“Boy Scouting is Saved!”

Last updated on: May 22, 2015 at 7:48 am by Jane the Actuary

“Boy Scouting is Saved!” 2015-05-22T07:48:07-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So says Robert Gates, or, rather, that’s a very loose paraphrase of his words at the annual meeting, as reported in the New York Times.

Speaking at the Boy Scouts’ annual national meeting in Atlanta, Mr. Gates said cascading events — including potential employment discrimination lawsuits and the impending Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, as well as mounting internal dissent over the exclusionary policy — had led him to conclude that the current rules “cannot be sustained.”

If the Boy Scouts do not change on their own, he said, the courts are likely to force them to, and “we must all understand that this will probably happen sooner rather than later.”

In a nod to the religious organizations that sponsor a majority of local Scout troops, he said they should remain free to set their own guidelines for leaders. “I support a policy that accepts and respects our different perspectives and beliefs,” he said, adding, “I truly fear that any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement.”

So, what do you make of this? Is this Gates’ pragmatic evaluation of the situation, or is this him, as an outsider “celebrity” president, pursuing an agenda of his own, wanting to remake Boy Scouts?

The article goes on to say,

“If we wait for the courts to act,” he continued, “we could end up with a broad ruling that could forbid any kind of membership standard,” such as the belief in a duty to God and the goal of specifically serving the needs of boys.

Is Gates right? Is a local-decision compromise the best the Scouts can manage, and the best hope for retaining the Boy Scout identity at all?

Back in April I wrote that the New York council had hired an openly and activist-ly gay young adult as a camp counselor, seemingly daring the national organization to say “no,” and I said,

It’s all the other adults — the council leadership — who are pushing the issue, and risking bringing about a schism of sorts, and who, many of them, may not even be particularly dedicated to Scouts, so much as having landed in their roles due to general non-profit work, and see this as an opportunity to further their greater cause of LGBT non-discrimination.

(Yeah, I know, bad form to quote oneself, but at least I’m not trying to push this as a “viral” image on twitter.)

Is there a real risk that the court would rule against Boy Scouts? I doubt it, since it was long ago decided that as a private organization they could continue with their requirement of at least a nominal theism. The bigger issue is that some local councils are pushing the issue themselves, and, of course, donors are fleeing, as donating to the organization becomes politically risky.

Would such a “local decision” approach be any more stable than the “gay youth only” compromise? There’s a chance that concerns that have already motivated some units to peel off to found “Trail Life,” wouldn’t be assuaged, since this would presumably mean that bans on employment as, in the above example, camp counselors, would be lifted — though Boy Scout camping, as I know it anyway, is a little different than other sorts of summer camp, as the whole troop goes together, so it’s adult leaders from the troop who camp with the boys, and the counselors just run the activities. And the bigger problem is that “social justice” activists are likely to see this partial victory as nothing other than a sign that they should keep pressing their cause.

You know, in Germany, the Scouting model is entirely different. I don’t know enough about the history, except that, as Wikipedia reports, scouting was strong before the Nazi era and re-established itself afterwards, but with a much smaller presence than in the U.S., for instance. But here’s the deal: there isn’t just a single Boy Scout organization, but, instead, a federation comprised of three different groups (per the same Wikipedia article):

Bund der Pfadfinderinnen und Pfadfinder (interreligious, coeducational, 30,000 members)
Deutsche Pfadfinderschaft Sankt Georg (Catholic, coeducational, 95,000 members)
Verband Christlicher Pfadfinderinnen und Pfadfinder (Protestant, coeducational, 50,000 members)

Perhaps that’s the path we’re headed towards?

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