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."
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."