsors but also public funding. They used to count on towns allowing them to use schools for free or at reduced rates and that also stopped because of the court case.
Lastly they say nothing about trans-people, will they allow trans-boys to join? Will they allow trans-men to be troop leaders?
So no, I do not believe this is a step forward. What it is a an attempt to weasel out of the fact that they discriminate not just against gays, but also trans-people and agnostics
It also raises many other questions, suppose that a troop is open and affirming and then they get a new scout leader who is not, will that mean all the gay scouts have to leave and find another troop? Or if the open scout troop goes to a Jamboree and it is run by a council that is not open, will it mean that all the gay scouts cannot attend or if they do attend that they have to hide in the closet?
Why is the national Boy Scout organization thinking about this change in policy? Well one reason might be that they are losing corporate sponsors and maybe they feel that by doing this they can claim that they don’t discriminate. Since the Supreme Court case where the court ruled that the Boy Scouts is a private organization that is allowed to discriminate they lost not only corporate sponsors but also public funding. They used to count on towns allowing them to use schools for free or at reduced rates and that also stopped because of the court case.
Lastly they say nothing about trans-people, will they allow trans-boys to join? Will they allow trans-men to be troop leaders?
So no, I do not believe this is a step forward. What it is a an attempt to weasel out of the fact that they discriminate not just against gays, but also trans-people and agnostics
To me, it is a positive step forward, but not for reasons of ethics or morality. The Scouts are simply reacting to market forces, pressures from outside which are telling the Scouts to be more inclusive.
ReplyDeleteProgress is not always clear and easy to see. Progress comes with backward and sideways steps that avoid roadblocks in the road. And in the case of the Scouts, they are being forced to recognize that they either catch up with sociery, or risk being left behind.
So give it a few years, and Gays in the Souts will be a non issue. Once this issue fades away, I think you'll be amazed how many dominoes will quickly fall - without much being said about them. And - since scouting is very popular in conservative circles, I think you'll be amazed at the rate of social change that occurs when these children become adults.
Sadly, this kind of change never comes quickly enough to benefit us. But it is coming - and we have a duty to foster it without getting in its way. We don't have to be radicals to foster it - we simply can explain why our views are just and ethical. Eventually, public morality will change....
I agree with you. It is only because of public pressure that they are taking this step and the way they are going about this is wrong. Many individual troops will continue to discriminate against LGBT individuals as well as those who are atheists.
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