Thursday, February 7, 2013

Boy Scouts of America Delay Decision on Lifting Gay Ban



So after I got all excited about the BSA making a decision on whether or not to lift the ban on homosexuals I found out yesterday that the BSA has decided to delay that decision. This doesn’t come as too much of a shock to me, as people on the right-wing tend to have a difficult time when making coherent and tolerant decisions.

The BSA released a statement today saying, "After careful consideration and extensive dialogue within the Scouting family, along with comments from those outside the organization, the volunteer officers of the Boy Scouts of America's National Executive Board concluded that due to the complexity of this issue, the organization needs time for a more deliberate review of its membership policy."

That basically translates to, “We know it’s the right thing to do, but we have a very large group of religious members who are against the right thing. So, we will delay this decision for a while to see if maybe our religious members will allow this.”

I mean, really? How complex is this issue? Does it take a fucking rocket scientist to figure out that discrimination is bad, especially when it’s a public organization that’s discriminating? Let’s not forget to add that they are a public organization when they want those public funds supplied to them from the government then turns around and says it has the right to discriminate because they are actually in fact a private organization.

We already know that the BSA is given a government stipend to fund their activities. We also know that the government itself has acknowledged the BSA as a patriotic organization and that they are allowed to rent public land for little to no expense at all. So if the BSA wants to call themselves a private organization then I guess they can do without the public money and the neat usage of public facilities for free, right?

OBAMA QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE:

"And you know the Scouts are a great institution, that are promoting young people and exposing them to opportunities and leadership that will serve people for the rest of their lives. And I think nobody should be barred from that."

And you know something; the President is right about this. Why would you bar certain people because of the way they were born from being exposed to great opportunities and experiences that not only will serve them but the rest of the people of this nation? Oh, but the religious right-wingers have some excellent, incoherent defenses for that, of course.

Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist and host of the 700 club said that if the Boy Scouts allow homosexuals to join their organization that it will open the door to pedophiles who will target children.

Robertson said, "The question is, are there predators as boy scouts, pedophiles that would come in as scoutmasters? And if they are, then of course parents wouldn't want their sons being involved in the Boy Scouts, or their daughters in the Girl Scouts."

Well of course no one wants their Scoutmaster to be a fucking pedophile, but how does allowing homosexuals the change to be apart of Scouting going to open the doors to pedophiles?

This whole idea that homosexual men are prone to be child molesters is an old one and one that has been proven to be incorrect. But that doesn’t stop the religious right, oh no. You see they like to think that male-male sexual molestation means that the perpetrator is in fact a homosexual, and that all male-male acts of molestation are committed only by homosexuals.

FROM DOCTOR FRED BERLIN M.D.

“A man who is homosexual is no more at risk of abusing a boy as a man who is heterosexual at risk of abusing a girl.”

Fred Berlin is a professor of psychiatry at the John Hopkins Medical School, and he is one of the nations leading authorities on pedophilia.

“There is in our society still much stigma against people who are homosexual, and part of the stigma is the sense that somehow they must be more at risk to children. There simply isn’t any scientific evidence to support that.”

So what does that mean exactly?

“To put it succinctly there is no credible evidence that a homosexual man is more likely to abuse a child than is a heterosexual man.”

Thanks doc! That comes in handy when talking to this religious nut jobs that are out to discriminate against something they don’t even understand. I’m pretty sure that one of the leading authorities on pedophilia in this country would know more about sexual disorders than a guy who preaches about God and hosts a Christian television show.

And lets look at it from another angle while were on the topic. If that is a major concern of the BSA, to keep children safe from homosexual pedophiles, then what current policies do they have to protect their kids against heterosexual pedophiles? It isn’t just gay men who molest children; it is also heterosexual men and women who molest children. So what procedures do they have in place to identify these heterosexual pedophiles? The short answer is that they don’t have any procedures.

This is where the stigma comes in. Straight Scouts are “normal” and have no sexual disorders because they walk the path that God set for them. Whereas homosexuals do not walk that path according to the Mormons, and because of that they are sick, twisted individuals who are out to touch you’re children’s genitals. Yet they have no solid evidence, they just blindly back up their claim saying that homosexuals are pedophiles because homosexual men are attracted to men and the Boy Scouts is a male organization. So does that mean that males are not allowed to volunteer for the Girl Scouts? I mean, since heterosexual men are attracted to women does that mean they are a threat to young girls in the Girl Scouts? Even further, could you say that no straight man is safe to be alone with his own daughter because he is attracted to females? The logic simply makes no sense.

When I was in High School there was one gay teacher (as I can recall). You really didn’t know he even existed because he taught Advanced Placement Algebra off in some tiny little corner of the school. Aside from him all of the male teachers were straight, and you heard more stories about the straight male teachers having sex with students then the gay teacher.

A friend of mine on the track team admitted to having sex with her assistant coach multiple times until the actual coach caught on and had the two separated (and no, no reports were ever made as it was deemed ‘consensual’ by all parties involved). And one teacher (our favorite teacher because he smoked marijuana and drank all the time) was forced into retirement just a few years ago because an ex-student of his from 20+ years ago accused him of having sex with her while she was a teenager. The teacher did not deny the claims. Rather, he took the forced retirement ultimatum and is now collecting his pension. 

So again, how does allowing straight people to be in any sort of leadership position any safer than allowing a homosexual to be in the same position? The Mormon Chuch is humping the idea that the children in the BSA are completely safe because there are no gay Scoutmasters. But what about the straight Scoutmasters who are at risk to children? How do they even find that stuff out? I mean, I’m sure it has happened before, where a straight Scoutmaster molested one or more of the children in his troop. Did anyone find out about it? If so, what happened to that straight Scoutmaster?

What I’m saying is that there is no way on earth to tell if someone is a child predator or not. These people blend into society very well, and you most likely live next to or close to someone who is straight and has been convicted of a sex crime against the same sex. So why point the finger at one group of minorities and say that they are the cause of all sexual abuse cases? Why not let everyone join, and those who break the law will be dealt with accordingly. That’s the way it should be.

Just like the argument against guns. The right-wingers like to say that you shouldn’t punish the law abiding citizens who own guns because criminals use them for bad things. And they are absolutely correct on that one. But the same logic can be used in this topic of gays in the Boy Scouts. Why would you punish every single homosexual in the nation because there was an instance where one homosexual man molested a young boy?

 To punish all homosexuals and say they cannot join the organization because they are a molestation risk? Have there been any homosexual Scoutmasters who were caught breaking the law by molesting children? And if there have been, why would they persecute all homosexuals because of the devious act of one homosexual? Sure, they are all for it when it comes to guns. Just because one guy goes nuts and shoots up a school with an assault weapon doesn’t mean that all law abiding citizens who have assault weapons are dangerous people. The same thing applies here, and I wish they would use simple logic to realize this.
Pat Robertson had this to say as well, "Our prayers are with them (THE BSA) that they will do what they feel is right for them, not what the political [sic] correct crowd thinks is right for them."

OK, once again I am all for them being a private organization and excluding whomever they want, if they were truly a private organization. You can’t pretend to be a public organization to acquire government money, then turn around and say that you are in fact not a public organization. Pick one! If you don’t want to allow homosexuals into the group then stop accepting public funds.

In closing, I think that the Mormon Church is behind this, big time. Taking a look at some figures we see that the Mormon Church actually represents 15% of 2.7 million Boy Scouts. They represent more Scouts in this nation than any other group, religious or otherwise. And since 1999 (which was around the time I was about to leave the Scouts) the membership of the BSA has dropped significantly, making the organization smaller, but expanding its Mormon influence.

But the Mormon connection doesn’t end there. The Mormons have been vehemently attacking homosexuals and gay rights in general for years. A good example of this would be the millions of dollars they funneled into California’s Proposition 8 campaign, which made gay marriage illegal in California under the guise of protecting marriage and the family unit. This is what the Mormon Church had to say about the BS delaying their decision on lifting the ban against homosexuals, “We believe (the BSA) has acted wisely in delaying a vote on this policy issue until the implications can be can be carefully evaluated…we caution others not to speculate about our position or assume that individual Latter-day Saints inside or outside the Scouting movement speak for the Church. Neither has the Church launched any campaign either to effect or prevent the policy change.”

But we do in fact know that he Church doesn’t support any change to the BSA’s membership policy. Will they ever? That is what we will have to wait and find out.

The Mormons are trying to walk a very fine line here of course, because of their views on homosexuality and their high stakes in the BSA organization. Only time will tell how much influence they really have, and how much pressure they put on the BSA to delay this decision.

People like Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum would have you believe that this is a liberal political issue and that popular culture is trying to find it’s way into this great organization and destroy it for political causes. But this is not a political issue. As Sean Penn who played Harvey Milk in the movie ‘Milk’ said to Josh Brolin who played Dan White, “It's more than an issue. This is our life we're fighting for.”

Stand up with me and fight against this bigotry. Tell the BSA that you think they should lift their policy of discrimination and that if they wish to be a private organization that they need to stop accepting public funds.  Tell the Mormon Church to back off and stop discriminating against our fellow Americans. Together we can put an end to this absurdity and we can have the equality that every American has today.


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