Their policy is confirmed in the membership clarification statement released to the media last month: "The BSA policy is: “While the BSA does not proactively inquire about the sexual orientation of employees, volunteers, or members, we do not grant membership to individuals who are open or avowed homosexuals or who engage in behavior that would become a distraction to the mission of the BSA.” "
No one who’s open about being gay can be a leader or a member. And I call bullshit on your “Sexuality has very little to do with scouting” as straights don’t have to be closeted.
There are several aspects I don’t see 100% eye to eye with the main Scout ‘company line’, but there’s a HUGE disconnect between the corporate level and the kid’s. I went into it with a ‘lets see how this goes’ and have found a lot of variability on the things people would be concerned with. (read: Theology)
Membership is down (Netfirms | This site is temporarily unavailable), I suspect that by itself will do more to change their opinions more than anything else. They will either adapt or die. What I’ve seen from them in the way of child and leadership protection against sexual abuse has me hoping they’ll be every bit as thoughtful on this topic, eventually.
In the meantime, this particular political statement has zero impact on the lives of the kids in our pack. I honestly couldn’t TELL you what the orientation is of the parents that volunteer. It hasn’t come up.
One of the qualifications for receiving each of those merit badges is not being openly gay. Doing anything in the BSA requires not being openly gay, so anti-gay discrimination is therefore a part of everything the organization does.
If it’s anything like cub scouts, a helluva life insurance policy. I doubt our pack would have NEAR the membership if it was just the Unintentionally Blank club.
But the point I’m trying to make is: Yes, this is an important topic. Yes, I think it’s something that needs to change. I doubt Boy Scouts as an organization WOULD change, if everyone that disagreed left. In the meantime, the foundation of scouting is teaching valuable, if non-sexual, lessons to my (and other) children.
“throwing the baby out with the bathwater” would be grossly misstating the issue. It’s bigger than that. I think this is a symptom of the time we live in. Even though gays weren’t allowed in the military, damned if there weren’t a bunch already there when the ban was lifted.
There’s politics here, to be sure, but those politics don’t (currently) extend down to my pack.
My point is that you’re looking in the wrong place for discrimination. Of course the internal policies are facially neutral; they don’t need to worry about openly saying “gay people need not apply for this badge,” because they already banned them from joining. You wouldn’t go inside a classroom in a whites-only school to look for discrimination, because you have to go outside the front door to see everyone that couldn’t get in in the first place.
It means that sexual relationships don’t have a place in scouting, of any orientation.
Listen, this is a stereotypical unending internet debate…my contribution to it is:
The lessons taught have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
In fact, the lessons are to accept, and value, differences.
The flavor of the pack is set, in many ways, by the volunteers that run the pack.
In my personal experience, it hasn’t come up.
Yes there is. You only need to read the thread to find the policy.
[QUOTE=BSA]
While the BSA does not proactively inquire about the sexual orientation of employees, volunteers, or members, we do not grant membership to individuals who are open or avowed homosexuals or who engage in behavior that would become a distraction to the mission of the BSA.
[/QUOTE]
If you are gay and honest about your sexuality you are not allowed to be a boy scout.
This sort of thing is actually why I think the Dale case was wrongly decided. To get the Supreme Court to decide that New Jersey’s public accommodations law didn’t apply to them, the BSA described their stance on gays as being an important part of their values. As far as I can tell, the Supreme Court just accepted their word on the matter. If the BSA had described their position (more accurately, imho) as being that anti-gay bias is an important value to the bigots on their board of trustees, the states would have much more latitude to apply non-discrimination laws to them.
Incidentally, I seem to recall way back in 1994, when Mitt Romney was running for Senate, that he took some heat for being on the BSA board of trustees, due to this policy. At the time, I recall that he said that he was opposed to the policy, and voted against it. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the anti-discrimination faction to win. I’ve long since given up much hope for the idea of changing the organization from within, but that’s just me.
Nobody has said that sexual relationships have any place in scouting.
You’re just pushing anti-gay propaganda lines, asshole. The fake-neutral “sexual relationships don’t have a place” and “leave sexuality, AS A WHOLE, out of the equation” are what bigots routinely push out when they know that they’re getting too unpopular to say what they really think.
Seriously, I’m sorry for you. I faced the same thing. But I had a great talk with my son and some neighbor kids about this and they decided that the hiking and scuba and ski trips are great, but “that gay hate thing is fuuuucked up!” (their diagnosis, not mine). I thought they’d want to boycott, but they all joined the same troop, with wonderfully liberal leaders and some gay guys and even some girls in the troop.
(Now, eventually they got too cynical for a para-military Lord-Of-The-Flies gang of Lost Boys, but they had a few great years, and even got to sail and dive the Florida Keys.)
Except they have decided. They have decided to maintain the ban on gay and lesbian leaders. That is not leaving it to each family to address same-sex orientation issues; they have decided that gays and lesbians are not welcome in their organization. The fact that they use “we have to respect everyone’s diversity” pablum to justify their decision is simply a hypocritical attempt to mask their decision: they are excluding potential leaders based on sexual orientation.
Then why are individuals of particular sexual orientation banned from membership, and subject to expulsion if their sexual orientation becomes public? That policy explicitly and publicly means that sexual orientation does indeed have a place in scouting - only individuals of a particular sexual orientation are allowed in.
Unless the difference is that the individual is gay or lesbian - in that case, the difference is not accepted or valued, and in fact is the reason to exclude the individual.
Until someone narcs on the volunteers based on their sexual orientation, and they are excluded.
If sexuality has very little to do with scouting, why ban individuals of a particular sexual orientation? By doing so, the BSA is in fact stating that sexual orientation is important to scouting - only those of a particular sexual orientation can participate.
This is on the “I retired retroactively” level here. They know they’re on the wrong side of history here, and they’re trying to duck moral responsibility for it in the most blatantly transparent way possible.