Left unchanged was the ban on gay adult leaders. That means after you make Eagle, the Scout’s highest rank awarded on or after your 18th birthday, you’re done, no leadership role for you, gay scout. That likely spells a court challenge citing equal protection and doom for yesterday’s limited rule change.
But for now we celebrate the boys who can scout if they want to, with a list on the following pages of heroes and leaders that came before them. Congratulations, kids! Dream big.
Charles McGee & Percy Sutton
Tuskegee Airmen. McGee (pictured) holds an Air Force record of 409 fighter combat missions flown in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Sutton was a civil right activist and entrepreneur who revitalized the Apollo Theater.
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Rob Corrdry
Waiting to confirm Eagle Scout’s hero status with release of new Arrested Development episodes on Netflix this Sunday.
Darwin Judge
Judge was a Marine and embassy security guard, one of the last two US servicemen killed in the Vietnam War, a true American hero.
Ross Perot
As a third party candidate for president in 1992, billionaire businessman and Eagle Scout Perot helped Bill Clinton defeat George HW Bush and usher in Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. Well, maybe not a hero. But colorful and folksy, for sure. (See “giant sucking sound.”)
tookietookie
While the accomplishments of many of these men are impressive, it’s faulty logic to link their participation in the Boy Scouts with these successes.
While it’s right in principle for the Boy Scouts to not discriminate, the benefit is that there’s one less major organization out there pushing discrimination against gay people…and that’s about it. The actual activities of the Boy Scouts are pretty nonsensical and meaningless to modern people who don’t have strange wilderness-self-sufficiency fetishes. “So says you when you can’t tie that whatever knot and splint a this and climb a that and tame a bear and build your own canoe.” Um, does anyone hear how crazy that sounds? Organizations like the Red Cross do better training and work that has a real impact.
Also, I can’t support an organization that de facto contributes to a gender stereotypes, while the “ghetto” of Girl Scouts still exists. Just another example of some gay people getting what they want, and because what they wanted was wrong-headed to begin with, they let the discrimination leftovers fall they may.