Gay, No. Pedophiles, Sure!
Way to go, Boy Scouts!
After taking such a strong and ignorant stance against allowing gay scouts to join, come to find out …
Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.
A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks.
Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, “chronic brain dysfunction” and duties at a Shakespeare festival.
I’m tellin’ ya, you cannot be homophobic and not be weird. That is now becoming a proven scientific fact.
Thanks to Brian for the heads up.
My first thought on reading this was “I didn’t know the Catholic Church ran the Boy Scouts!”
1I agree with you, BarbinDC … there must be some umbilical cord connecting the Priests to the BS Leaders … yeah, BS, that about fits, doesn’t it?!?
The children simply are not safe where you’d think they would be the safest … some not even in their own homes! It is a sad, sad statement for how some think they have the “right” to treat the children around the world … not just in the U.S.
2This is all so terribly sad. u.d. was a scout, decades ago, and while I did not advance very far in scouting, my training in first aid, land navigation, and living off the land exceeded my army basic training in the same subjects. But our scout leaders were first rate, and none were pedophiles.
3@Uncle Dave: It isn’t that the Boy Scouts or the Church or college football programs don’t do what they are supposed to do; it’s that they seem to fail at policing themselves. It’s almost like the men in charge don’t want to accept that they are aiding and abetting pedophiles and are blind to the damage being done to the kids. Personally, I don’t get it.
4“Chronic brain dysfunction”
My old friend, “Fryer” Tuck, seems to think that defines the entire class of people running various conservative organizations like BSA, Susan Komen, the GOP and the Taliban.
My cousin, Jesus Hachecristo, seems to think “chronic” brain dysfunction is being too stoned to stay awake.
5BarbinDC, You are right about those institutions failing to police themselves, and that results both in their failure to accomplish the good they intend and injury to the kids they intended to benefit.
6I hope someone in the LBGT community presents the Boy Scouts with an award: In appreciation; for your work in protecting young gays from pedophiles, by your tireless efforts to deny them membership in your organization…
7I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but I just got this in my email:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/09/24/120924crat_atlarge_gladwell?mbid=nl_Weekly%20(22)
8It should be noted that denominations that accept gays and lesbians are not allowed to sponsor Boy Scout troops. Much of the Boy Scout backlash against gays has come from the influence of the LDS church on the organization “According to the latest BSA figures, the Mormons’ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints charters more than 37,000 Boy Scout and Cub Scout troops with a youth membership of more than 420,000”.
So the message from the Boy Scouts is: Gay is bad; atheism is bad; Pedophilia? We’ll get back to on that one.
9Scouting just isn’t the same since my old pack and troop 666 (seriously) folded up.
10BarbinDC, that was a really good article. Thanks for posting.
11Operation Save America based in Dallas, TX is helping what I call the “Cause of the Crazies” by claiming that hatred of God is what binds Islam, homosexuality & abortion. I kid you not:
http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/2012/08/30/press-release-what-do-abortion-homosexuality-and-islam-have-in-common-the-dnc/
12Navigators USA is new to me but I think it has the right idea. I was a Boy Scout, and when I became an adult was an Assistant Scoutmaster. I feel badly that an organization I used to really love and respect can be so blind today.
13@Moms Hugs aka Eve — that was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. My oh my oh my. And these people somehow believe that they are spreading the word of Christ?
Thank you for replacing my rare nightmare from Hitchcock’s movie, “Psycho” (which I saw as a teenager and had to sleep with my mother that night) with real-life horror. Crazy really, really scares me.
And is anybody truly surprised by the Boy Scouts? I’m not.
14I just finished six years as assistant scoutmast with y son’s troop. It is sponsered by a fairly liberal episcopal church and overall a good group of people. Scouting is a good alternative for kids who are not good at sports. Unfortunately, when you start dealing with regional and the national scouting organizations, you start to run into plenty of people who think America is going to hell in a hand basket because of socialists, athiests, liberrals, gays, and just about anybody who doesn’t act like Ward and June Cleaver. Its a shame they feel the need to discriminate, because scouting can be a very good program. And as someone else pointed out, the LDS church has become a driving force in scouting. They even have an alternate handbook that lets them fit the scouting program into the LDS church’s own hierarchy.
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