The father of a Cub Scout sat his son on his lap late last week and told him news that tore up both their hearts: The family was leaving the Boy Scouts.
Aaron Butler, the leader of his 8-year-old son Evan’s Cub Scout Wolf den in Roseau, Minn., said he didn't explain to his eldest son exactly why they were walking away from an organization they loved so much, but he told NBC News that it was because of last week's controversial decision by the Boy Scouts of America to allow gay youth to participate.
“It was a big disappointment ... he cried for about 10 minutes because I told him that the Boy Scouts were not honoring their own law," Butler said, referring to the BSA oath that he interpreted as barring gay people. "They say it -- 'On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep [myself] physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight,'” he said.
“If the BSA cannot honor their own law, then how can I stay with an organization that just does not care anymore?” he said.
I think he is saying this wrong. Instead it should be, "How can we leave and organization that has finally started to care so much?"
I have confidence that for every homophobic jerkwad that pulls his boy out of scouting due to this new policy there will be two that will put their children in because they now have renewed respect for the scouts.
Now if they could only get rid of their overbearing religiosity they could start hundreds of new packs all over the country.
By the way isn't THIS how people responded when they first did away with segregation? How did THAT work out for the racists?
When the son grows up he is going to think his Dad was nuts to pull him out of Scouts and for being bias. By the time he is older, the gays will be accepted with zero second thoughts, which it is moving more and more toward currently.
ReplyDeleteThe older folks mentality will show itself to be ridiculous...i.e. mostly on the religious side.
By that time this kid will be a fully indoctrinated homophobe, thanks to said Dad. He's already starting now.
DeleteYou've got to be carefully taught. The younger, the better.
Who would want to be involved with an organization that banishes a gay person for having an 18th birthday?
ReplyDelete>>>By the way isn't THIS how people responded when they first did away with segregation? How did THAT work out for the racists?<<<
ReplyDeletePretty darn good. Took over a major political party, elected a paranoid sweating guy with 5 o'clock shadow President twice (but he quit once even though he wasn't a crook). Messed up the secession thing with Jerry Ford, but then got the star of Bedtime with Bonzo elected President twice, and then Bushes and Iraq and oil wars and so on.
Steal a few trillions from the 99% and warn us about socializm!
Keep on keeping on with the kochsucking Tea Party and NRA shoot the darks if theys near your house or lookin' atchoo funny program.
O/T, but the grads in Republic are still waiting on Caribou Barbie to speechify. You can check out the latest at this twitter feed from this Spokane reporter covering the mess:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/KHQKatieSteiner
She has a couple of photos on her feed as well.
Bible Spice is only supposed to give a 10-minute word salad gibberfest.
I bet she doesn't show up. There will be some gibberish about not officially confirmed or some such crap.
Deletemalaiuppa, Palin showed up with an audience of maybe 300 people. Talking gibberish about small towns.
Deletehttps://twitter.com/KHQKatieSteiner
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLtIpV2CUAAce7y.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLtIMQlCQAAnWCQ.jpg
Now if they would just leave the country as well.....
ReplyDeleteWhile flipping channels the other night I landed on "Democracy Now!" (on PBS) just in time to hear the current president of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, tell what I thought was an AMAZING story:
ReplyDelete"I used to be the managing editor of a paper called The Jackson Advocate in Jackson, Mississippi. Our paper was burned down three times. My publisher used to have lunch with the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan every month . . . "
". . . and I’m like, 'Why? Why? Why?' And he said ... 'It’s time that we start listening to each other and figuring out how we heal this, because it’s just not ending. The Civil War isn’t ending.'
"These were two old men who sat down across great difference, across great pain -- I mean, my publisher had covered the Emmett Till case, he'd had many friends killed by the Klan -- and he said, 'It’s just time for us to bury the hatchet and figure out how we move forward.' "
If the head of the KKK and an African-American newspaper publisher can actually sit down and talk -- over lunch no less ! -- ANYthing's possible, maybe even LGBT equality in my lifetime.
P.S. Gryphen, the way you talk about your daughter on this blog often leaves me misty-eyed -- how much happier my life might have been if my parents had been so supportive of me.
I still wouldn't put my kid in scouting. Saying is one thing. Practicing is another.
ReplyDeleteSure the military now allows women, but look how they treat them.
Just because the scouts say they'll accept gays doesn't mean those children won't be bullied, ostracized, be the butt of jokes. Even if they have a leader that won't allow it, plenty will go on behind backs and unreported.
You can't just decide, Okay, we won't be homophobic bigots any more and expect everyone to comply and make nice.
Well those parents could always make their kids be altar boys...
ReplyDeleteYou know what they say.
DeleteCatholic Priests Would Use Birth Control If Altar Boys Could Get Pregnant.
When the priest says he needs to adjust his cassock just after he asked the altar boys to help pick up the spilled collection plate...
So sad that these parents think that allowing their teenaged boys to wear knee socks with shorts and kerchiefs are doing them any favors! Gays in the boy scouts can only improve upon those uniforms and make them less likely to be picked on by kids who would never dream of being in scouts.
ReplyDeleteWhat responsible parent would allow their son in Boy Scouts with gays in the same tent.
ReplyDeleteAny responsible parent would.
DeleteResponsible parents are educated people, they deal with reality. People like you do not. Hence we have idiots out there screaming about gays being pedophiles that are going to "target" your child, when here in reality we know that 98% of child molesters are heterosexual.
In reality, we understand that homosexuals are not interested in children. We understand this thing called consent. We understand that people do not "recruit" into some homosexual "lifetyle."
If you choose to willfully believe otherwise, more power to you. But you don't get to claim that you're being responsible or smart. those words have meaning, and you're nowhere near them.
Any of them, all of them.
DeleteObviously, Aaron Butler ain't morally straight if he has to lie and make his son cry for ten minutes, but his son's "loss", is that troop's gain. One less homophobic male insecure in his own sexuality will no longer have a captive audience of young minds to corrupt.
ReplyDeleteNot letting my son join the Boy Scouts was the best decision he ever made, and neither my husband nor I lied to him.
Oddly enough, all those years ago (my son is now 30), he and I made the decision to leave the Boy Scouts because of the homophobia within the group.
ReplyDeleteNope, son is not gay. He is just an amazing young man then, adult now.
I suspect he sensed the hate and bullying and did not want to be a part of it, not even as an observing bystander.
DeleteKudos to him.
And to you. You did a great job as his parent.