The 3.9 million member Boy Scouts of America were in a lose-lose scenario from which there was no escape. No matter which way they jumped – toward inclusion or exclusion – they were going to be damned. Of course, one side takes that damning quite literally.
When the Boy Scouts chose to stop demonizing gay youths but to continue to exclude gay men in leadership roles, many of us thought they’d taken at least a step in the right direction. Excluding adult gays from those roles is something that could come in time, once they see that acceptance of gay youths did not destroy the organization (or possibly, that it did not attract the wrath of God). If that’s what the Boy Scouts themselves were thinking, they were woefully ignorant of the depths of religion-based bigotry.
Without a trace of irony, conservative activist John Stemberger complained,
What kind of message are we sending to young people about being brave when its top adult leaders don’t even have the courage to stand up to the pressure of a militant lobby when [they] start pressuring and harassing them?
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
It seems to me that the BSA did show courage by standing up to the “pressure of a militant lobby” (the Religious Right). Perhaps Stemberger is not aware he is part of a militant lobby himself.
The American Family Association’s official stance is that the Boy Scouts are in “open rebellion against God.” The AFA’s Dan Cella opined that the decision would bring about “the fall of the nation.” So much for only the destruction of the Boy Scouts. Look out! God’s gonna kill us all.
Bryan Fischer, who back in February assured the faithful, “The chances that this 1,400 National Council is going to remove the ban on homosexuality does not exist. It’s infinitesimal. It is off the charts in remoteness,” leapt into the fray, as he always does, exhibiting a complete absence of thought. He claimed that the Boy Scouts of America ought to change their name to the ”Boy Sodomizers of America.”
Fischer applied a quote from Luke (17:2) to back up his “argument,” saying “these are the words of Jesus himself to the Boy Scouts”:
It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.
He says they’re “pretty sobering because this comes from Christ himself.” Fischer says he would not want to be “in the shoes of a Boy Scout executive standing before the throne of God being judged by the man who spoke those words. That is not going to be a pretty picture.”
The problem for Fischer is the same as it always is when he resorts to the Bible: he gets it wrong. Of course Jesus isn’t talking to the Boy Scouts. He is also not talking about boys, or in a more general sense, children.
Yes, Jesus uses the term “little ones”(found also at Matt. 10:42; 18:6 and Mark 9:42) but he isn’t speaking about children, as Fischer seems to assume (because he hasn’t actually read the Bible or because he assumes we haven’t).
What is under discussion by Jesus and his disciples – in an eschatological or end-times context – here is “little believers” – the spiritually innocent. Jesus is talking about believers, not children. When Mark and Luke talk about children, they say children, as at Mark 10:13 and Luke 18:15).
Fischer had promised a defeat for “Big Gay” in February but instead, with about fifty percent of Americans now in favor of marriage equality, “Big Gay” got 61 percent of the 1,400 votes cast by the Boy Scouts council.
Right Wing lunacy approached new heights of absurdity leading up to the removal of the ban: Right Wing Watch provides a list of The Top 5 Religious Right Claims on the Consequences of Lifting the Gay Scouts Ban and mediaite.com gives a list of 6 Typically Over-The-Top Christian Conservative Reactions to Boy Scouts Allowing Gay Kids.
Ralph Hallow wrote in The Washington Times that the vote reflected “Signs of waning evangelical power in the nation’s culture wars and in Republican policy” and we can only hope that is the case, though the Religious Right has been pronounced dead more than once.
The only option now for religious bigots is to form their own little Hitler Youth groups where they can safely trumpet hate and exclusion, and indeed, on May 24 Fox News reported that “the Assemblies of God said the policy change “will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program” and that “a meeting is planned for next month to discuss the formation of a new organization for boys.”
We’re always being tasked, as Frank Bruni reminded us in The New York Times, “to remain sensitive to people whose religions condemn homosexual behavior” but what, he asked, “about the morals and the God of people whose religions exhort them to be inclusive and to treat gays and lesbians with the same dignity as anyone else?”
The Religious Right does not want the question framed that way; they do not want it asked, just as they do not want to think about the religious freedoms of the majority of us who not conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants when they beat us over the head with their “religious freedoms.”
The problem for the Boy Scouts is that while most Americans are not anti-gay any longer, Frank Bruni points out that “Religion is inevitably part of the Scouts’ debate: more than 70 percent of local scout troops are chartered by religious groups.” Bruni notes too, the problem for the Religious Right, that for all their talk about homosexuality defying Boy Scout principles, ” the Scouts’ bylaws require equal treatment of every religion’s teachings.”
There will be fallout. What, exactly, that fallout means, remains to be seen. Those of us who are in favor of inclusion over exclusion, will likely not be displeased if the bigots take their toys and go home. The problem is that the children so affected will be closeted away from any dissenting opinions, and from the opportunity to see for themselves that gay children are still, in the end, just children like themselves.
The problem is not, and has never been, persecution of Christian points of view, but rather the fundamentalists’ insistence on a position that is completely antithetical to that of the Constitution, that it’s “our way or the highway.” In the end, this story is not about a Boy Scout rebellion against God but a conservative Christian rebellion against the Constitution.
The rest of us will move forward with the twenty first century in accordance with constitutional principles, happy with the thought that, eventually, the Declaration of Independence’s promise of equality for all and the First Amendment’s ban on state sponsored religion, will be fulfilled.
Image from The Christian Science Monitor
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
