Boy Scouts Cling to Discriminatory Policies

From ABC News:

The Boy Scouts of America today voted to lift its longtime national ban on admitting openly gay Scouts but will continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership roles.

So, according to this logic, gay kids are just fine, but watch out! As soon as one turn 18, he becomes a raving child molester!

Newsflash to the Boy Scouts of America: there have always been, and still are, thousands of gay boy scouts as well as thousands of gay scout leaders -- before and after this ruling. Nothing's changed.

This is as dumb as closing your eyes at the beach and pretending those billions of grains of sand don't exist. Open your eyes. Surprise! They're still there!

The Boy Scouts of America issued a statement saying, in part,  "Going forward, our Scouting family will continue to focus on reaching and serving youth in order to help them grow into good, strong citizens."

Yes, good, strong citizens who have been taught to exclude and discriminate. Great values, huh?

In case any holier-than-thou, rightwing Christian-types are reading this, here's a shocker: From your beloved spawn's very first day, he has been exposed to "the gays." The doctor who delivered him may have been gay, certainly several of the nurses were, and so were hundreds of classmates, teachers, coaches, neighbors, friends, and even your relatives, whether you know it or not.

"The gay" is not contagious.

This is exactly like when Don't Ask Don't Tell was officially ended for the armed services. There were thousands of gays and lesbians serving in all branches the day before it ended as well as the day after -- the exact same number. Nothing changed. The sky didn't fall. The world didn't come to an end.

Funny thing is, this matters a lot less to today's kids than it does to the homophobic middle aged Boy Scout officials making this call. Today's kids all know other gay kids; they know a lot of kids with two fathers or two mothers; they know a lot of kids from mixed ethnic backgrounds, etc. All of this has been commonplace for decades. Go to any school in the country and kids really don't care a whit about any of this.

It's only the older folks who are losing sleep over this. As all surveys on same sex marriage show, the approval numbers increase with each successively lower age group. In other words, 30% of people over 65 may approve, but 45% of people under 50 approve, and 70% of people under 25 approve.

The bottom line is exclusion and discrimination are not values that should be supported by this organization. And as long as it operates under a Congressional Charter (a US law condoning the mission, authority and activities of the group), institutionalized discrimination within the group should be expressly banned.

Boy Scouts Not Really Ending Discrimination

It may look like the Boy Scouts were finally joining the 20th Century (now that we're in the 21st), but looks can be deceiving.

"Boy Scouts Consider Lifting the Ban on Gays" is what the headlines have been saying. But a closer look shows that the Boy Scouts of America are not ending discrimination against gay scouts and scout leaders; they are not banning discrimination. They're simply saying they may end the mandatory ban on gay scouts on a national level, allowing each troop in each district to make its own decision.

"We're not requiring you to discriminate, but go ahead if you like," is essentially what they're saying to troops in every state.

This would be like saying the Federal Government frowns on slavery, but hey, if you nice white folks in Mississippi and Alabama want to own slaves, the choice is yours.

Not acceptable.

The Boy Scouts of America must not only end discrimination, it must ban it at all levels.

Through the years, public schools and other entities that follow nondiscrimination policies have stopped sponsoring Boy Scout troops. Picking up the slack were Southern Baptist, Catholic and Mormon organizations that were only too happy to continue the policy of hate and discrimination.

Complete article from the Associated Press here.