As we reported Thursday, the Boy Scouts of America made one small step toward equality when they voted to revise their membership standards to state “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” Confirming the gay generational split, polling prior to the vote revealed a majority of BSA’s youth opposed the ban on openly gay people while a majority of adults supported it.
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.As we reported Thursday, the Boy Scouts of America made one small step toward equality when they voted to revise their membership standards to state “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” Confirming the gay generational split, polling prior to the vote revealed a majority of BSA’s youth opposed the ban on openly gay people while a majority of adults supported it.
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.
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.