I never wanted to be in scouts. As a child, our neighbors were heavily
involved in Boy Scouts as members, scouters, and volunteers. Over the early years of my youth, I would
watch them come and go to regular meetings and activities in their uniforms and
think to myself that I never wanted to do that.
“Too much hassle….too much conformity….short pants with
green socks?!”
Consequently, I never gave the scouts much thought until,
many years later, my son was in the first grade and my wife told me that I was
taking him to Cub Scouts. We argued; me
dead set against it largely because of the stereotype I had of it. She arguing for it largely because of the stereotype
she
had of it.
In the end, she prevailed and I took him to his first Cub
Scout meeting. I recall it was very foreign to me – all this talk about “Akelas”
and “Weblos” was over my head. He had a great
time – walked out of the meeting holding my hand and just beaming.
With wild hair and happy eyes, he looked up and me and asked
“Dad? What’s the best I can be in scouting?”
Uncertain of the answer due to my own scouting inexperience, I replied “I
don’t know, maybe an Eagle scout?”
He looked down, set his jaw and then told me “well that’s
what I want to be then, an Eagle Scout.” I remember thinking at the time that
just the week before he wanted to be Batman.
But, we signed up and I committed to go and stay involved as long as he
wanted it.
Complicating all of that was the issue of exclusion. One of my best friends from school was
gay. I didn’t find out until years after
we were in school together. When the topic came up, I remember asking him
why he never told any of us. “It’s hard,”
he confessed. “Very complicated. I thought you guys wouldn’t want to be
friends anymore…”
I remember it as a
turning point in my life – the realization that normal events associated with growing
up; discovering that you are attracted to other people, dating, relationships, and
holding hands – all of those deliriously awkward moments of adolescence are
made infinitely more complicated for the teen who awakens into a world where he
or she is gay. I remember thinking it was simply beyond absurd, and a bit
painful, to think he believed we would abandon him because of who he was. I shared this with him and he said in a voice more weary
than his 22 years “trust me, people hate me.”
The moment left me with some sensitivity to the issue – my good
friend suffered for years worrying about what people would think of him, worrying
that he had to keep a significant portion of his life not just private, but
super-secret private.
So it was that in 2000, I was in law school and, like many
in law school at that time, I spent more than a few minutes in any of a half
dozen different classes debating the different constitutional merits of either
party’s case in Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000).
I carried a lot of the feelings generated by my friendship with
John into these debates in school. The
law was more than likely clear. So too
was the predictable outcome of the Supreme Court vote. The joke in school was the true story that
one of the Justices voting to uphold the ban wrote that he actually thought
homosexuality only occurred in prisons, on desert islands and in forced survival
situations like shipwrecks and plane crashes.
Given that, and as a student of the law, I was pretty much certain that the 2000 US Supreme Court wasn’t going to create a protected class
of people based on sexual orientation using the Boy Scouts as the fulcrum to do
so. And history shows that they didn’t.
A 5-4 court upheld the BSA’s exclusionary policy as a manifestation of
BSA’s freedom of association. In other words, legally it was the right call
according to the US Supreme Court.
Fast forward ten years to the fall of 2010. My son, then 10 years old and in the 5th
grade, was riding out the waning moments of his Cub Scout career as a Weblo. His Cub Pack went from having around 60 kids
to having no more than 6 kids ten years after the BSA v Dale decision. I was eager with
anticipation for the moment I could tell him “well, good work with Cub Scouts. You gave it a first class effort but it looks
like this is the end of the road. No Boy
Scouts, no Eagle Scout. Let’s move on to
the next great challenge…”
So I had been rehearsing, mentally, the “talk” with my son
for several weeks during my morning commute.
I practiced the talk I planned to have with my wife and him several
times and had just about refined it to the level where I was ready to pick the
date by which I would break the news that we were leaving the dream of Eagle
Scout behind us.
There was a camporee planned and I expected the Cub Scout
presence to be very small – perhaps just one Weblo family (us). That would
present the perfect opportunity to introduce the topic of how we were spinning our wheels with this backward looking organization.
Perhaps adding accelerant to the fire burning inside of me
was the fact that for this particular weekend, I was forced to say yet another “no thank
you, we have a scouting event” when a colleague offered free football tickets. These tickets were to the annual Michigan State/Michigan football game.
To say I was ambivalent, ten years post-Dale, is generous. I was in fact itching to move on from scouting
and pursue other ways to kill off a beautiful autumn weekend in Michigan. Free football tickets aside, by the fall of 2010 I had no love
lost for the Boy Scouts of America. I fundamentally disagreed with the
exclusionary policy. It seemed to be
based in prejudice and was contrary to anything I believed in terms of civil
rights. I was actively looking for ways
to get my only son away from something I considered bigoted and irrational.
Committed to the idea that this would be our last scouting
event, I loaded up the car and went to a fall camporee at a scout camp in
Central Lower Michigan. Nothing extravagant. Not at all far from our home, but
a very nice camp with a long, uphill curving driveway leading in.
It was a camp I hadn't been to before. Set among gorgeous rolling hills heavily
wooded with stands of hardwood and pine, it appeared to be a
first rate camp. As we worked our way up the neatly paved drive leading up the
slope, I noticed there were – spaced out at even intervals – neatly lettered yellow
signs arranged along the camp’s driveway.
They stood dappled at the tree-line on the edge of the
forest – almost as much a part of the landscape as the plentiful cedar and white
pine. They said, in successive order “A
Scout is…. trustworthy …… loyal ….. helpful
….. friendly ….. courteous ….. kind ….. obedient ….. cheerful ….. thrifty ….. brave
….. clean ….. and reverent.”
They didn't say anything about sexuality, or law books, or politics, or courtrooms. Just plain old words describing extraordinary virtues. They described the essence of scouting. Scouting, in that moment, began to crystalize for me as something that could not, and should not, be defined by a single polarizing issue.
Something about each handmade sign caught in my throat as I
drove by. My father died when my son was
5 years old. Much of this whole “being a dad” thing has ended up me doing it without
the benefit of my father to guide me on what’s right for a kid. The signs were
handmade, tidy, but with faded paint.
They had been there a while but were tended to by someone who had an eye
toward their importance.
For my son, the day was one to climb the “Victory Tower” and
to Shoot BB Guns and to have all kinds of scout fun. For me, it began what was a serious reflection
on what scouting would come to mean for me personally; what it truly meant to me as a dad. It began a period for me that I
later recognized as my time to consider how I could best spend my efforts in
bringing up a boy with timeless values and a solid sense of confidence and
service.
Those signs staring at me from the shadowy tree-line were
the beginning of a new commitment for me with scouting. I did not have the conversation I planned and
practiced with my wife and son. Instead I researched the
scout law and eventually sat down with my son and had a different conversation:
“Michael, the world needs Boy
Scouts.”
Not the kind of thing any who know me as a bleeding heart,
mushy-headed college liberal would expect me to say. Growing up, the term “boy scout” was a
put-down. Something synonymous with a “goody
two-shoes” or “teacher’s pet.” But I was
convinced of it then and am doubly certain of it now.
“The world needs Boy
Scouts.”
I have watched my son grow from a Tenderfoot to a newly
minted Life Scout. Have joined him on countless service projects in our community and watched him mature from a tiny little fellow in pants and shirt way too big, to a solid young man who, in the thick of the worst thunderstorm I have ever endured outside, reminded me "Dad, this happens every time I come out with the scouts. Trust me, you're going to be ok." His mom and I have followed his
travels from Montana hiking over the Great Divide down to Florida Seabase where
next month we will take our SCUBA certifications and test our mettle SCUBA diving
in the ocean.
“The world needs Boy
Scouts.”
Along the way, I was lucky enough to get involved as an Assistant Scoutmaster, Unit Commissioner and as a member of a great Wood Badge
patrol (Owl) at C2-271-12. My Wood Badge
experience was held at the very same camp where I had my scouting epiphany
several years before.
Having spent this time and energy; having come to embrace
the idea that the world needs Boy Scouts, I’ve also become convinced that the Boy Scouts need the world. I had the good fortune of joining scouts from
22 countries at the Michigan International Camporee in the summer of 2012. There
it was my pleasure to join in the community of international scouting and
discuss with them the development of scouting in other countries.
If you accept that the Boy Scouts need the world, then you
must also accept that the Boy Scouts need to reflect on the aims of scouting as
originated, not by the BSA v Dale case in 2000, but rather by the words and
vision of Lord Baden-Powell when he cultivated this dream. The Boy Scouts exist not because some council
in New Jersey won a legal battle in 2000.
They exist because of the vision of an extraordinary man in 1908.
Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, wrote the original
Scout law in the publication Scouting for
Boys in 1908. Included in that text is the tenet that a Scout is a friend to
all and a brother to all other scouts.
"A SCOUT IS A FRIEND TO ALL, AND A
BROTHER TO EVERY OTHER SCOUT, NO MATTER TO WHAT SOCIAL CLASS THE OTHER BELONGS.
If a scout meets another scout,
even though a stranger to him, he must speak to him, and help him in any way
that he can, either to carry out the duty he is then doing, or by giving him
food, or, as far as possible, anything that he may be in want of. A scout must
never be a SNOB. A snob is one who looks down upon another because he is
poorer, or who is poor and resents another because he is rich. A scout accepts
the other man as he finds him, and makes the best of him -- "Kim," the
boy scout, was called by the Indians "Little friend of all the
world," and that is the name which every scout should earn for himself."
“…Accept the other man as he finds him, and make the best of
him…” was Baden-Powell’s approach to differences that might arise between scouts. The
presumption, unstated but obvious, is that the brotherhood of scouting transcends
those differences. It demands that we
approach our neighbors – strangers and friends alike – with a bias toward
temperance and a commitment to the non-judgmental. You cannot be a friend to all if you are
wagging your finger, or spewing hateful rhetoric, or passing judgment on one
lifestyle while freely indulging your own lifestyle choices absent having to answer to
others for them.
To be a brother to all Scouts, as Baden-Powell intended when
he blazed the trail for all other scouts, you cannot approach your fellow
scouts or scouters and tell them “you cannot be my brother because of who you
love.” If Baden-Powell’s words have
meaning; if the notion “a brother to all other scouts” will indeed have
vitality, then that brotherhood cannot be revoked merely because a scout is
gay.
Making the rounds presently on social media is the story of Bruce
“Trip” McMillan, a 37-year veteran professional Scouter currently living in
Charlotte, N.C. Trip’s noteworthy take
on the exclusionary policy is that the practice of excluding brothers; the
practice of institutionally excluding scouts and scouters based on who they
love, is contrary to the community of scouting.
“Shame on us (scouting) as a movement,” McMillan says, “if
we continue to abandon ‘one of our boys’ at perhaps the most difficult moment
of their life.”
A brother, a scouting BROTHER who is coming to realize his
developing sexual identity, does not need to be abandoned by his brothers in
scouting. He needs that community of
friendship, that continuity of fellowship and virtue. Scouting needs to be standing taller than
what has been presently made of their virtues.
Scouting needs to say to that boy, “here you are among the scouts, and
the scouts are among the best. So here
you will thrive. We will find the best
in you.”
Change will come. I
am sure of it. No species on Earth has
ever purposely starved itself into extinction.
So true with the scouts, whose membership continues to shrink while its “brand”
has been hijacked into this issue.
Change will come when Boy Scouts of America comes to
realize they need the world as much as the world needs the Scouts.
Change will come, because the world needs scouts.
Change must come, because a weary world wants for that boy
scout “constant” - the virtuous helper, leader, and friend to all to continue.
Change must come, and it will come.
Dennis Armistead is a writer, labor relations professional
and mediator, and scouter from Bath, Mi.
As a member of Wood Badge class C2-271-12, Owl Patrol, one of his ticket
items was to write an essay regarding the Exclusionary Practice of the Boy
Scouts of America as it relates to homosexual scouts and scouters. This is his essay. All rights reserved to the
author. The World Needs Scouts©
