Be Prepared

The school year ends, or is very close. It is times like this and each fall when the year resumes that I most miss being an educator. I so clearly remember the happy/sad feelings as the class in which I vested myself for 10 months departed. I so clearly remember the panic of grades and check out. I so clearly remember the extraordinary effort it takes to both shut down a school year and then a few months later crank it up again. I still attend the award assemblies, concerts, powder puff games, fund days and field trips of my local school, disconnected by the lack of knowing the kids, connected by the rituals that transcend the reformers model of what school should be all about. Clearly, once the testing is over, school is not out, it returns to local community values and institutions.


So on this first day of June, a Saturday, I awake after a wonderful week of hurrah at my local schools to discover I have missed the big picture and larger issue. Again. The Boy Scouts will allow gay boys to join the Scouts, but the Baptists won’t let them meet in their churches. I have returned to the rancor I felt while writing my previous post on fundamentalism. What in the world are we doing?

I am not a great fan of the Boy Scouts. I believe they teach young men important skills like knot tying, camping, fire starting, whittling, hiking, love of nature, etc. I remember helping my sons learn the Boy Scout Oath and believe I can recite it even today, embedded in my brain from years of practice somewhere just below John 3:16. It has always bothered me that girls could not join the Scouts and had to have a separate but unequal branch of their own. Finally the scouts stopped racial discrimination and now sexual orientation discrimination, but girls still can’t join. Isn’t it funny that a black, gay 11 year old will be allowed to join an organization that girls cannot? Hence, I am not a great fan. However, I still live with the irony that men who were former slaves were allowed to vote before women. But I digress.

I do believe that every step we take toward tolerance is a good step, and every step we take toward banning, rejecting, blaming, and judging others for either attributes they inherited or attributes they assumed is a bad step. I have no desire to engage here in the debate regarding whether homosexuality is an inherited or chosen attribute. I simply recognize that among our population are people of both sexes who prefer a partner of the same sex for whatever reason. I do not believe this is a contagious attribute requiring isolation for fear it will rub off. It simply is an attribute. (In fact, I worry more about those who choose to be fundamentalists as this clearly is not a genetic attribute.) The Boy Scouts is for young men aged 11 to 17, and I suspect many of whom have yet to have a sexual experience nor are they sure of their sexual orientation. I continue to try to picture a pre-pubescent 11 year old boy coming out of the closet.

Regardless, the Boy Scouts now allow young men who claim homosexuality to join. Enter the Baptists. They claim the Bible clearly says homosexuality is a choice and a sin. Really? I addressed all those fundamental belief structures in “The Antonym of Fundamentalism” and shall not repeat it here. The Baptist Church, however, is now taking steps to ban Scouts from meeting in their buildings. They are to be banished. They are to be isolated. They are turned away at the gate because they are sinners. Really? Since when do Christians reject sinners rather than forgive them?

It is this approach of the fundamentalists that is ripping our planet apart. The radical Islamist must have it his way (notice I say “his”) or will declare jihad. The radical Christian, evidently, must have it his way or he will do the same. I see no difference. Both stances reflect the notion that my position is holy, yours is sinful, I know the ultimate truths and you do not, therefore, think like me or be punished. Amazing. Not even Hitler demanded such loyalty to right-think. McCarthy and Dan Patrick waged terrible witch hunts to find people who did not practice right-think, but though they did damage, as a nation we eventually wised up. The Baptists now model the same thinking as the radical Islamists, Dan Patrick, Joe McCarthy and Hitler. They are un-American. Baptists have an absolute right to believe what they want to believe. Baptists should not have an absolute right to practice judgmental discrimination in this country and retain their tax exempt status. Period.

As for the Boy Scouts, good for you for letting all boys in. As the fundamental churches reject you I trust you have learned a lesson from those who have been your biggest supporters: Discrimination feels “right” when you are in the majority. Discrimination is terrible when you are the victim. Our nation was built on the notion of protecting the rights of the minority from the discrimination of the majority. It is time to become real Americans.

The Boy Scout motto remains “Be Prepared.” Perhaps there should be a new merit badge regarding fundamentalism and discrimination for boys to earn to ensure they are prepared for life. Sounds American to me.