Scouts Divided
Since a
Supreme Court ruling against gays in the Boy Scouts, Americans are
increasingly torn over a beloved institution
By David
France
NEWSWEEK
Aug. 6 issue — Jeff Moran and some friends from
Troop 1320 dropped onto the
lawn near Trading Post 13 last Tuesday, a
sweltering morning during the 15th
Boy Scouts Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill
near Fredericksburg, Va. Despite the
heat wave, over the next 10 days they
would help 32,000 other Scouts burn
through 76,000 hamburgers, 479,000 eggs,
10 tons of beef stew—and countless
hours energetically addressing a
controversy that will not fade. “In the
Bible, it’s a sin to be gay,” said
Moran, 15, as the sun glinted off his
dyed blue hair. Keep them out of
scouting? “Exactly,” he declared.
Fifteen-year-old Greg Gutta Jr. was
sympathetic. “They say everybody should
have the right to be in the Scouts,
but everybody has the right to feel
comfortable, too,” he said. “A lot of
people don’t feel comfortable around
homosexuals.”
Yet within troop
1320, as in many scouting gatherings around the country,
there is no easy
consensus. Noah Kinney, a shy 15-year-old, challenged his
friends. He knows
a few gays back home and thinks they’re OK. “I think as
long as they stay
off of you, they’re fine, that’s all.” Other troop members
nodded, even
Gutta, despite his own discomfort. “I don’t think people should
be kicked
out for just being gay.”
For
the Boy Scouts of America it has been a year of such debates
since last
summer’s Supreme Court victory handed them the legal right to
exclude gay
boys and leaders. In a 5-4 majority, the justices found that the
group’s
religious foundation allowed it to set membership standards at its
headquarters in Texas, even if they are at odds with the ordinances or
policies on the books in 244 localities and 13 states to protect lesbians
and
gay men from
discrimination.
Polls show
that most Americans approve of the court’s ruling. They
want scouting to be
as it always has been, a safe place for kids to learn
archery and radio
building, but also public service and generosity, loyalty
and trust. At one
time or another, 110 million American boys have raised
their fingers in the
scouting oath, raced in pine-box derbies or conquered
their fear of the dark
at Boy Scout camp. “Traditional families will not be
involved with an
organization that does not support basic moral values,” says
Jeff Glaze, a
volunteer committee member for Troop 477 in Dunwoody, Ga. “Most
don’t see
homosexuality as something to hold up as a good role model to their
kids.”
But a surprising
thing has happened. A growing number of Americans
don’t approve of the
exclusionary policy—and they’re not letting it rest.
These aren’t skilled
combatants in the culture wars, but ordinary
heterosexual Americans—moms and
dads, priests and rabbis and teenage
boys—who are taking a stand on this
issue of gay rights simply because they
love scouting and want it to do the
right thing. By the organization’s own
internal polls, 30 percent of Scout
parents don’t support the current
policy—people like Boy Scout Second Class
Kevin Elliot, NEWSWEEK’s
13-year-old cover model. “I think discrimination
within the Boy Scouts gets
rid of the whole concept of what the Boy Scouts
are all about,” says the
Riverside, Calif., eighth grader. In anger or
sadness, some have simply
walked away, considering Boy Scouts no better now
than a whites-only country
club. Earlier this spring Steven Spielberg, a
former Eagle Scout, ended 10
years on the advisory board, saying he could no
longer serve a group that
practices “intolerance and
discrimination.”
Religious
groups are lining up on both sides of the debate. Mormon
and Roman Catholic
churches—which together sponsor 750,000 Scouts—have
supported the
straights-only rule. But the United Church of Christ, along
with Baptist and
Episcopal congregations, have asked Scouts to reconsider. In
January the
Union of American Hebrew Congregations went even further, issuing
a
remarkable public denunciation and calling upon synagogues to end Scout
sponsorship and congregants to pull their children out of the dens, packs or
troops. Hundreds of parents have complied. The Boy Scouts of America does
not
release data on how many Scouts have resigned in protest, says Gregg
Shields,
scouting’s spokesman. He adds, “This has not been a serious
problem.” But
nationwide, at a time when Girl Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs
and other youth
groups are growing in popularity, membership in Cub and Boy
Scouts dropped
4.5 percent last year, according to internal documents made
available to
NEWSWEEK. In the Northeast it slid even further, by 7.8
percent.
The
Texas leadership may have misjudged a cultural climate that is
now more like
“Dawson’s Creek” than “Mayberry R.F.D.” For the first time in
20 years,
Gallup last month reported that the majority of Americans consider
homosexuality “an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” Polls show that more
Americans today than ever before know someone gay. For them, the formal
scouting position has caused excruciating conflicts. Following the ruling
last summer, Dena Jaeger, 41, whose sister is a lesbian, took the uniform
she
wore as a dedicated committee chairwoman for Pack 78 in Des Moines,
Iowa,
wadded it into a plastic bag and stashed it in the garage. But her
husband,
Don, 41, and son Christopher, 9, are still members. “I wrestle with
the
hypocrisy, frankly,” Don says. In Oak Park, Ill., 54-year-old John Mayes
resolved to remove Carter, 9, from his Cub Scout den after summer camp last
month, in memory of his college roommate, a “self-described screaming
queen.” “Being African-American, I am sensitive to discrimination,” he says.
But so far, he has not had the courage to break the news to his son, a
special-needs kid who blossomed at camp. “This is getting harder and harder
for me,” Mayes says. “What’s it really about? Is it about me and my
principles? And do I do this to my son, in the name of
principles?”
Increasingly,
local backers are finding themselves at similarly
difficult junctures. About
44 of the most affluent chapters of United Way—one
of scouting’s biggest
funders—have blocked additional support or changed
allocations in order to
comply with their own nondiscrimination policies; a
few others have
augmented funding, in keeping with their community’s
standards. Even the
business community has weighed in. Merrill Lynch, Textron
and
Procter&Gamble steadfastly support Scouts; Levi Strauss, Wells Fargo,
Fleet Bank and CVS, along with the Philadelphia Foundation and
Communications
Workers of America, have taken steps to distance
themselves.
It goes on:
the cities of Tucson, Ariz.; Chicago; San Francisco; San
Diego, and San
Jose, Calif., have ended free use for Scout troop meetings in
public parks,
schools and other municipal sites. Often, they have had no
choice—ordinances
and policies long in place prohibit public support of
anti-gay
discrimination there. In Miami a few weeks ago, Dade County school
officials
halted sponsorship and in-class recruiting, joining school
districts in
Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota. A group called the Gay,
Lesbian and
Straight Education Network says that at least 4,418 schools
nationwide have
ended preferential relationships with
Scouts.
Coming to scouting’s
defense, last month 51 senators voted to strip
federal funds from any school
that bans Scouts—a measure that is unlikely to
survive in conference. At the
same time, 49 voted the other direction, a
repudiation of Scouts that would
have been unthinkable before the court case.
“We’re slipping out of the
mainstream of thought,” says a very worried Mike
Harrison, past chairman of
the board for the Orange County Council in Costa
Mesa, Calif.
America turned to
scouting, a new quasi-military British program,
in 1910, during a period of
widespread concern that middle-class schoolboys
were losing their “manly
character.” Its philosophy was described by founder
Sir Robert Baden-Powell
as a blend of outdoor comradeship and “boyology.”
Today, 66 senators and 205
congressmen are former Scouts, and 3 million kids
are members, finding in
Scouts a meaningful alternative to afternoons spent
with Game Boys and
PlayStations. Between 1997 and the end of last year, this
army in shorts
completed 214 million hours of volunteer work.
According to a strict written
policy, adult leaders are not to
discuss sex with their boys, not even to
answer questions. Until James Dale’s
suit wended its way to the Supreme
Court, many Scouts thought the same
applied to homosexuality. In fact,
scouting in Canada and elsewhere has long
had specific nondiscrimination
policies. Dale was a 19-year-old Eagle Scout
and unpaid assistant
scoutmaster back in 1990 when, in an unrelated forum, he
addressed a
conference of high-school teachers on his struggles as a gay
youth growing
up in New Jersey. After his comments were reported in a local
newspaper,
Dale was fired by the Scouts. He sued and eventually won
reinstatement by
the state’s top court, which found his constitutional rights
were violated.
The Boy Scouts of America appealed successfully to the Supreme
Court.
In defending
Scouts, social conservatives have expressed two
concerns. They do not want
young boys to view gays as “accepted or
affirmed,” says Family Research
Council president Ken Connor. And they worry
about sexual abuse, despite the
fact that gay authority figures don’t pose a
disproportionate threat to
kids. “The leaders I talk to were worried about
how you explain to parents
that they’re sending their children into the woods
with an openly gay
scoutmaster, regardless of one’s position on homosexual
rights,” says
Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
for Policy
Research.
Some religious
institutions were openly relieved by the ruling,
especially the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has adopted
scouting as its
official youth program. More than 400,000 Mormon boys
participate in
church-sponsored troops, 13 percent of scouting’s total. As a
result,
observers say Mormons exercise unparalleled clout over the national
board,
which for years was sprinkled with top executives from Eastern firms
and now
attracts mostly conservative civic leaders tied to the churches that
sponsor
troops. Before the Supreme Court ruling the Salt Lake City-based
church
threatened to break away from the fold if forced to tolerate
homosexuals.
Such a move would devastate scouting, a ranking leader says.
“There is
unadulterated fear that they’re going to bail out, that they’re
going to
start their own program,” says the Scout leader, who requested
anonymity.
“The Mormons have all the cards.” (Shields, the Scouts’
spokesman, says that
is not the case.)
In order to
win the Supreme Court case, the Boy Scouts argued that
they are not a public
accommodation open to all, as many had presumed, but a
private “expressive”
association restricted to like-minded individuals. The
court bought the
distinction—but that gave Scouts a new problem: since they
receive millions
in state and federal funding—some of it spent on the
jamboree—did they now
still have a right to the assistance? Despite an
executive order prohibiting
discrimination in federal education and training
programs, well over $5
million in taxpayers’ money was spent on last week’s
extravaganza, according
to Scout sources. After the court ruling, government
compliance officers
looked into the legal conundrum. On Sept. 1, 2000,
Attorney General Janet
Reno issued a proclamation declaring the jamboree was
not federally directed
training per se, but a private event to which the
government was providing
logistical support—perfectly allowable, therefore,
even for an organization
that discriminates.
A
closer look at the jamboree, which George W. Bush was expected to
visit over
the weekend, reveals a different picture. Federal employees are
indeed
teaching skills and lessons. In fact, the Department of the Interior
is
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to stock a trout pond and sent
several hundred staffers to teach courses the Scouts must pass in order to
receive selected merit badges, including fly-fishing. Department officials
defend their presence, saying anybody driving past the jamboree is welcome
to
attend, even gay kids and adults. But at Fort A.P. Hill, Ben Jelsema,
chairman of the fishing program for the jamboree, was turning away
non-Scouts, saying those areas “are not open to the
public.”
For all the
discussion, protests at the jamboree were meager. A few
adults wore rainbow
ribbons alongside their badges, while men and boys around
the post tried
floating potential compromises. Two friends from LaGrange,
Ga.—Bernard
Newman and Brandon Thomas, 15 and 16, respectively—were saying
they thought
the Scouts should be more flexible, so that gay kids, if not
scoutmasters,
could be allowed in. But otherwise, the gathering proceeded
without a hitch.
“The young men are oblivious to it,” said Wilmington,
Dela., troop leader
Mike Bernhardt, 55, wearing his uniform at the
jamboree.
Back at headquarters
in Texas, Boy Scouts executives aren’t talking,
preferring instead to issue
periodic defenses on their Web site. “We are a
private organization.” says
the spokesman. “We are handling this discussion
within the
organization.”
Nevertheless,
the straights-only debate dominated a Boy Scouts’
leadership meeting last
month, with representatives of nine of the largest
metropolitan scouting
councils requesting the right to establish their own
membership policies.
They were told their proposal will be sent to a task
force for
consideration, but everything about the task force is top secret.
“It’s
unbelievably dumb on their part,” says a former national staff member.
“They
could take about 80 percent of the gas out of this thing if they were
to be
open and cooperative.”
A few
local troops are simply adopting nondiscrimination policies on
their own.
For instance, the Greater New York Councils’ Web site emphatically
declares,
“Prejudice, intolerance and discrimination in any form are
unacceptable.”
Other Scout leaders are quietly meeting funders’ demands to
sign
nondiscrimination pledges in order to receive their grants, according to
United Way’s interim president, Chris Amundsen. But they risk punishment by
Texas. In Oak Park, Ill., after seven Cub Scout troops decided they would
accept gays as leaders, headquarters forced them to disband. In Cleveland,
the Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ had sponsored Troop 98
for
90 years, longer than any other church in the city. Through the winter,
troop
and church leaders hammered out an accord: this troop would pledge not
to
discriminate. But the area Scout council would not allow it. One day in
March, without warning, council leaders entered the church and removed all
of
the canoes, tents, flags and plaques, stripping the church bare of its
Scout
troop, the Rev. Laurinda Hafner says. “I feel such a deep loss about
this.
Now those boys are going to be reinforced with the idea that being gay
is
bad, and even that standing up for gays is bad,” Hafner says.
And that message can be fraught
with serious risks for kids. The
American Medical Association has called
upon groups to “reconsider
exclusionary policies that are based on sexual
orientation.” At its annual
meeting last month, the association warned that
stigmatizing homosexuality
can contribute to major depression and suicide
among gay youth. They may well
have had in mind boys like Judd Hardy, who
was a 16-year-old Eagle Scout and
camp counselor on the Wednesday afternoon
three years ago that he took a pair
of scissors and clipped the artery in
his left wrist, hoping to die. “I
remember thinking I have this thing inside
of me that I can’t get rid of,”
says Hardy, now 19. “But I wanted to get rid
of it so much that my mind
turned very practical: obviously, it’s not worth
living.” His terrified
little brother Skip called a local Scout leader from
Troop 73 in Salt Lake
City—the one who taught the first-aid merit-badge
classes. “Judd kept
saying, ‘Don’t call the Boy Scouts, tell them to go
away’,” remembers Skip,
now 15. “I had no idea
why.”
Today, Judd says he
first realized he was gay when he was 13. As a
Mormon, he struggled for
several years to change this through something the
church calls “reparative
therapy,” which involved frequent fasting,
memorizing Scripture and
mandatory basketball games. As a Boy Scout he
regularly withstood anti-gay
commentary. “It breaks you,” he says. “I looked
around the room at all the
boys who were gay-bashing, and I wanted to be just
like them, but I knew
that I couldn’t.”
After his
suicide attempt, he announced his resignation from the
Scouts. His parents
accepted his decision over time. Soon, his brothers each
concluded that
blood was thicker than the Scout’s oath; they left, too, in
solidarity. “I
knew they believed all these bad things about gay people, but
this was my
brother they were talking about,” says James, a high-school
senior. “We just
didn’t feel comfortable going back.” Now the Hardys are
estranged from their
church and have founded the local chapter of Scouting
for All, a national
organization challenging the gay ban. In June, James,
Skip and Zach (now 17,
15 and 10) marched with their parents in the gay-pride
parade wearing pink
kerchiefs and carrying the Scouting for All
banner.
In a twist typical of
the complicated struggle for the soul of
scouting, Judd is not a member of
the group. He just finished his freshman
year at New York University, and is
working as a summer counselor at a New
York-area camp that does not exclude
gays. “This Boy Scouts battle, that’s
really my parents’ thing,” he says. “I
want to tell them it’s been great, I
admire their support. But it’s time to
give the Boy Scouts a rest.”
Still, his family seems determined to fight on. Judd’s brother James
admits
that part of him would rather be attending the jamboree than staying
at
home. Yet he’s pledged an oath of a different sort now. “I’m still
looking
for ways to speak out,” he says. The jamboree “seems like a fun
thing to do.
But it would be a lot more fun if it didn’t have to be this
way.”
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With
Franco Ordonez, Gretel C. Kovach and Saba
Bireda
© 2001 Newsweek,
Inc.
© MSNBC