The boys who need the Scouts the most

Home Opinion The boys who need the Scouts the most

If the Boy Scouts of America upholds the ban on gay members in May, the organization will have violated the core of its mission statement: “to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.” The BSA should vote to allow gays to participate in its local troops. That doesn’t mean the BSA should also choose gays as troop leaders.

Almost nobody wants Boy-Scoutness to go away. It would take a very loose reading, however, to argue that the Scout Oath and Law allows for homosexual acts. The document’s admonition to be “morally straight,” given the BSA’s evangelical history, pretty much covers any form of sex outside of traditional marriage. The code’s principles — Scouts are courteous, clean, cheerful, and reverent, to name a few — also rule out lying, swearing, disrespecting a parent, being grumpy, and even having body odor or belching in public. If the Boy Scouts are going to kick out the gays, then they should also toss out all the young men who look at girls the wrong way. But that would seem strange for a group committed to moral education. The mission statement uses the words “prepare” and “instill,” rather than “cultivate” or “enhance,” for a reason. Boys sin. Who needs Scouts if every kid’s already an angel?

The term “sin” fits because the Boy Scouts of America are fundamentally religious. If the churches and synagogues (the sponsors of 70 percent of local troops) have the right to publicly oppose homosexuality, so should the BSA. The Supreme Court upheld that right in 2000. But while the more conservative of those churches won’t ordain a homosexual pastor or accept gays as voting members, they aren’t running them out of the pews Sunday morning. They believe the gay lifestyle means distance from God, and the point of evangelism is to bring people nearer to God. It’s hard to do that if you make rules against people listening to you.

The same concept applies here. How many gay men grew up without a father figure and close male peers? How absurd is it to deprive a struggling kid of a great source of healthy masculine interaction and mentorship? Won’t it do infinitely more good to get a boy into the woods — building fires and filleting fish with his buddies and admiring the cool and capable Scout Leader — than to leave him stuck in his room wallowing in loneliness and self-loathing?

This mentorship is the key word in the second part of the current debate — whether to allow gay leaders. If the Boy Scouts’ goal is to educate honorable Judeo-Christian men, the answer has to be no. Students by definition are less virtuous or knowledgeable than their teachers, and grow up by opening themselves to their influence and emulating their example. They get grace and wiggle-room because they are there to learn and to change. While it’s a teachers’ cliche that they also learn from their students, the standard for them must be more rigid. If gay men are leading the boys, the BSA is suddenly teaching something contrary to its 100-year-long beliefs. But they need to get over being uncomfortable with the boys themselves.

There seems to be a general feeling among straight guys that showing compassion to gays would taint them, and that machismo proves they are secure in their sexuality. A young Jew once led 12 confused, tired, messed-up kids on a three-year hike all over Israel, teaching them a different way to be a man. Call him the first Scout Leader. He said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” He made friends with thieves and prostitutes. He loved murderers. A gay teenager wouldn’t have fazed him.

The Boy Scouts need to stay true to their mission. They should uphold the spirit of their tradition and make sure their troop leaders are dedicated to their core virtues.

But they can’t shun the boys who need them most.