Towleroad.com: Waldman Says Boy Scouts Made It Worse!

 

 

 

The brilliant legal scholar, Ari Ezra Waldman, who contributes regularly to Towleroad.com has made a powerful case that the Boy Scouts allowing LGBT youth but not leaders into the organization has only made it much worse. Here is an excerpt:

The new policy reinforces the Scouts' anti-gay identity.

The Boy Scouts plan to include gay youth not because they accept their sexuality, but because they see it as something to train out of them. As children, young scouts are "still developing, learning about themselves," implying that their professed sexual orientation is, at a minimum, a passing phase. When they join the Scouts, they are still developing "a sense of right and wrong," suggesting that they don't yet know that, in the Scouts' worldview, heterosexuality is right and homosexuality is wrong. They don't yet understand their "duty to God," which requires they dump how God made them and adopt a persona the Scouts happen to think is better.

The Boy Scouts' refusal to permit gay scout leaders is only the strongest evidence of this pernicious motive behind policy reform. The ban on gay scout leaders does more evil than simply denying young gay scouts good role models. It reinforces the Scout message that homosexuality is wrong: The Scouts are saying that, as a child, you don't know who or what you are, so we will help you find yourself; as an adult, your choice to be gay, in violation of morality and God, makes you a negative influence on children.

If the Scouts really believed in accepting American youth as God made them, they would have to allow gay scout leaders. Training, teaching, and building character are important; straight and gay kids can benefit from that kind of education. But the Scouts also teach that being gay is wrong. They believe that the only valid way to conclude the youthful period of discovery and learned is to conclude that you're not gay. Gay scout leaders, as testaments to the fact that morality, esteem, and homosexuality are not incompatible, give scouting youth another option: be who you are. And that the Boy Scouts cannot abide.

SEE WALDMAN'S ENTIRE COLUMN HERE...

WATCH ZACH WAHLS VIDEO FOR SCOUTS FOR EQUALITY HERE...