I have never been a Boy Scout but I did belong to the Boy’s
Clubs of America, the branch on Livernois Avenue, south of Michigan Avenue. I
was actually a camp counselor at Camp Drisulla Farwell on Harsen’s Island
during one summer. I think we did what basically the Boy Scouts do, we camped,
learned to swim, learned to shoot a bow and arrow and many other fun things.
I do remember one night when a counselor had to be removed
from a cabin in the middle of the night because the boys in his care were somehow
afraid of him and complained to the other counselors. I was only 17 but now
believe we had a pedophile in camp.
The Boy Scouts of America have had their share of pedophiles
becoming scout leaders and molesting scouts. In fact, the Boy Scout
organization has behaved like the Catholic Church and hid decades of sexual
abuse by scout leaders until finally they were forced to release thousands of
documents detailing how they covered-up the abuse; thousands of lawsuits
followed.
Now they are faced with pressure to allow gays into the
organization as scouts and scout leaders.
They are being pressured by a changing society that sees
gays as fellow humans but born with a different sexual orientation; notice I
said “born with”. They are also being pressured by sponsors who are withholding
monetary support due to the scout’s discriminatory policies…loss of donations
hurts!
They are also being pressured by gay scouts that love
scouting but hate being in a closet.
On the other hand they are also pressured by the religious
right that wants the organization to stand up to those immoral people on the
left.
A sad sight is seeing little boys protesting with signs
displaying hateful anti-gay slogans put there by their parents and not even
knowing what gay means.
The very word Boy Scout stands for honesty and a readiness
to help those in need by using the skills learned while a scout; it stands for
everything that is good in a person.
Boy scouts are taught to be moral and unfortunately the
religious right sees homosexuality as an immoral state of being even though the
problem the scouting organization has had for years is with pedophiles and not
gays and here lies the dilemma.
We, as a society are facing a sea change in attitudes towards
issues like homosexuality that were never imagined before and my generation
(Baby Boomers) is in the midst of it. We are children of the 1960s where
INCLUSION was the word of the day and not EXCLUSION; we need to be true to the
revolution we started and give our grand-kids a better world to live in; a world
of inclusion.
