BSA, LDS, and the Jesus-y Margin

Last updated on: August 3, 2015 at 9:18 am by David Mason

BSA, LDS, and the Jesus-y Margin 2015-08-03T09:18:09-05:00 David Mason

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What Would Smokey Do?

My first inclination upon hearing that the LDS church plans to reexamine its relationship with scouting was to reexamine my relationship with the LDS church. But, I climbed down from that peak of indignation. In a sincere effort to avoid the trap of recriminations and to elevate the discussion, I’d like to offer the following thoughts on the LDS church’s recent, and rather stunningly petulant, threat to abandon the BSA ship.

Because I’m on record as not regarding myself—Mormon though I am—as a Christian, it’s a little hypocritical for me to play the WWJD? card. But almost every other LDS Mormon on the planet identifies as Christian, so Jesus probably matters, if I do say so, myself.

Can any Jesus-ite of any sort imagine the following conversation between Robert Gates, the president of the BSA, and Jesus, the savior of the world?

GATES: The BSA is no longer going to tell gay people they can’t participate.

JESUS: That is it! I’m going to start my own club, and it’s not going to have gay people in it, and it’s going to be fifty times better than your stupid club. I never wanted to be in your dumb old club, anyway. My club’s going to have ice cream. And Clif bars. And we’re going to have a secret club house that you can’t find. So, neener.

My problem with the LDS church’s threat to take its ball and go home over the BSA’s 45-12, not-at-all-close vote to allow gay people to participate in scouting is this: even if we start from the premise that gay-being or gay-doing is immoral, I nevertheless can’t believe that the Jesus who hung with lepers, told adulteresses not to sweat it too much, and insisted that the last will be first, would think badly of the BSA’s newly-formalized charity.

But I’m not at all sold on the gay-is-immoral premise, anyway. I find it equally impossible to believe that the Jesus whose father’s house has many mansions suffers any anxiety over gay-ness. Over malice, yes, I expect Jesus suffers some distress. But, of course, straight people are also guilty of abuse and exploitation, and I expect that hetero-normal church folks, who think their particular sexual appetite insulates them against god’s wrath over the pride and envy they manifest by working to keep their unwanted on the outside, are sure to be on the sorry end of “I never knew you”, when the time comes.

Now, the elevating-the-discussion part.

The BSA has surely done the Jesus-y thing here. I can’t see any way of reading things differently. Surely the world is happier, kinder, and more loving because the BSA decided to say, to people against whom it has kept its doors closed: you belong. As a Jesus-ite, if not a Christian, I am drawn to the concession in the BSA’s action that folks whom society still tries with ugliness to keep out there, in the leper colony, should be here, at the center.

Or, rather, I find joy in the unavoidable subtext of the BSA’s action: Jesus is probably out there, with the so-called lepers, and if we who are so zealous to hold the center want to be with him, we’d better move.

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