A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Litigious...

Former gay scoutmaster James Dale on growing up gay in scouting:

I was trying to fit in, looking for a niche or a crowd I could be part of. 

So I tried soccer, band, karate — all the activities that little boys growing up in my middle-class New Jersey suburb were supposed to enjoy. But I spent most of my time on the sidelines, never really feeling like I belonged.Until I was 8 years old, and I discovered Cub Scout Pack 242.

For the first time in my life, I felt I was a valued part of a group. I could be an insecure and fearful kid, but Scouting offered positive reinforcement, a direction, shared goals. My fellow Cub Scouts didn’t judge me because I couldn’t hit a home run. We were taught to appreciate each other’s strengths because each of us was a unique and necessary part of a larger whole. 

Scouting even brought me closer to my father. His demanding commute to Manhattan and weekends in the Army Reserve often kept us apart, but now, more than 30 years later, I still remember whittling down a seven-inch block of wood into a sporty sedan for the Pine­wood Derby with him. In our garage, surrounded by the pungent scent of sawdust and spray paint, we found common ground in Scouting. 

I went from Tiger to Wolf to Bear to Webelos, and at age 10 I crossed the bridge into Boy Scouts. Year by year, with every skill award and merit badge, I held my head a bit higher and became more accepting of myself, developing a sense of value and self-worth. During this time I started to think I might be gay, but it was a nonissue in the Scouting environment. I sensed no polarization, no culture war. In the Scouts I found countless peers and volunteers who helped me establish my convictions and find my voice. 

I would need those convictions and that voice on Aug. 10, 1990, just before my junior year at Rutgers, when I received a letter from my local council leader, James Kay. “The grounds for this membership revocation are the standards for leadership established by the Boy Scouts of America,” the letter read, “which specifically forbid membership to homosexuals.” 

It was a punch in the gut. Scouting was about overarching principles — kindness, respect, community — that could be upheld regardless of sexual orientation. How could this be?

Yea. How could the BSA possibly know that Dale was gay?...

At this point in my life I was openly gay and unashamed of it. I was co-president of Rutgers’s Lesbian/Gay Alliance and an assistant Scoutmaster in Troop 73 of Matawan, N.J. — and saw no contradiction between the two parts of my life. A local paper had published an article about me, and that is how my sexuality had become a matter of public record.

Oh. He was president of his college LGBT alliance and announced the fact that he was flouting BSA policy in the press.

Then he sued the BSA for the same policy he implicitly endorsed by signing up to be a scoutmaster, hoping obviously for a big payday at the expense of the kids:

I challenged the BSA policy in the New Jersey Supreme Court and won a unanimous victory. “The human price of this bigotry has been enormous,” wrote Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz. “At a most fundamental level, adherence to the principle of equality demands that our legal system protect the victims of invidious discrimination.” In a concurring opinion, Justice Alan B. Handler emphasized that being gay does not take away from “one’s ability to participate in and contribute responsibly and positively to society.”

Dale could practically taste the money...

When the BSA appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, I continued the fight — and ultimately lost in a 5-4 decision on June 28, 2000.

So much for early retirement. Those scouts are so selfish...

The majority ruled that it was within the BSA’s First Amendment rights to exclude gay members if it thought our presence would undermine its mission. In other words, the nation’s highest court ruled that the Scouts could legally enshrine bigotry into the Scout Oath and Law.

The court ruled that private organizations can legally restrict membership to people who share their values. The First Amendment protects freedom of association. 

The ruling contradicted all I’d learned in my years of Scouting. As a Scout, I couldn’t accept it. So I’m still fighting...

Maybe the big payday will still come...

... the Boy Scouts of America is choosing to become increasingly irrelevant. With each passing day, the Scouts will continue to lose members, sponsors and funding because people are disassociating themselves from an organization that tells a boy he is immoral, unworthy or unacceptable simply because his is gay...

It all comes at an unacceptable human cost; this kind of bias is the reason for high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide among gay youth. It’s a policy that will harm some of the young people that the Boy Scouts was created to help.

Yea. The high disease and death rates among homosexuals have nothing to do with massive promiscuity in service to a sexual perversion in the midst a deadly epidemic and the use of dangerous drugs to heighten sexual experiences.

Gays are such helpless victims. It's all the fault of people who don't engage in gay sex.

*sigh*

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Here's some suggestions for Mr. Dale:

1) Start your own organization-- "the Gay Boy Scouts-- GBS".  Parents can send their boys on GBS camping trips with their gay scoutmasters-- "Camping equality"... Ranks are Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Rear Admiral... Merit badges in T-Ball, Tent-Sharing, and Tea-Bagging... "A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Discreet, Submissive..." It'll be a big hit with families. 

2) In the interest of reciprocity, Mr. Dale, as former co-president of the Rutgers Gay and Lesbian Alliance, should take the Gay Alliance to court for not having enough conservative Christians who disapprove of homosexual conduct as members of the Alliance. Heck, if opponents of the values of the Boy Scouts should be leaders of the Scouts, why shouldn't opponents of the homosexual lifestyle should be leaders of gay organizations? Why shouldn't a conservative Christian anti-sodomy activist be "co-president" of the gay alliance? The reciprocity seems obvious.

If Boy Scouts should be forced by law to admit even to leadership positions people who do not share their values, why should gay organizations not be similarly forced?

Gay organizations aren't a bunch of bigots, are they?

Actually, Mr. Dale will never have to worry about being forced to accept people who disagree with him in membership or leadership positions in his gay organization. 

Fortunately, the Supreme Court decision that Dale lost protects his right to form private organizations that reflect his personal views-- the right to freedom of association-- without coercion by some litigious intolerant hypocritical scumbag looking for a big payday and his five minutes of fame.