Bill, a frequent commenter here whom I am proud to call my friend, contributes this story to the recent post about the Boy Scouts and their negligent handling of pedophiles in the leadership. Here is his Comment of the Day on The Absurdly Warped Priorities of the Incompetent Boy Scouts of America.
“When I was ten years old a man tried to snatch my little brother, who was then seven, off the street. The only thing that stopped this from happening was that the two gay men who lived next store saw it happening, ran out into the street, grabbed my baby brother and apprehended the married pedophile who tried to snatch him. They also gave him a pretty good ass-whipping in the process, as they were both bodybuilders.
“A while later another neighbor asked my father how he could stand living next to those two “faggots” my fathers response was, ‘If it wasn’t for those two men, my youngest son would have been raped and most likely dead. Don’t ever call them faggots in my presence again or question their manhood.’”
“The BSA needs to come into the 21st century and recognize that homosexuality doesn’t equal being a pedophile . That’s is an ignorant and outdated belief and by continuing to follow it they are putting their members at risk.”
Ethics Alarms 
Here in suburbia, it’s kind of like the army used to be, don’t ask, don’t tell. In traditionally male dominated organizations like the army and the scouts, it makes the authority figures at the home front (ie nurturers) nervous when a gay person joins the ranks. Boys have their boy clubs and girls eventually clawed their way into the army but so far it’s the boy scouts and the girl scouts, not the gay scouts and the straight scouts. What a dilemma!
I don’t see how that story/comment has any impact at all in the debate. How does that prove the boy scouts are in the wrong?
I was only trying to point out that the BSA has been judging people as a group and not individually and by their actions. The man who tried to snatch my brother was married and had a family. The BSA would let him be in the Scouts but the two men who saved my brother would be excluded based on their sexual orientation.
I believe the BSA has been judging individuals all along, and doing so out of consideration for the characteristic or reasonably expected actions of the individual according to the group the individual identifies with.
If the BSA put out a public statement, “We hate queers,” then I would agree that they have “judged people as a group.” But to my knowledge, BSA has not done that. Perhaps the BSA needs to put out a clarifying statement, something like: “We hold homosexuality to be in irreconcilable conflict with the standard we uphold for ‘morally straight;’ therefore, we reject membership of persons who practice, claim as inherent to their individual identity, or hold convictions that moral straightness is inclusive of, homosexuality.”
I find this rationalizing. “This group is not good enough to associate with us” is close enough to “we hate queers” for horseshoes. What else does it mean? It certainly feels that way to those rejected. “We don’t dislike you, we just think we’re better than you are.”
Oh. Well that’s OK then.
This really makes sense to you?
It makes no sense to me to presume that any group that would not have me for a member is necessarily better than I am, or to let myself necessarily feel “hated” (as if I was worthy of being hated in the first place) just because some group – that I really, REALLY wanted to be part of – rejected me for some reason relatable to my admitted, actual, or expected behavior.
Why is rationalizing “wrong,” “bad,” or “not enough,” as you seem to infer? Do you really prefer some alternative to rationalizing (and what are the alternatives?), whenever a group establishes a standard? A standard is going to result in “discrimination.”
Allowing for freedom of association, a specific group’s membership standard typically is not something that its makers are obligated to calibrate for inclusiveness. More often than not, if they exist for any purpose, membership standards exist for enabling consensus within the group on whom to EXclude – for determining who does not meet the standards, with an aim and presumption that the standards are not what “just anybody who happens to walk by and who wishes to join” can meet. “Minorities,” or groups of persons with certain commonality, who were formerly excluded can be accommodated and included by way of sufficient consensus (whatever that may be) amongst existing group membership, regarding a temporary waiver, or permanent change, to standards. And in almost all cases, it makes more sense to me for waiver or change decisions to result from appropriate members, who are already in the group, doing some rationalizing related to favoring (or opposing) any waiver or change – not from external “association policing.”
“This group is good enough to associate with on its terms, or else it’s bigotry against the group” is close enough to “All MUST love hypocrisy” for horseshoes.
Morally straight? What is morally straight about excluding a group of people based on their sexual orientation? The BSA and their supporters have for years based their exclusion on the myth that homosexuals are going to molest their scouts. A homosexual is no more likely to molest a male scout then a hetrosexual is molest a female child. Homosexuality and pedohilia are not one and the same thing. Also as what happened to my brother shows , being morally straight and having honor and conviction is not determined by whether you are a homosexual or a hetrosexual.
Words change over time. When I was a Scout 65-70 years ago, “straight” had nothing to do with sexual orientation, and we still thhought “gay” meant “carefree”. And Scout leaders often preached that “a Scout is square”. What boy wants to be “square” today?
I think the Scouts’ use of “straight” in their code is only coincidentally aligned with modern sexualized uses of the word, but I also think that the Scouts’ intended meaning of “morally” has always been to reflect “intolerance” of sexuality other than the old, classical “straight” kind.