When I first heard about the Boy Scouts Of America not allowing Gay Scout leaders, I
had an aggressive negative reaction. I thought they where a bunch of out of touch bigots.
But then I remembered that my dad and his friends were the people who ran the boy scouts
in my town. Those guys weren't bigots. They were just good people who wanted to do something
wholesome with their kids. 2. So who is making decisions like this for
the Boy Scouts. There must be some small super conservative group at the top, right?. A supreme
council of homophobic bigots run by a Grand Wizard Webelow or some thing. But that's not
how it works. The BSA has a rather large voting council, with everyday people involved. So,
how did we get into this mess?
3. Well. The BSA started as an all male, religious movement, inspired by a military model of
operations. 4. You know, a handbook, uniforms.... The
whole shebang.
Those were the three things holding them together, military structure, a hetero-normative all-male
membership and a belief in God. 5. The twelfth point of the Scout law IS to
be Reverent, after all.
So, naturally they were closely tied to both Christianity and our US military tradition.
And that still the case today. Right now 70% of the chartered scouting units are sponsored
by faith-based organizations. Which, as we know, are not exactly hubs of open-mindedness
and change. 6. To achieve the Eagle Scout rank, scouts
must get a recommendation from a religious leader, it's required.
Still, the Boys Scouts Of America have their own council and the freedom to accept whomever
they want as Scout leaders, Church be damned, so why haven't they?
Because the roughly 1,400 member council that makes these decisions hasn't voted on it yet.
7. They did vote in May of 2013 to admit gay youths, but they haven't yet addressed the
question of allowing gay scout masters. And they may not do that any time soon. Like the
Church, they're slow moving when it comes to cultural changes. Though, they are doing
quote unquote "studies" on the question and even polled their membership about it last
January. That's the good news. The bad news...61% of the nearly 200,000 people polled who perfectly
OK with the status quo.
But that's the thing with the status quo. It is hard to change. And until, the Boy Scouts
of America and people in general are down with directly questioning the status quo,
we'll keep having out of date policies like this. But, change always comes and eventually
the BSA will do the right thing. Scout's honor.