Are Boy Scouts making themselves irrelevant to modern-day youth?

My brother, Christopher, and I both did the Cub Scout thing some four decades ago. Speaking for myself, my memories are largely pleasant.


Where the Boy Scouts met

It was because my “den mother” was my youthful best friend’s mother (and also one of my mother’s best friends) and I didn’t have people trying to put any ideas in my head – or shove them down my throat!

HECK, I’VE EVEN come to remember as humorous the pain I suffered following a 13-mile hike we took (yes, we got lost along the way) through the woods.

So I have some problems reconciling the nonsense-talk I’m hearing from Boy Scout types (maybe there’s something about a 12-year-old wearing a parody of a military uniform that makes them all behave that way) when it comes to the issue of gay people.

The Boy Scouts, of course, showed this week that they were as capable of being as lame as former President Bill Clinton was when he came up with the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to deal with gay people in the U.S. military.

Let’s hope that the Boy Scouts can put to rest their new nonsense policy more quickly than the military can come to its senses with regards to dealing with gay people.

FOR THOSE WHO went out of their way to not pay attention, the Boy Scouts said it will now accept gay boys into the scouting ranks. But they’re not about to put up with any gay men as scout leaders.

I stumbled across one person who tried to explain this decision by saying it was a gradual step toward overall acceptance, since it would mean the gay boys who were scouts would grow up with sympathetic memories of the experience and someday would be ready to be proper Scoutmasters when they were adults.

The way it looks in the news box

That’s wishful thinking, if ever I heard it.

I can’t help but think that somebody thinks if they get the gay boys into the scouts, that perhaps they can smack it out of them. I’m not literally implying physical abuse. But maybe someone is delusional enough to think that a group camp experience or two will somehow make someone less likely to be gay.

IT SOUNDS LIKE somebody envisions the Boy Scouts as the equivalent of a religious camp where they convert gay people back into normal ones.

Which is such a nonsense statement on its very premise that I had a hard time keeping a straight face while writing that last sentence.

The subdued approach to story play

Besides, I suspect what this policy really means is that some uptight scoutmaster will now go singling out the boys who don’t fit his vision of “manly” – regardless of whether homosexuality is an issue. And in many cases, it probably won’t be.

What this week’s Boy Scout actions show is a group that is desperately eager to avoid a social change! Even though, by all evidence, it is one that most people in our society have no problem accepting.

MAYBE THESE PEOPLE like the idea of being isolated from the masses. Although I find that isolated groups usually wind up so cut off that they wither away and die.

Which makes me view this latest action as something akin to suicide. It’s totally self-inflicted.

Not sufficient

I know for a fact that I have two nephews who never did the scouting thing, in large part because their grandmother (my step-mother) came to see it as too cut off from any type of persons she wanted her grandsons to be.

But they were involved in other types of activities growing up, and seem to be turning into human beings with great potential. My older nephew, Caylon, is going to be a Leatherneck (no, he didn’t enlist, he’s headed for Western Illinois University in Macomb) come autumn.

WHILE MY YOUNGER nephew, Tyler, seems to have serious potential both academically and in terms of music talent as he gets ready to attend high school. I don’t think either one feels deprived in life about never having worn any kind of scout uniform.

I’m sure the assorted ribbons and trophies they have won for activities in their youthful lives that their grandfather has on display at his house mean as much to them as the other trophy he set up aside them – from the year I won the Pinewood Derby!

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