The BS of the BSA
by Mitchell McLeod Willcox

            Everybody has a deep and dirty secret that comes to them on windy nights and sends them to tossing and turning. Mine is that I am currently an Eagle Scout of the Boy Scouts of America. Perhaps the first sentence was hyperbole, but this is something that I am not proud of and wish to change. I wish to do this because of what the BSA calls its values and how it enforces them.

            Almost six years ago there was a case that went before the Supreme Court in which an openly gay scout leader was suing the BSA after being dismissed because of his sexual orientation. The Supreme Court ruled against him and said that his case had no merit because of the non-public standing of the Boy Scouts and because of the constitutional right of private organizations to expressive association. The constitution does not explicitly state any such right but it does say in the first amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting…the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. The corollary of assembly is the right to exclude. Of what value is an assemblage if one cannot say who can be there and what they can and cannot do? Our wonderful government has no place in this decision and that is what the Supreme Court upheld.

            I agree with this. Similarly gay groups have the right to exclude Boy Scouts from their meetings and extremist Christians have the right to exclude people who are actually sane. James Dale, the gay man who sued to be a scout master, was wrong because he was trying to impose himself on a group of people who did not wish to have his company. Being in agreement with the Supreme Court does not mean that I am in agreement with the Boy Scouts. Quite to the contrary. I believe they are a cruel organization that practices prejudice as policy. They exclude not only gays but also agnostics and atheists. Their comment concerning James Dale was that the scout oath requires scouts to be"morally straight" (no pun intended) and that the organization "takes the position that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout oath ... and contrary to the Scout Law to be 'clean' in word and deed" (CNN.com). As if to be gay was something immoral and dirty.

            I take issue with these so called ‘values’ that are in themselves disgusting and without any other basis than homophobia and that fossil - the Old Testament. I also take issue with throwing valuable people out of an organization simply because of what their sexual orientation happens to be. For these reasons I am ashamed to be an Eagle Scout. My only excuse is that I was encouraged to become an Eagle by my family so that I might have an edge in college applications and that I did not have any firmly established set of beliefs at the time. I was simply willing go along with whatever my elders thought was best.

            So, perhaps I had an excuse. But James Dale does not. It seems like some sort of strange Stockholm Syndrome on his part that he wishes to be a part of an organization that reviles him. Upon acknowledging to himself that he was gay he should have distanced himself from the BSA’s hateful organization as much as possible. And that is what I ask you to do. The only way to bring about moral change is to remove oneself from the individual or organization that you deem immoral and in this way to put social pressure on them. But one person cannot accomplish this alone. Social change requires social activism and therefore I ask you to not be a James Dale.  Instead revile the Boy Scouts yourself, remove yourself from their association, argue with those that remain in it and continue to support it, and in all make the BSA an organization for moral pariahs.

            For my part, as a sympathizer with the gay rights movement and a ‘born again’ atheist, I will write to the Boy Scouts of America and ask them to revoke my Eagle Scout award and to please go to hell.

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