There’s a reason women don’t lead Boy Scout troops. Just like there’s a reason men don’t lead girl scout troops. Yes the overwhelming majority of adults would do nothing wrong. But there’s always a few that would have inappropriate relations with the teens in their troop.
Gay Scout leaders (male) are a unique issue. Yes, I fully understand very few gays are pedos. But, 14, 15, 16 year old boys are not really pedo bait anyway. We’ve seen enough female teachers get in trouble with teens that age. Like it or not teens that age are sexually attractive to adults.
I’d suggest, Gay men could lead a girl scout troop. Gay women could lead a Boy Scout troop.
It’s not a perfect solution. But no one wants to see underage boys or girls victimized by anyone. We don’t want to risk males leading a girl scout troop. Why would it be ok to risk letting a lesbian lead a girl scout troop? What’s the difference?
Absolutely nothing wrong with letting a lesbian lead a Girl Scout troop. I know, because back in the 1980’s, my troop was lead by a lesbian couple. Yes, we girls knew about it, and found it cool and exotic, but other than that, nobody really cared.
But aside from not realizing that unlike the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts have never had a problem with homosexual scouts or leaders, the main problem with your argument is that you are equating homosexuality with pedophilia. Study after study has shown that the rate of pedophilia is not different among gay men and straight men. So there is no greater risk of boy scouts being molested by a gay male leader than by a straight male leader. The only reason to allow straight men and not gay men to lead scout troops is bigotry.
This is a nice step, but they still don’t knowingly employ gay people. Last I heard, they also were closed to atheist youth. Both of these practices are deplorable.
I knew I was gay at that age, younger actually. Had my first crush on a boy in kindergarten. I was having, not exactly erotic but as close as a kid can get, dreams about superheros then as well, not sexual because I didn’t know what sex was. I just knew I wanted to be near them.
They’ve always left it up to the individual troops. Yeah, yeah, the national council passes various rules, but I’ve never yet heard of any troop that pays one whit of attention to anything National says. If a troop wants to let a gay kid join, they will, and just won’t mention it up the hierarchy (just like they don’t mention anything else, either).
EDIT:
Oh, and at least half of the Boy Scouts I knew were openly atheist. Nobody gave a damn about that, either.
In 2012 (or was it 2011?) BSA had claimed to have reviewed their policy on allowing open gays, and claimed to have decided to keep open gays out “forever”. Between January 2013 and June 2013 BSA went from 3 membership policies you describe as deplorable, to 2. The change was incredibly fast.
I am, as I posted upthread, very happy with the new policy that allows openly gay youth to join any BSA unit. I think there are important details to be worked out, and I hope the new policies that should be released in January with the policy change will address all the reasonable concerns.
My guess is that BSA-National is playing for time on the admittance of openly gay adult leaders. If the organization stays together after allowing gay youth - if not too many units or members flee BSA for some other gay-hostile organization, then the ban on openly gay adults will fall in time. And they aren’t playing for much time, as Scouts turn 18 and some of them become adult leaders. It is obviously offensive to say that Johnny Hypothetical is a fine member of BSA the day before his 18th birthday, but is not allowed to be a member 2 days later, simply because he is being honest. If the majority of BSA units stay in BSA, then the gay adult ban will IMO be gone in a few years.
They aren’t, but it remains to be seen if they will actually leave the program over this.
I think the people that really hated the inclusion of gay adults left when gay youth were included. The mormons will probably stick around, especially since they can still kick out adults in their troop for being gay (they just don’t have to).
The Times article said that they’ve been thinking about setting up their own version of the Scouts anyway, so we’ll see.
I was amused that Mormons in the church seem to get July off, so everyone was supposed to stop anything affecting them in July.
The LDS church has been a cash cow for scouting, contributing substantially to BSA. About 18% of all scouts in America are from Mormon sponsored troops.
I don’t know if it’s the same in other councils and areas of the country, but here the LDS troops run “separate but equal” units. The adults might come to district training, at least for the basic stuff, but they have their own LDS leadership training. They also have their own summer camps and rarely send their own scouts to a “normal” scout camp. So they might as well leave as far as their effect on and interaction with other troops.
It’s the same in my district. Never see an LDS unit get a commissioner visit, never see them at roundtable, never seen them at camporee, never see them at summercamp, never see them at training. Only time you see them is recharter and if one of their boys makes Eagle. Even then it’s iffy.
It’d hurt the numbers bad for LDS to leave, but I don’t think the rest of the program would really notice.
Well, the big (guess it depends on your definition of big, though) outfit that a number of church groups ran to is Trail Life USA (which is in partnership with American Heritage Girls). The LDS won’t be going into a partnership with them as TLUSA specifically prohibits having Mormons in leadership positions because, according to TLUSA, Mormons are not Christians. So, TLUSA/AHG cannot have adult leaders who are Jewish, Mormon, or Gay, but youth membership can be any of those. It is amusing to see that they permit Gay youth even though that the trigger to forming TLUSA was when BSA permitted Gay youth membership.
JohnGalt & yellowjacketcoder: Where are you two? I’ve seen at least one troop in the Atlanta area (well, Cartersville area) attending events with troops that are not affiliated with the LDS. How would you know if a particular troop is or is not affiliated with the LDS?
Anyway, a quick check of Wiki shows that there are a number of programs similar to scouting, some affiliated and some not affiliated. It’s not like there’s a dearth of opportunity. All it takes is for enough people (adult leaders and potential members among the youth in an area) to decide which program they want to follow and then obtain affiliation with said program. Say there area 100 young people in your town who’d like to do something similar to Scouting but don’t want to join BSA or GSA. Pick another program or create a new program.
I checked a number of Mormon forums, and there is a substantial number of people who support leaving BSA, not because of the current issue, but because they are unhappy about the partnership.
One of the problems is that all of the male youth are roped into participating (at least that was how it was when I was there, and it seems to still be the case) regardless of interest. there is a concern that this is not the best policy.
The adult leaders are not trained particularly well, and many don’t have that much interest in scouting. In all of the years I participated, there was only one leader who had been an Eagle himself, and he had been from a non-LDS troop. He quit fairly soon because of the amateurish nature of LDS scouting.
Because all of the boys go into scouting but the church does not partner with Girl Scouts or Brownies (and according to some, girls who join on their own are demonized) there is a huge difference in funding for the programs. Many of the liberal Mormons are quite unhappy about this.
That all said, the liberal Mormons seem to be happy that there may be a break with BSA, but furious that it’s being handled this way, which puts a lot of bad press for the church.