Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Ignorant

            The Boy Scouts of America today delayed taking action on its ban on gay Scouts and leaders.  Many expected the BSA to rescind the bans on a national level but leave the decision to its individual “troops,” or local units, “consistent with each organization’s mission, principles or religious beliefs.”

That proposal only proved yet again that you just can’t please everyone every time.  Some snorted at the private organization disavowing discrimination on a national level but leaving the door open for approximately 400,000 of its approximately 400,000 troops with approximately 2.7 million Scouts to discriminate.  Others bristled at the prospect of being forced to be either tolerant or discriminatory – and in public.  It’s a lot easier to discriminate when you’re just enforcing a private organization’s policies.

            It’s even easier to discriminate when you’re just enforcing two private organizations’ policies.  Not all Scout troops are sponsored by a church, but around 70% are.  Not all churches teach that homosexuality is a sin, but some do.  Some split the proverbial baby and teach that being gay is not wrong, but engaging in same-sex sex is worse than wrong.  For example, the Mormon Church teaches that.

The Mormon Church is also the BSA’s largest sponsor, with about 420,000 Scouts in about 38,000 troops that are in turn sponsored by 38,000 “wards,” or Mormon congregations.  Mormons like Scouting’s emphasis on traditional values, quasi-military hierarchy and vernacular -- calling groups of "Scouts" "troops" and such.  Some even see Scouting as a “celestial order,” meaning that its structure and mission are . . . well, celestial, or inspired by God.

Mormonism is also religion’s version of buying a Marie Callender’s pie, taking it out of the box, taking it to the pot luck dinner and presenting it as better than Marie Callender’s.  Mormons take all kinds of things and make them their own.  God.  Jesus.  Cain.  Moses.  Abraham.  The Bible.  Utah.  Lionel Ritchie.  Underwear.

Scout troops sponsored by a Mormon ward are no different.  I was in several back in the late 70s, and the structure hasn’t changed.  Troops are divisions of Mormon Priesthood “quorums,” or groups.  The president of the particular Priesthood quorum is also the troop leader, and the quorum's chief adult adviser is the Scoutmaster.  The quorum is the dog that wags the troop tail.  Separation of church and state?  How one tax-exempt private organization allows another to appropriate it is its private tax-exempt business.

            Does the Mormon tail also wag the Boy Scouts on a national level?  Consider this.  Last week, the BSA’s Great Salt Lake Council joined 33 others representing over 500,000 Scouts in a letter to the BSA’s national board expressing concern over “the pace at which such actions are being taken.  There is no compelling reason to accelerate this decision ahead of a full analysis.”

Two days ago, the Salt Lake Council published on its website that the decision should not be made without a “completed and open discussion and deliberation with professionals, volunteers, parents, chartered partners, and all other stakeholders of the organization.” In other words, if it’s never too late to stop being discriminatory, it can also be too early to stop.  Let’s not abandon segregation too soon.  Today, the Boy Scouts tabled their plan to stop excluding gays.

            But get this.  The BSA also announced that it will put the matter to a vote of its 1,400-member National Council in May.  So, the BSA's national governing body could be seen to have simultaneously capitulated to its constituents and plopped the hot potatoe right back in their collective lap.  It’s harder to be discriminatory when the Organization that’s defined discriminiatory institutional policies for its members for so long suddenly tells them to vote on the institution's discriminatory policies.  You wanted to participate, Greater Salt Lake Council?  Careful what you wish for.

            The BSA for its part wasn't wishing to turn its annual feel-good jamboree for regional leaders into a quasi-Republican National Convention with 1,400 regional leaders in the role of delegates voting on a single-issue platform.  The two factions on either side of that one issue don’t even know exactly how it will be presented -- i.e., universally lifting the universal ban on gays or leaving it up to the rank and file.

What the two factions do know is they’ll be consolidating their votes and coalitions between now and May.  As they do, people who don’t know a sheepshank from a sheet bend will still learn a lot about several American religions.  We know they all disagree with each other about things they obviously feel are very important.  We also know the BSA feels that banning gay Scouts was important enough to defend (successfully) before the Supreme Court in 1990.  We know the decision will never be put in the hands of the disparate troops.  If that we’re going to happen, it would have happened today.

We also know that progressive Presbyterian and Methodist members of the National Council will band with members whose sponsoring troops are not affiliated with any church.  We know that their platform will be “Live and let live and lift the ban” in so many words.

What we don’t know is what alternative the more catholic coalition led by the Mormon and Catholic Council members will advance – besides tabling the vote until 2014, of course.  Both churches are known to stand on subjective principle in the face of outside opprobrium.  Both are also known to ultimately cave into that opprobrium – e.g., God’s revelation in 1978 that Black Mormon males could receive the Priesthood, the American Catholic Church not enforcing the Vatican’s policies on abortion.  Both have also recently sustained public relations black eyes over homosexuality, the Catholic Church with its epidemic of priests molesting altar boys and the Mormon Church almost single-handedly getting California’s Proposition 8 passed in 2008.

        Both churches also only very recently abandoned excluding gays from every right, privilege and place possible.  When you get right down to it, telling someone they’re perfectly welcome in your organization if they live their life without love and physical affection is pretty far from tolerant.  It’s hard enough for people to countenance something their religion teaches is a sin.  Things that are an “abomination in the eyes of the Lord” are on a totally different plane.  Asking some people to allow active gays in their private club is like asking them to pucker up and kiss the Devil.  Believe it or not.

        Believe it or not, the Mormon Church defines appropriate sex practices for married Mormon couples – yes, heterosexual couples.  Proclamations from the First Presidency are the Mormon equivalent of papal decrees.  One issued in 1982 proclaimed in part, “The First Presidency has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice.  If a person is engaged in a practice which troubles him enough to ask about it, he should discontinue it.”
 

        With that position on oral sex among married hetero couples, the Mormon First Presidency would tell the BSA that any question about allowing gay Scouts and leaders answers itself – except it’s 2013, not 1982.  Thirty years ago, Mormon hybrid ecclesiastical Scouting leaders talked about masturbation.  All the time.  We were well-adjusted if we weren't jerking off and troubled teens if we were.  Homosexuality only came up long enough to confirm that it's the worst sin one can commit after murder.

        Because it is 2013, public suport for LGBT equality is rolling as fast as the proverbial stone and is gathering no more moss.  The Boy Scouts and the Mormon Church don't need another P.R. pratfall, let alone over an issue where mainstream mores are departing from more traditional approaches every minute.  Change happens fast when enough people decide other people are equal after all.

        Look for the Boy Scout National Council to ratify a policy that welcomes Scouts and leaders of either orientation who are "morally straight," as they vow under the Scout Oath.  The strict constructionsists at the Convention will insist that "morally straight" means heterosexual, but they'll lose out to pragmatists who see that making it all about chastity instead of orientation is the highest ground on which to make camp.  Disciplining Scouts of either persuasion who are not chaste will fall to the local troops.  Hot potatoe, hot potatoe.

        It's the best of all worlds, and it will totally please nobody -- but it's either that or change the Scout Law to "Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Ignorant."