B.S. ... A.

In my defense, I was young, and I needed the social capital. I didn't know I was joining a hate-group.

Not me. But it's a close enough approximation.

Just add glasses, a toe-head, and a constant sunburn.

I don't even remember why I did it - I guess my friends were in it, and maybe my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to get some exercise, or at least learn that the big field at my elementary school didn't actually count as "nature," and I found myself suddenly shopping at Mervyn's for an extra-large pair of army-green cargo shorts. And that stupid belt with the weird buckle that you had to cinch against itself that just reminded you how fat you were. 

Sure, put a kid in a copper-plated gut-corset, why don't you...

Okay, so I may be straying from the common experience here. The point is, I was a Cub Scout, and then a WeBeLoS (that's "We'll Be Loyal Scouts" to the uninitiated... I guess you can't expect dazzling acronyms from an organization that can be called "The B.S.," though...). I would have been a Boy Scout if I had decided to stay, but it turned out that I could only suffer a certain amount of ostracizing before I snapped.

 

How I had hoped "Red Rover Worked."               How "Red Rover" actually *did* work.

What I learned most, even more than how to tie a bowline knot (there are rabbits and a multitude of holes involved; that's all I remember now) was that I didn't like pain. This was apparently very strange to my troop-mates, and my insistence on grimacing and wincing whenever one of these "fun" kinds of romp-around contests were suggested resulted in my being called quite a few names, most of which were an education in themselves, and all of which led inevitably toward everybody's favorite childhood pastime, "Smear the Queer."

  

Now, as a young boy, I had a sort of vague notion of what "queer" meant. It meant gay. And I pretty much new what gay meant - and I was terrified of being it. Because it meant ridicule. It meant worse than fat. Worse than albino (which I wasn't, but only on the medical technicality that my eyes weren't red, and I had some pigmentation). Worse than everything.

What I thought gay meant.

In a way, my instincts weren't completely off - I never suffered the misconception that it was something a person chose. Instead, I lived in the constant fear that one day, I would just wake up and suddenly find out that I was queer. It was a bizarre, literal form of homophobia. There was no "It Gets Better" campaign in the mid-eighties, after all - there was only "It Means You Have AIDS." And I didn't want to catch it.

Children are vicious creatures. For every Piagetian fantasy of social development among a woodland utopia, there's a Southpark episode which more closely resembles my reckoning of growing up. 

 

Kenny's preoperational because he *can* talk; we just can't understand it.

The worst part is that I didn't even know I was homophobic, because I didn't recognize the fact that there was an alternative to automatically segregating people who others called gay from the rest of society (nobody, of course, called themselves that). Without any exposure to the real-life example, I didn't even really have an understanding of what a gay person would look like, or act like.

And almost three decades later, today's Boy Scouts probably won't either.

Okay, it may be an exaggeration to say that. Surely, the prevalence of media exposure, legislative efforts, and human rights campaigns will work their way into even the most martinet households, and it's almost impossible to imagine an eight-year-old boy in today's world who is as misguided and ignorant as I was. But not due to any efforts by the Boy Scouts. They have decided to maintain their "restriction" on advancing "openly gay" members to "positions of leadership." Reading through those double-speak quotes, that means "banning homosexuals from participating in the Boy Scouts."

 "But wait - they're a private organization - can't they do what they want?"

No. That's the first thing we need to clear up, and we need to do it quick: Any time you open up your doors to the general public, you become a "place of public accommodation," and you thereby do *not* get to enforce your backwards bigotry upon the same people you're inviting into your clubhouse.

Or your diner.

 

"Wait - that's not the same thing at all, though!"

Yes, yes it is. Ever since 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court has considered groups who have been historically denied equal treatment as a "protected class," which means that they cannot be discriminated against - even by religious groups. This includes Boy Scouts.

See that lady with the spiky hair? She has something to tell you.

I did finally learn, though, what being gay meant. My 10th-grade Spanish teacher taught me. He was the first person I'd ever met who was "openly homosexual," and I eagerly awaited a lesson in what that looked like. When I finally met him, I discovered the truth.

 

Yup. Pretty much.

That day, I earned my tolerance badge from Mr. Osborne, and he didn't even realize that he'd given it to me. Good leaders are like that, though. It's a shame the BSA can't see that.

Until the Supreme Court takes action, though, and forces them to fulfill their responsibility to the public they claim to serve, all we can do is  boycott. 

Of course, what I'd like to see is the whole thing brought down, boy and girl scouts alike, and a new organization take its place - we could call it the "Young Person Scouts."

... Or not.