Reinstate Cub Scout leader who was removed for being gay

[decay]

http://www.change.org/petitions/boy-scou...-being-gay

over 153,000 signatures. i added mine.

I was a Scout until age 18, an OA Brotherhood member, and I valued my time with Troop 512.

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My 7-year-old son, Cruz, loves being a Cub Scout, and he really loved when I got to be his pack's den leader. But the Boy Scouts of America asked me to step down as the leader of my son's group -- just because I'm gay. Cruz doesn't understand why that matters, and frankly, neither do I.

When Cruz told us last year that he wanted to be a Boy Scout, my partner and I were concerned. We knew the organization has discriminated against families like ours before. But the other families in Cruz's group were so welcoming and supportive -- they even asked me to be a den leader on the first day.

One year later, our fears came to life. A representative of the Boy Scouts of America abruptly told me I was no longer welcome -- that because I'm gay, I didn't "meet the high standards of membership that the Boy Scouts of America seek."

I hated feeling that my family had been discriminated against, so I started a petition on Change.org asking the Boy Scouts of America to stop discriminating against gay people.

During the year that I was den leader, my cubs performed volunteer service at a local soup kitchen, collected canned goods for area churches to distribute in food baskets, and worked on a conservation project for a state park.

After I was asked to leave, other parents from my pack were outraged. Some of them even waited for hours to voice their concerns to Boy Scout officials, but they were turned away. As for Cruz, he doesn't really understand why there's a problem. He made a sign that says "I love my two gay moms."

Other organizations like the Girl Scouts and Boys & Girls Clubs of America welcome gay kids as well as adult leaders -- I know that if thousands of people sign my petition, the Boy Scouts will see that it's time for them to adopt a policy that incorporates their own core values of compassion and respect.

Click here to sign my petition asking the Boy Scouts of America to allow gay parents to serve.

Thanks,

Jennifer Tyrrell

[cbelt3]

I do agree that it's past time for a rethink on the policy.

Grace will provide some good opinions. I think the reality is that Scouting is politically rather replete with Mormons, and the internal politics militate against it. Scouting IS legally able to exclude people due to sexual orientation.. that case was settled.

[Ombligo]

Hate to say it, but it likely won't make a bit of difference to the BSA.

I was very proud of my son when he declined to join with his friends because they would not accept me due to being an athiest.

[davester]

Well good luck with that, though this has been tried previously, and the boy scouts, which unfortunately has been largely taken over by the anti-gay mormon church, crushed the movement and threw them out of scouting. Check out http://www.scoutingforall.org/data/home.html . I believe there was a 60 minutes episode or some other kind of documentary on Steven Cozza and his quest to bring tolerance to the BSA.

Note that scouting in many other countries is highly tolerant of people who are different (gay, non-christian, etc), and that many of those countries have mixed boy/girl scout organization. Unfortunately, the BSA has become an incredibly intolerant religious organization that actively seeks out gays and athiests to purge them from the organization, nothing like what Lord Baden Powell envisioned when he created the scouts. My fantasy wish is that the world scouting organization rejects the charter of BSA for going against the ideals of scouting.

My son was in scouting for a while, and although I could see that scouting had good roots, the adults in charge of the organization are a bunch of intolerant hypocrites.

[beagledave]

As a former (and actually current) Eagle Scout, this continues to sadden me.

[decay]

well, change may not come easily, and it may never happen; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

evolve or die.

and it's not like there's not molesters in the BSA who aren't gay, either.
(being pedophiles, not homosexuals)

[JoeH]

beagledave wrote:
As a former (and actually current) Eagle Scout, this continues to sadden me.

:agree:

It's not just the Mormons, the direction of the BSA organization also gets undue influence from other conservative christian sects. Personally I noticed the change from attempting to be inclusive of various beliefs around the time BSA moved its national headquarters from DC to Texas. Don't know if this move reflected a change in the internal politics, or contributed to it.

As for accepting gays, yes the court cases have ruled that as a private organization they can do so. However, BSA does have a national charter granted by Congress. That in the end may be the way for change to be pushed onto the organization if the political will ever is there to revoke or modify that charter.

[the_poochies]

Little Poochie's Cub Scout Pack is run out of our local Catholic Parish. It is a large and quite active Pack. No Mormons or open homosexuals are in our Pack, as far as I know.

Conservatives also don't like the Girl Scouts.

[Lemon Drop]

What happens in a troop/pack has a lot to do with the flavor of bigotry (or lack thereof) practiced by the local volunteers. Mormons can dish it out but they don't always take it well.


ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: 8:25 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

RALEIGH, N.C. — A Presbyterian church was happy to have Jeremy and Jodi Stokes as Cub Scout leaders until it was discovered that they are Mormons. Then they were told they had to step down because the church doesn't consider them real Christians.

The Stokeses enrolled their sons as Scouts at Christ Covenant Church, a Presbyterian congregation near Charlotte, and expressed interest in volunteering as leaders. Church officials were initially thrilled earlier this month, the Stokeses said, until they saw on the application forms that they belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After two Scout meetings, the Stokeses were told that their sons, 6 and 8 years old, could stay in their packs, but the parents couldn't serve as leaders.

"I can't believe they had the audacity to say, 'You can't be leaders, but we want your boys,'\u2009" Jodi Stokes said. "Do you really think I'd let my boys go there now?"

Christ Covenant spokeswoman Stelle Snyder said in an e-mail Tuesday that the church — which belongs to the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative evangelical denomination — was taking action to "assure that our parameters for leaders are clearly defined and well-communicated to volunteers and those interested in leadership roles for church sponsored programs such as the Boy Scouts."

http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/nor...81349.html

[hal]

If they want to be a christian group that excludes others, what business is it of mine to tell them to do otherwise?

It's sad, yes, but the could be alternatives.