Exclusion Of Gays From Boy Scouts

In the past years the most moving and influential event in my life was when the Boy Scouts Of America decided to discriminate against homosexuals. They stated that gays were not living by the Boy Scout Law of being "clean" and the Scout Oath of being "morally straight". The association banned any gay troop leaders and any gay scouts. One Scout spokesman stated that "A homosexual is not a role model for traditional family values" and "An avowed homosexual wouldn't be a role model for those values," [in the Scout Oath]. BSA decided to ban gays even when all of the other youth organizations were not "The Girls Scouts of America, the YMCA, 4-H clubs, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Jewish community groups, don't exclude gays." BSA also lost over $530,000 in public governmental funding in September 2000 alone after the vote was passed to exclude gays from its organization.

At the time of this decision I was a Boy Scout and I was also gay. I felt targeted even though at the time I was not publicly out with my sexuality. Why should it be such a big deal? Why does it even matter? It shouldn't and it doesn't because it is nothing I can change. Just because I'm a homosexual doesn't mean I can't climb a mountain, swim the mile, go backpacking, and do everything else a straight male could do. In most cases I was the best at whatever I did and I was proud of myself. I went backpacking for 88 miles with a 40 pound pack for 10 days in the Rocky Mountains and I swam the fastest mile in the entire summer camp.

BSA tried to stop gays, because we weren't going to get married, have kids, have a little dog, and a nice house in the suburbs; we were going to find our love elsewhere, somewhere they didn't approve, but in the end they didn't stop us.

Even through all the obstacles I proved that I could be a good boy scout, no, a great one.

For more quotes that correspond to the sourced ones above and for a list of organizations/states petitioning against BSA's ban of gays see http://www.hatecrime.org/subpages/boyscouts.html