The greater Salt Lake City area is one of the Boy Scouts’ biggest strongholds—not surprising considering how well the Scouts’ policy of exclusion lines up with Mormon values.
Still, we were disappointed that a whopping 83% of Scout members, leaders and parents in SLC oppose allowing gays to serve as scouts and leaders. What’s more 70% of respondents say they’d quit or be less involved in Scouting if the ban is lifted.
After the BSA votes on the ban in May, it may simply do away with any national policy on gay scouts. That would be peachy for kids in New Paltz or the Bay Area, but queer youth in Mormonville, Utah, would obviously still be ostracized.
Conducted by the Boy Scouts’ Great Salt Lake Council, the poll was leaked to the media—probably so Scout leadership could say it was just following the will of its members. And, with a response rate of 11%, it doesn’t exactly adhere to stringent research methodology.
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The Great Salt Lake Council was just in the news recently, when Chipotle got in trouble for sponsoring its Scout-O-Rama, despite the burrito chain’s own anti-discrimination policy.
RichieW
Let them quit. I do not believe they would do it. If so, bye bye bigots.
Polaro
83% of people in Salt Lake are inbred, white Mormons too. Doesn’t make them right, but it generally does result in very sex gay boys.
Cam
What a shock, there is bigotry in the Mormon heartland. EVERY SINGLE TIME that the LDS church has had the opportunity to chose which side of a civil rights issue they could be on they have chosen bigotry EVERY TIME.
They were instrumental in fighting against the Equal rights Amendment
They would not allow blacks actual membership in the church until the P.R. and the threats of schools boycotting playing against BYU became so embarassing that they were forced to change.
And now with gay rights.
Dakotahgeo
Location, location, location plus prejudice says it all. I’m surprised at 83%! One would think it a higher number, but the LDS can’t whip all the people into line, I guess.
AxelDC
So much for the alleged wave of LDS inclusion. Just the same old antigay attitudes.
Spike
Err, the LDS took over the Boy Scouts a long time ago. This ban IS ALL ABOUT LDS discrimination toward gays.
Domonu
These results are grossly overvalued. My stats teacher talked a lot about this survey because it is SO BAD.
For starters, only 9% of the surveys that were sent out were returned. The population was not accurately represented (non-response bias) even remotely. This also means that only those who felt VERY strongly would have responded (response-bias). You could interpret this as 83% of the extreme views on this issue are against it.
So basically, this was a more or less useless survey. I’d bet this was published nationally only because of the shock value it carried.
Hopefully that makes ya’ll feel a little better…
bigomega73
Yeah. Not surprising. The LDS is the largest single sponsor of the BSA and has threatened to withdraw its support if the BSA lifts its ban on gay scouts. So, with the threat of losing most of its funding, who do
you think the BSA is going to listen to? Unless we have a pro-gay scouts organization come forward to match the contributions that the LDS currently offers, I wouldn’t expect a change in policy any time soon. It would be organizational suicide for the BSA to do so.
Cam
@Domonu:
The fact is however the survey was done, that the respondents nationally were for getting rid of the policy and the respondents in Salt Lake City were for it by over 80%. Additionally 70% of them said they would quit.
To No. 4 · Dakotahgeo
Trust me, the only reason the number isn’t as high as you thought it would be is because SLC is now only about 50% Mormon. If you took the curvey in Provo that number would have been closer to 90%
Dakotahgeo
@bigomega73: All I would say to the LDS church is, Good riddance to you… don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you!
Dakotahgeo
@Cam: Goood Heavens! That IS scary! Thank you for the clarification.
MuscleModelBlog.com
If the survey only had an 11% response rate, that is terrible. No researcher would think that the results would give an accurate depiction of the survey population…and the part about Salt Lake City does not surprise me. Since the Mormon Church is one of the BSA’s biggest financial supporters, I guess that perhaps the ban will stay…or the BSA will leave the ban up to states / smaller units of the organization.
Harley
Well, under current rules for the BSA, Jerry Sandusky would be a perfect scout leader and would have been granted full access to the boys without supervision, considering he is a “married heterosexual.”