Heh, even this anti-gay troop leader — who promises to quit scouting if gays are allowed to participate — doesn’t buy the pedo fearmongering:

Elwart, a 30-year veteran of Scouting, explained to WND that with a model program already in place to protect Scouts from sexual abuse, his concern is not that pedophiles will infiltrate the organization if the policy is changed.

Calling that issue a “red herring,” his concern is more fundamental.

A-yup.

In the meantime, I guess we should be happy that the homophobes were kind enough to provide a phone number for us to call BSA to urge them to drop the ban. 972-580-2000!

Maintaining the policy hurts the Scouts and the organization knows it. They’re probably prefer if the hard right shuts up on this one. It hurts them among the middle class, where intolerance is just generally uncool and where the idea of having conversations about a 12-13 year-old’s emerging sexuality is disgusting, anyway. They want to grow.

But if you look beyond the immediate issue you find that the Boy Scouts are historically a very suspect organization, with connections to British fascism. And one needn’t doubt too much that the combination of discipline freaks and children has often meant abuse, of many kinds. For me this is like the question of whether women should be allowed to kill for our country–I don’t want my kid near this organization to begin with.

It really hurts them financially. That’s all. They are starting to lose sponsoring money, so they are reconsidering. They will still hate on atheists though and that’s not going to change any time soon.

The Girl Scouts accept everybody, lesbians, transgender girls and atheists, and it hasn’t been a problem. Why can’t the Boy Scouts institute similar inclusive policies?

Because the Boy Scouts are controlled by religious fanatics in a way the Girl Scouts aren’t. BSA is the official youth group of the Mormon church. Together with the Catholic Church, the Mormons charter most of the BSA troops. So you have two extremely anti-gay organizations that set the policy for everyone. The GSA don’t use the same chartering system, so their troops aren’t directly controlled by churches.

And of course, there’s the right-wing obsession with sex in there: “‘the vast majority of the parents’ of Boy Scouts reserve to themselves the right to introduce and give guidance on sexual topics.”

So when did the Boy Scouts start including sex education in their activities? (At least, officially.)

“Freedom of thought” doesn’t mean what these idiots think it means apparently. If they are worried about religious liberty, there are plenty of like minded groups they can have their kids join. They are redefining the meaning of “boy scout” and we know how much they like it when words are redefined, don’t we?

Not that it matters now since he’s had his last election, but I suspect he’s finally figured out that nothing he could say or do would satisfy the right wing, so THWI.

These people (the religious conservatives) have been fed misinformation about LGBT people throughout their entire lives. We need to find better ways to counter that misinformation.

One problem is the word “homosexual” and the fact that it has long been used (even now) to describe both passive and active same-sex relationships involving both gay people and pedophiles. It is an unfortunate word, because all uses are linguistically accurate, and it creates a false connection between these two distinct groups of people.

We also need to drive home the message that gay boy scouts can be taught the exact same sexual morals as their hetero peers (minus the “you can only be attracted to girls” message); self control, chivalry and honor are universal concepts. And they can freely teach monogamy and abstinence until marriage to their gay youth as well. Gay youth can be held to the exact same standards as hetero youth, just as gay adults who participate in leadership should be held to the same standards of conduct and morality as hetero adults. If the Boy Scouts were co-ed, they wouldn’t allow relations between adult hetero male leaders and female scouts, and no one is asking them to tolerate the same between adult gay leaders and male scouts.

The whole point of scouts is for kids to play military. When it sinks in that DADT was repealed, scouts around the land will be “scouting” for gay mambers to join their troops so they can be like the real growup military.

And besides, like DADT, we all should be judged on our behavior and character, not cheap, lasy, hateful stereotypes.