| Gay Scouts |
Bob Rusbasan
September 3, 1999
This column was prompted by the August 4, 1999, decision of the New Jersey state Supreme Court that a gay man named James Dale could not be banned from the assistant Scoutmaster position solely because of his sexuality.
As I began to write this, I hopped over to CNN's site to get the date of the court's decision. I searched for "Boy Scouts" and quickly came across an article saying that the Scouts planned to appeal. Wanting to get a story about the actual decision rather than the planned appeal, I jumped to the "Related Stories" section. There were five articles listed. Though only one of them had to do with this particular case, two of the other stories spoke volumes about the state of this issue in American society.
The first was entitled "Suspect pleads guilty in beating death of gay college student". It was about the Matthew Shepard case. What does this have to do with the boy scout case? Nothing, if you are thinking rationally. Everything, if you are of the emotional persuasion that any attempt to deny any homosexual advocacy group anything they demand is "homophobia" that inevitably leads to the murder of gays.
The second story was entitled "Lawsuit alleges sexual assault at Boy Scout camp". The Boy Scouts of America organization is being sued by the parents of four scouts, age 6 to 10, that were sodomized with a broomstick by two 13-year-old boys. Were the older boys gay? That article and a related article do not say. For that matter, neither article makes it clear if they were even scouts; they are referred to as "campers".
By referring to the story of Matthew Shepard's tragic death as a "related story" to the Boy Scout item, CNN implicitly endorsed the theory that any denial of "rights" claimed by any gay activist group leads to violence against gay people.
That is pure hogwash.
When any oppressed group (and, make no mistake about it, homosexuality has been oppressed) wants to advance its cause, the first thing its members do is label all of their demands "rights". Calling them that does not make it so; it is up to society to decide what is a right and what is a privilege. No person or group gets to unilaterally declare what their rights are.
Some of the gay rights groups have a very radical agenda. Do people that are inclined to murder gays oppose that agenda? No doubt. That, however, does not mean that everybody who opposes that agenda, or any item of it, is inclined to murder gays. No more than the fact that people who murder gays wear at least one pair of shoes means that wearing shoes leads to killing of gays.
Gay rights advocates have argued that homosexuals should simply be given the rights that everybody else has. In other words, that they be treated by society no differently than anybody else. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. As the "lawsuit alleges sexual assault" article makes clear, the Scouts have an obligation to protect their members.
Society has traditionally disallowed sexually charged situations in which one party is particularly vulnerable. People that advocate the right of consenting adults to do anything they choose will get quite upset if it turns out that one of the participants was actually a young child. Whether or not that child "consented" is irrelevant.
Actual action is not necessary to raise objections. If parents of a group of Girl Scouts age 15 to 17 find out that a 23-year-old man is going to be the sole adult in charge of the upcoming camping trip, the hollering will begin well before anything sinister actually happens. The 23-year-old man will be removed from the trip, whoever put him in charge will be reprimanded or fired, and someone more appropriate will run the camp. No "heterosexual advocacy" groups will swing into action to fight for the "right" of the young man to supervise a group of teenage girls. Everybody implicitly knows why that is a bad idea.'
Now, perhaps the man would truly behave honorably. He may have no lecherous designs on the girls. As far as society is concerned, however, that's just too bad for him. It's not worth the risk.
It is the same situation with putting a gay man in charge of younger boys. That is just a bad idea. Everybody knows why it is a bad idea. Will this cause some inconvenience to gay men that have no intention of making sexual advances toward boys? Yes, but, as with the case of the man supervising teenage girls, that's just too bad. It's a potentially explosive situation. When vulnerable children are involved, society is right to protect them, even at the expense of an adult's "right" to be trusted not to take advantage of their vulnerability.
The situation becomes yet more complicated when considering the Scouts themselves.
One can certainly feel compassion for boys in this situation. As a young child, you join the Scouts. You enjoy it for years. Then, one day, you realize that you are gay. (Forget momentarily the debate over what causes homosexuality. It is pretty much beyond dispute that gay people are telling the truth when they say they one day came to the realization that they were attracted to members of their own sex.) On top of all the other complications in your life, you are supposed to quit the Scouts as well.
Unfortunately, it makes just as much sense to ban gay Scouts as it does gay Scoutmasters, at least from camping-type situations.
Scout troop members vary in age by many years. Most parents will not want a situation in which their young boy will be sleeping, changing clothes, etc., in a tent with older gay boys. No more than the parents of a young girl would want their child in a tent with older heterosexual boys.
Or, to bring the analogy closer to the situation in question, no more than parents of a young lesbian girl would want their child in a tent with older heterosexual boys. Even though any sexual attraction only goes one way, older kids can sometimes pressure or force younger children into situation the younger children are not comfortable with.
Perhaps boys could remain in the Scouts but steer clear of intimate situations like camping. This would certainly make it very awkward for them, but no more awkward than it would be for heterosexual boys being forced to camp with other boys that may be sexually attracted to them.
Evan Wolfson, the attorney for the former Scoutmaster brought up one of the few legitimate points in this case:
"What the court here is saying is when you hold yourself out as open to all boys, when you're sponsored by the public schools, when you're sponsored by fire departments, tax departments and military, when you're taking money from the government, you can't then turn around and pretend you're some club in a treehouse somewhere."
Although I believe that the Scouts can establish almost any membership rules that they want, this argument does make a good point. The Scouts often use school property and are often sponsored by government institutions. Since that saves them money they might otherwise have to pay, they are in essence receiving a government subsidy. One could argue that they should then follow government rules which prohibit discrimination based on sexual preference.
Or maybe not. Do schools have to let any club that uses their resources be open to everybody? Can boys join the cheerleading squad in every school? Would gay students be prohibited from forming a support group that excluded heterosexuals? Was the Society of Black Engineers at the state university I attended illegal for excluding whites? The sword cuts both ways...
For the sake of argument, however, let's grant that clubs sponsored by government schools have to follow government discrimination regulations. What are the implications of that?
Certainly that would not prohibit the Scouts from using government resources if offered! It would instead prohibit the government institution from offering those resources. If the Scouts are classified as a discriminatory group that is ineligible for government aid, but a public school lets them use a room, then the entity to sue is the school, not the Scouts.
Otherwise, look at the ramifications. Any state government could make any arbitrary rules, invite a club to use their facilities, then -- ha ha ha! -- force that club to follow their rules from that point on. Does that not seem a little twisted?
The state of New Jersey has no business telling the Scouts how to run their club. If they find that the scouts violate rules for state-sponsored clubs, then the state of New Jersey can withdraw any support for them. The Scouts will survive. There are plenty of churches and hall owned by private groups that would be happy to host the Boy Scouts.
If gays wish to join the Scouts, they will have to petition the group for membership. If the Scouts ultimately decide that gays cannot be members, then that is the way it goes. Gays and their allies can form their own groups. If they can form a Scouting-type group in which a broad age-range of gay and straight boys and leaders engage in camping and related activities, more power to them. I personally think that may be a recipe for disaster, especially when gay members have absolutely no reason to hide their orientation, but they're welcome to try it. They should not be allowed to impose that experiment upon an existing group, however.
Regardless, everyone involved should realize that the Scouts are simply trying to protect the best interests of their members. They are not provoking hate crimes by limiting their boys' club to heterosexual members. Any suggestion otherwise is irresponsible.
Copyright © 1999 Bob Rusbasan. All rights reserved.