Nice to see a knowledgeable voice speaking up. Good to see you again.
National doesn't seem to have a problem with it. Minuteman Council's policy seems to be "Don't ask, don't tell", which is National policy. They just stated it in a fashion that makes it a little more palatable for the locals.
This isn't my impression at all from reading BSA's briefs and press releases during the James Dale case that we discussed ad infinitum with the gays on Salon's "TableTalk" two and three years ago.
BSA National has been forthright: No Gays, no way. What we are discussing here is Blue America's attempts to overthrow the rule by issue creep and what used to be called "salami-slicing".
BSA National may never have admitted it in a court brief or a public statement, but the entire issue has been precisely about pederasty and the gay drive to get at the boys. They've cracked open the schools behind GLSEN and rhetoric about "protecting" students who are (arguably) endogamously gay and profess themselves to be gay; but the struggle isn't about self-identifying gays, it's about developing pubescent sexuality and the fact that pederasts know that they can impress unformed youth into accommodating sexual partnerships regardless of gender identity. I would further suggest that such partnerships, formed outside society's bounds of approval, are the reason why the gay activists at the American Psychiatric Association eventually took down the term "ego-dystonic homosexuality" for such accommodations, because of the imputation that there was something unhealthy about accommodative homosex. There is, but the activists won't admit it, and instead wage war on anyone who thinks there might be.
Thus GLSEN propagates an essentialist line on gender identity, for polemical effect, which the practical experience of the gay community shows is untrue. At these ages, young people's sexual orientation is mutable and susceptible to interference by aggressive homosexual adults -- which I submit is the whole ball game, and precisely what the Youth Protection program is all about. So to say is not to say that heterosexuals do not behave badly, but simply to acknowledge what gays themselves know but will not honestly admit, that gay men in particular are more of a problem where youth contact is involved. Man-for-man, they are markedly more likely to act out even than married heterosexual peds, who are the largest group of bad actors.
As for the essentialist roorback itself, that children "born gay" will inevitably "become gay" and that the community shouldn't, by further implication, interfere with the efforts of adult gays to contact "their own" youth to support, protect and "counsel" them, we can profitably reread the demurrer of Charles Socarides et al. on gender identity and essentialism:
Gender Identity
It is a matter of professional responsibility to correct certain statements made by Lawrence Newman, M.D. in the December 5 article, “Children With Gender-Identity Disorder Benefit From Early Psychiatric Intervention.”
To his credit, Dr. Newman urges compassion and kindliness toward children with a disturbance in gender-defined sexual identity. He accurately states that such a condition leads to a lifelong disturbance in an individual’s relationship with himself and with others, as well as producing isolation, depression, and anxiety in a prehomosexual child as he grows from childhood into adolescence and later adulthood. He announces correctly, but with apparent unconcern over this dire development, that such children, of course, will “develop a homosexual orientation in later life.” But he makes no reference to the possibility of the reversal of this condition, while, in actuality, there are multiple case reports now appearing in the literature attesting to its reversibility.
He bases this assertion on a mysterious “landmark long-term study”-without citing it-that there is “no known therapy which could change this probability.” This is completely erroneous and misleading, both to parents and to the child, as well as to the multitude of readers of Psychiatric News worldwide.
We cite, for example, Edward Glover’s report (1960 Portman Clinic Survey), a fact-gathering committee report of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1956), the Bieber et al. report (1962), and the findings of Socarides (1978, 1997). He has completely disregarded the MacIntosh report (1994) published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1995) that in a responsive survey of 285 psychoanalysts who reported having analyzed 1,250 homosexual patients, 23 percent changed to heterosexuality from homosexuality and that 85 percent had significantly benefited from therapy. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality report of 1997 confirms MacIntosh’s study.
We take exception to Dr. Newman’s attitude that parents disturbed over this development are “homophobic” -- an erroneous term (for it does not meet the criteria of phobia) coined by the gay movement to stigmatize all parents who disapprove of this condition, for no parent ever raises a child to be a homosexual.
Tolerance, compassion, and understanding of both child and parents, along with a recommendation for psychoanalytic therapy, should be the position of dedicated and responsible psychiatrists.
One’s compassion for the plight of the prehomosexual child and his parents, the child’s own responsiveness as a patient, and his value as a human being lead to a mutuality of gratitude and satisfaction between child, parent, and therapist that well justifies the commitment to the alleviation of this important and serious disorder. It is no kindness to children with a gender-identity disorder disturbance in gender-defined self—identity-a precursor to adult homosexuality and other sexual deviations-to suggest that this condition should be not only accepted but embraced by both the patient and his family.
Charles W. Socarides, M.D.
New York, N.Y.
For:
Abraham Freedman, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa.
Harold Voth, M.D., Topeka, Kan.
C. Downing Tait, M.D., Atlanta, Ga.
Benjamin Kaufman, M.D., Sacramento, Calif.
From NARTH's site.
It seems to me, as an outsider, that BSA's best course of action now is to step up and 1) reaffirm the "no gays" policy that they defended before the Supreme Court, 2) explain that the policy is an integral part of the YP program, 3) restate the need for the YP program, and 4) state for the record that yes, the gay ban is about pederasty and the disproportionate tendency among gay men to participate in, or wink at, pederastic abuse of youths, inasmuch as it is visited not just on gay youth, but on all youth indiscriminately.
Gays who brag in private about their exploits with teenaged boys and "skinning some chicken" cannot then expect to be believed in the forum when they profess with a straight face that their concern for youth protection is the equal of the rest of the community's. The record of scandals and abuses, not just with the Catholic Church but generally, shows that this is just not so. It's high time that BSA grasped that nettle and pulled it up.
As an aside, it would have made a difference to me, if gay leadership at e.g. HRC and GLSEN and PFLAG had rung down interdicts of the most wrathful punishment on pederasts and pedophiles generally, and professed publicly a promise and pledge of fidelity to the community's sensitivities about young people and sexuality. But they have not done this, and so far as I can see, even from the chitchat on "TableTalk", they remain in solidarity with, and secret or even public admirers of, gay men who succeed in introducing formative teenagers to homosex as their first significant sexual experience.
What we have here, Ron, is you guys on the one hand trying to maintain the YP program, and these other people acting in bad faith to break it down.
My two cents.
Then why do they keep putting that "avowed" qualifier in there? It means something, or it wouldn't be in there. What it means as far as I can tell (based on things like the Camp Yawgoog case) is that gays in Scouting are acceptable to National as long as they keep their mouths shut.
What we are discussing here is Blue America's attempts to overthrow the rule by issue creep and what used to be called "salami-slicing".
What we are discussing here is BSA's policies on gays, how the BSA has expressed it, and what they mean by that expression.
BSA National may never have admitted it in a court brief or a public statement, but the entire issue has been precisely about pederasty and the gay drive to get at the boys.
Now this is issue creep. The BSA explicitly states (as referenced upthread) that it's not about pederasty, and you say, "Oh, well, they're lying, it really is, now let's talk about that." Well, no. I take National at their word. If they're lying, then they've got no right to uphold themselves as the guardian of American morality.
I certainly am concerned about child molestation in my unit and in the BSA in general. But since there's plenty of it that has been committed by people who have never been demonstrated to have sex with people their same age and gender, maintaining the BSA's current membership standards isn't going to decrease it. What's going to decrease and eliminate it is if Scouters and Unit Committees take the BSA's Youth Protection policies seriously. If they do, then the sexual orientation of Scouters won't matter with regards to the danger of child molestation. Every time I read a story about youth being molested in Scouting, I see a violation of Youth Protection somewhere in the story. Except for one case, where a couple of leaders colluded, but the Unit Committee and parents should have caught that.
As far as the main body of your post goes, it's quite informative, but it concentrates on where you're trying to move the debate to, not where it is.
It seems to me, as an outsider, that BSA's best course of action now is to step up and 1) reaffirm the "no gays" policy that they defended before the Supreme Court, 2) explain that the policy is an integral part of the YP program, 3) restate the need for the YP program, and 4) state for the record that yes, the gay ban is about pederasty and the disproportionate tendency among gay men to participate in, or wink at, pederastic abuse of youths, inasmuch as it is visited not just on gay youth, but on all youth indiscriminately. ... It's high time that BSA grasped that nettle and pulled it up.
You are of course entitled to that opinion. But the BSA has so far always held the opposite, that the two are not connected. So this would be a big change in policy. My guess is that the information they get is that there is no connection, so they won't adopt this as policy.
There are gays in Scouting. There have always been gays in Scouting. There always will be gays in Scouting. National understands this. They also understand that Scouting is for boys, not for adults. If a straight son of a homosexual wants to be in Scouting, National accepts that the boy's parent will want to register along with their son, just like any other parent, and as long as the parent keeps quiet about their own sexual orientation, they'll accept them. For the homosexuals who want to join to recruit or abuse children, the exclusion of "avowed homosexuals" and the YP policies serve to deal with them.
You mentioned Blue America. There are a lot of Scouts in Blue America, probably about 1/2 of them. Scouting is not reserved to, owned by, or made up overwhelmingly of Red America. Both are members of the BSA in full and have equal rights to determine what Scouting means and how it will be run. Some Scouters would hunt down and expel every single gay or lesbian Scout and Scouter. Some Scouters would welcome them all with open arms. The BSA needs to find a way to accomodate both parties, and their current policies are an attempt to do so.