To tell you the truth, I wasn’t really paying attention to the recent decision by the Boy Scouts that it will no longer deny membership to openly gay youths “on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”
When I first heard the news, it seemed to me that continuing to discriminate against openly gay scout leaders while admitting openly gay members was sending a mixed message. But there was more to my apathy than that. A quick internet search confirmed my suspicion that the Boy Scouts is a training ground for the militarization of young men.
But last Friday when I was in my driveway, packing up the car to take a trip to the Catskills for the legal same sex wedding celebration of two close friends, I had the opportunity to listen to a program on the Boy Scout’s decision on a Christian radio station that my neighbor’s roofer was blasting. The radio announcer was firmly against the Boy Scouts’ decision, and surprisingly I found myself agreeing with some of his logic. He mentioned that openly gay Boy Scouts may be scapegoated. This had occurred to me, even before I heard the Conservative Warrior railing against the decision.
He also mentioned that he would under no circumstances send his 16 year old son camping in a pup tent with an openly gay Boy Scout. He said that hormonally charged teenage boys experiment and implied that the openly gay Scout may seduce his presumably straight son.
The fact is that pre-teen and teenage boys do experiment — with each other. When I was growing up, it was known around the neighborhood that straight teenage boys were experimenting with each other. A gay male friend once explained to me that straight teenage boys actually saw more action with one another — than gay teenage boys, because the gay teens were more inhibited due to a fear of being identified as gay. The parenting website, Baby Center, has the results of a poll about boys age 11 to 13 year old boys experimenting with each other.
Sex is sex to a hormonally charged adolescent boy -whether that sex is with another boy, a girl, or a blowup doll. Chances are that if this radio personality sends his 16-year-old son into a pup tent with anyone – even avowed heterosexual Boy Scouts–that he is running the risk that his son will experiment.
As a pre-adolescent, I was an overachieving Girl Scout with badges up both sides of my sash. I learned about camping and tying ropes (neither of which stayed with me) – but what I remember most was that I learned the definition of “jerk off” by asking my mother what this meant after another Girl Scout called me this. My practical nurse trained mother explained to me that jerking off is something that a man does to himself while pretending that he is with a woman. Mind you, this was close to a half century ago. As I recall, knowing the facts did make me feel a little intellectually smug when I went back to the next Scout troop meeting and told my taunter that it was, in fact, not possible for me to be a jerk off.
A year later I was smoking pot and drinking and beginning my slide into full-blown adolescent self-destruction so it could be deduced that the Scouts did not instill anything in me to prevent this. However, when I was eighteen I did attempt to join the military and this was directly linked to me trying to redeem myself. The military recruitment video showed young women who looked like they had been Girl Scouts. More precisely, the women in the boot camp recruitment video looked like lesbians and undoubtedly this is what hooked me. I wanted to be a photographer. In 1977, the occupation of Army photographer wasn’t open to females so, fortunately, I did not join the military.
There are alternatives in life to joining the military and also to being a Boy Scout or Girl Scout. In Philadelphia, there is Mountain Meadow Queer Camp Alliance for children, girls and boys aged 9 to17, of LGBT parents and there are other similar camps across the country.
The New York Times reported recently that the Boy Scouts membership has been dwindling for years. After listening to the Conservative Warrior, I got to thinking that if he and his ilk decide to keep their sons out of the Boy Scouts and we do too that the result could be revolutionary.
It’s time to teach our children that it’s okay to think and stay outside the box.
This piece was originally published in OpEdNews.com
Janet Mason, author 