Boy Scouts Anti Gay Policy: Could It Be Hurting The Organization More Than Helping?

The Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy seems more dated than anything nowadays, with more Americans favoring the legalization of gay marriage than opposing it and a seeming total turnaround in the past decade when it comes to gay Americans finally being fully embraced by the mainstream.

While ten years ago, the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy was the sort of thing that was way more commonplace, in 2012, it feels nearly quaint- if bigotry could be quaint and the not-so-subtle exclusion of an entire group based on “morality” or the implicit safety of children somehow couched as a traditional value.

We wrote yesterday about the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy and its token re-examination of such. And on the subject, I have a confession. In this house, we have one happy Girl Scout, and one conflicted potential Boy Scout, who has never attended a meeting nor ever had the chance to earn a badge… due entirely to the fact that the Boy Scouts have an anti-gay policy.

The Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy doesn’t directly impact anyone in this house so far as I know, we are all straight and no one is specifically barred from participation. (Except me and my pesky vagina are not welcome on camping trips, so I hear.)

But as a family that has several gay people who are close to us, we’ve never quite been able to square the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy with our own values. When gay marriage is legalized and our country no longer allows discrimination based on who a person loves, how could I look my kid in the eye and tell him we willingly say by and allowed him to participate in an organization that prevented people from serving merely due to who they slept next to at night?

One can’t help but wonder with the changing numbers in support of gay rights how many more families feel as we do- while it feels terrible to allow one child to experience scouting and all the fun that comes with it while the other does not, perhaps one day the Boy Scouts will truly revisit their anti-gay stance and everyone, really everyone, will be able to support them in good conscience.