I find Scouting's exclusion of boys who are perhaps most in need of the moral guidance they provide, frankly, mean and un-American. Certainly it goes against the grain of Scouting abroad as well as the foundations upon which Baden-Powells movement was founded.

I spent my entire Scouting career from Cub Scouts through to my Eagle Scout years and even beyond to the time I was a camp staff member principally as an Atheist. This flied against Scout policy even back then and things have only gotten more extreme since then.

Growing up in the East Bay, religion was a pretty mellow, live-and-let-live kind of thing and much like the kindly cop who doesn't enforce the silly rules, the local council was generally pretty giving on its enforcement of the national stance on "reverence" and "duty to god".

It is difficult to explain to people what that is like, to be part of an organization that wants you out based on your beliefs, common though they may be.

Most of my gay friends who were also in Scouts understand this in a much larger way and they were definitely a larger target within the organization.

This affected a great many of my gay friends in rather tragic ways. Many deferred "coming out" until their Scouting years were done, no doubt fearing being expelled from the program.

That an organization or a person could look a youth in the eyes and tell them that the wonderful opportunities available through Boy Scouts were not available to them because of factors largely beyond their control seems an abomination to me. Not only does it seem to go against common decency but the high sense of civic correctness the Scouts try to foster.

The Boy Scouts repeatedly say that homosexuals do not provide the sorts of role models they want for their youth and this comes mainly from the strange superstition some still hold that gay people will somehow corrupt straight youth with their gayness.

So, let me dispel this by saying that my two biggest scouting heroes are both gay.

My friend Chris was my boss two separate summers (years apart) at the Scout Camp at which I worked. Chris was an Eagle Scout with supplemental decorations and beyond camp he kept his post-Scout career going by re-establishing his college's branch of Alpha Phi Omega, the so-called "Scouting Fraternity".

Chris exemplified to me all of the virtues of the Scout Oath and Law and was a generally great guy as well.

Jeff was another former staffer as well as model military officer. He regularly did the un-doable at Camp, whether it was leading scouts on impossibly long treks to have them back in time for dinner singing a new song he'd taught them or building monster bridges nearly single-handedly. In all my time of both Scouting and Staffing, I never saw an individual who more embodied living the full promise and potential of Scouting.

The Boy Scouts would have denied both of these men admittance as youth and expelled them as adult leaders had their secret been out. Their program would be much the poorer for it.

This situation is thousandfold -- how can the organization go on as it has?

Resources:

Inclusive Scouting. My friend Sean slipped me their "Inclusive Scouting Award", a small guerilla token of resistance.

Scouting For All