Boy Scouts of America: Boy Scouts of Babylon, A Special Series
In recognition of the final settlement of the lawsuit brought by six men sexually against the Boys Scouts of America (and its co-defendant, the Mormon church), in a case that ended in April, 2010 — which, ironically, coincides with the 100-year anniversaries of both the Boy Scouts of America and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — Conservative Babylon hereby begins an ongoing series about sexual abuse within the entirely anti-gay, anti-female, anti-freedom-of-religion — and largely Mormon — Boy Scouts of America.
Why? Simply because the Boy Scouts of America is (aside from the Mormon church itself) the largest, most visible epitome of institutionalized bigotry and the hypocrisy that almost always goes along with such bigotry.
And, even more importantly, understanding what drives those who prey on children — and what makes children the most vulnerable to sexual assault — may just help prevent one child from falling victim in the future.
But let’s start with the easy part — the astounding bigotry and hypocrisy of the Boy Scouts of America, and its blindness to its own culpability in the organization’s epidemic child abuse.
First, a brief recap of the BSA’s long tradition of homophobia and theocratic ways, excerpted from a much longer Wikipedia article (worth reading in full):
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA), one of the largest private youth organizations in the United States, has policies which prohibit atheists and agnostics from membership in its Scouting program, and prohibit “avowed” homosexual people from leadership roles in its Scouting program as directly violating its fundamental principles and tenets. BSA has denied or revoked membership status or leadership positions of youths and adults for violation of these foundational principles.The BSA contends that these policies are essential in its mission to instill in young people the values of the Scout Oath and Law.
The organization’s legal right to have these policies has been upheld repeatedly by both state and federal courts. In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed that as a private organization, the BSA can set its own membership standards. The BSA’s policies have been legally challenged but have not been found to constitute illegal discrimination; as a private organization in the United States they have the right to freedom of association, as determined in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale.
We fully support the right of any private organization to discriminate against anyone it wants, no matter how stupid and bigoted its reasons. If a country club wants to be an anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic organization of bigots, that’s its prerogative, as repulsive as it is.
However, when such an organization expects the public (that’s you and me) to subsidize it with our tax dollars, then we have a problem. A big one.
And we do object to being forced to fund the Boy Scouts of America; fortunately, we are not alone. In addition to recent rebukes of the BSA’s discriminatory policies by public officials…
…the policy disputes have led to litigation over the terms under which the BSA can access governmental resources including public lands.A number of public entities (including the cities of Chicago, San Diego, Tempe, Buffalo Grove, Berkeley, and Santa Barbara, as well as the states of California, Illinois, and Connecticut) have canceled charitable donations (of money or preferential land access) that had historically been granted to the Scouts. …
After the Dale decision, public opinion in some communities turned against the BSA; corporations, charities, and even some local governments criticized the policy, threatening to either cut off financial support or block the Boy Scouts from using public buildings for their meetings. …
A number of lawsuits have been filed by or with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union over issues such as government association with the BSA and the conditions under which the BSA may access governmental resources.
Among the private donors jerked awake:
About 50 of the 1300 local United Ways, including those in Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, have withdrawn all funding. The BSA has also lost all funding from several large corporations that had been regular donors, such as Chase Manhattan Bank, Levi Strauss, Fleet Bank, CVS/pharmacy, and Pew Charitable Trusts. For example, Pew Charitable Trusts, which had consistently supported the BSA for over fifty years, decided to cancel a $100,000 donation and cease future donations. …Eagle Scout filmmaker Steven Spielberg had been a long-time supporter of Scouting… Spielberg resigned from the BSA Advisory Council in 2001, saying, “it has deeply saddened me to see the Boy Scouts of America actively and publicly participating in discrimination.”
Finally, notes BSADiscrimination.org: “In the wake of the Dale decision, there is also speculation that sometime in the future, the IRS may revoke BSA’s tax exempt status, if it continues to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.”
For more links to articles about the pushback against the BSA leeching off the teat of the taxpaying public and well-meaning philanthropists — and for a look at just a fraction of (mostly Mormon) donors to anti-gay campaigns across the U.S., deeply entrenched in Boy Scout culture — see the Base8 entry, Boy Scouts of America.
And what of the Mormon hold on the Boy Scouts?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), a longtime supporter of the Boy Scouts of America, teaches that homosexual activity is immoral. The LDS Church is the largest single sponsor of Scouting units with over 30,000 units nationwide, which comprise about 13% of BSA’s youth members. The LDS Church has stated that it would withdraw from the Scouting program if it was ever compelled to accept homosexual Scout leaders.
More plainly, The Mormon Curtain notes: “Mormonism has morphed the Boy Scouts into a religious organization in which they use to indoctrinate the young men into a lifetime of church membership. Awards and rewards are based on Mormon Priesthood rules and regulations.”
(To wit, noted the Salt Lake Weekly in a 2004 article about the Mormon church’s long history of racism: “In 1974, the NAACP succeeded in pressuring the church-aligned Boy Scouts of America troops to drop priesthood prerequisites for leadership positions, from which blacks were necessarily excluded.”)
“More emphasis is placed on indoctrination and obedience to the Mormon Gospel,” continues The Mormon Curtain. “Young men are accelerated through the program faster than boys outside the Mormon controlled BSA. Mormon boys can receive an Eagle Award simply by placing bags on neighbor doors to collect food for homeless shelters.”
One writer states: “Years ago I was asked by a Baptist Church to start a non-morg [Mormon] troop in the north-west area of Salt Lake. We received our training by the only show in town that is the mormon establishment. It was a statistical fact that mormon troops graduated kids to Eagle Scout TWICE as fast as the national average. The morg allows almost nonsensical Eagle Projects, such as carpet cleaning in the local ward or Stake Center.”
And another: “”[Elder Dallenbach of the First Quorum of 70] said (as best as I can remember) that he did not give a rats ass whether the LDS boys completed the Eagle or not, nor how well they did. They main purpose of the scouting program in the Church was to help to prepare the boys to go on missions, get married in the temple, and become good members in the Church. In fact he alluded to the fact that the Church was preparing ITS OWN scouting program in case the BSA lost it’s case regarding Gay scout masters. Basically if Gays were allowed to be scoutmasters, the Church had no qualms in dropping them.”
As early as 1978, the Boy Scouts of America circulated a memorandum among national executive staff stating that they held it was not appropriate for homosexuals to hold leadership positions in BSA. Similarly, since at least 1985, the BSA has interpreted the Scout Oath and Law as being incompatible with agnosticism and atheism. In both instances, the organization asserted that it was not a new policy to oppose and disfavor atheism, agnosticism and homosexuality; and, in support of that, to deny membership to atheists and agnostics, and to deny leadership roles to and occasionally expel “avowed” homosexual persons — rather, the BSA argued it was just enforcing long-held policies which had never been published or publicly challenged. …
And then, of course, there is the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the completely baseless myth that gay men are more likely to molest boys.
“Officially,” writes Patrick Boyle in Scout’s Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution*, “the gay ban has nothing to do with child molesters. The BSA training guidelines for volunteers say that one myth about abuse is that ‘children are at greater risk of sexual victimization from “gay” (homosexual) adults than from “straight” (heterosexual) adults.’ [The national BSA] says that homosexuals cannot be Scout leaders because they are not appropriate role models for the traditional family values on which Scouting is based.”
But, “despite the corporation’s position that homosexuals are not natural child molesters, much of the public support for the ban draws on that very anxiety. In 1989, a half-page ad in a California newspaper urged voters to reject part of an antidiscrimination law that gave protection to homosexuals, saying it would allow gays to join Scouting and cause the ‘molesting of innocent Boy Scouts.’ When leaders gathered in Maryland in the spring of 1991 to watch a film on fighting sex abuse, one leader stood to ask how they could win that fight with gays filing lawsuits to join troops. ‘They have no business being around our kids!’ the man said.”
“The irony,” Boyle concludes (emphasis ours), “is that while the Boy Scouts bans men who are openly gay, those are not the men who usually molest Scouts. The vast majority of abusers in Scouting are heterosexual as adults, or at least carry on that way. The danger is with straight men who like boys, or gay men who are afraid to come out.”**
The Boy Scouts of America’s position is that atheists and agnostics cannot participate as Scouts (youth members) or Scouters (adult leaders) in its traditional Scouting programs. According to the Bylaws of the BSA, Declaration of Religious Principle:
“The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, ‘On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.’ The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members.”… The BSA believes that atheists and agnostics are not appropriate role models of the Scout Oath and Law for boys, and thus will not accept such adults as leaders. …
Since 1991, openly homosexual individuals have been officially prohibited from leadership positions in the Boy Scouts of America. A 1991 Position Statement states:
“We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.”… In 2005, a high-level employee of BSA was fired by the National Council after the organization received a copy of his bill from a gay resort at which he had vacationed. In 2009, the mother and civil union partner of a Vermont Scout were prohibited from volunteering for his pack when it was learned they were gay. …
In 2001, the Boston Minuteman Council adopted a nondiscrimination policy which included sexual orientation; however, when an openly homosexual man attempted to register as a merit badge counselor he was rejected on the basis of his sexual orientation. The same year, nine BSA local councils proposed a resolution that would have allowed local councils to comply with nondiscrimination policies regarding homosexual persons but the resolution was rejected by the BSA National Council. Also in 2001, the BSA revoked the charters of several Cub Scout packs in Oak Park, Illinois, because the sponsors, a parent-teacher group, adhered to a policy which banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. In part due to a lawsuit (Cradle of Liberty Council v. City of Philadelphia), the Cradle of Liberty Council in Philadelphia adopted a nondiscrimination policy with respect to sexual orientation in 2003 but was ordered to revoke it by the National Council. …
The Boy Scouts of America has been sued because of its membership, leadership, and employment standards. … During the 1980s and 1990s, several people attracted media attention when they sued the BSA, attempting to make them accept atheists as members and homosexual individuals in leadership positions. In 1981, Tim Curran, an openly homosexual former Scout, sued asking that he be accepted as an assistant Scoutmaster (see Curran v. Mount Diablo Council). In 1991, twin brothers William and Michael Randall, who had refused to recite the “duty to God” portion of the Cub Scout Promise and Boy Scout Oath, sued to be allowed to continue in the program… Ultimately, the courts ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts of America in each case.
The courts have repeatedly held that the Boy Scouts of America, and all private organizations, have a right to set membership standards in accordance with the First Amendment protected concept of freedom of association. In particular, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the BSA’s Constitutional right to freedom of association gave them the authority to expel a gay assistant Scoutmaster.
With that — and before anyone gets on his high horse and lambastes us for “picking on” the Boy Scouts or any other such nonsense — ask yourself this:
Why do the Boy Scouts have such a problem with sexual abuse among its ranks, when no other similar organization — such as the Girls Scouts, which openly welcomes lesbian leaders, and gay and atheist Scouts — doesn’t?
To echo Patrick Boyle: The Boys Scouts are banning the very people least likely to molest children.
And if the BSA is so vigilent in keeping gays and atheists out of its ranks, it stands to reason that all they have left are religious heterosexuals.
Maybe the answer is to welcome gay and atheist leaders and Scouts, and start banning religious zealots.
With that, let’s just see how “morally straight” the Boys Scouts of America has been all these years.
ONE IN A SERIES
Each entry in our ongoing series will be marked by the green box at right.
Of course, we can’t possibly list every perp, since, as Wikipedia notes: “There have been more than 2,000 US cases of abuse within the Boy Scouts of America prior to 1994 by Scout leaders” — but we already know one thing: Tragically, this series will be endless.
* Boyle’s worthy book, Scout’s Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution, is the product of a series of investigative articles published in 1991 for The Washington Times. Notes Wikipedia:
“Staff from the newspaper had worked for two years preparing the series, reviewing internal and personnel records from the Boy Scouts; tens of thousands of pages of court records from more than 20 states; and more than 1,000 newspaper articles about abused Scouts; as well as interviewing more than 200 people, including molesters, families of victims, Scout leaders, sex abuse experts and lawyers. The newspaper restricted itself to reported cases of male Scout leaders abusing boy scouts prior to the introduction of its Youth Protection program. In summation they wrote “The Boy Scouts are a magnet for men who want to have sexual relations with children… Pedophiles join the Scouts for a simple reason: it’s where the boys are.”The series of articles drew on three historical sources:
• Historical “confidential files” (formerly known as the “Ineligible Volunteer Files”) within Scout records, with details on 231 Scout leaders banned from Scouting for sexual misconduct from 1975 through 1984.
• 50 lawsuits against the Scouts by families of molested boys from around the US.
• A list from the BSA of more than 350 men banned for sexual misconduct from 1971 to 1986.
The newspaper discovered that at least 1,151 Scouts reported being abused by their leaders over a 19 year period: they published a detailed list of 416 cases from 1971-1990 where a US Scout leader who was arrested or banned from Scouting for sexual abuse of Scouts, adding that experts said the real number of abusers and victims was probably several times higher.
The entire five-part series is available on Mr. Boyle’s Web site (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
Among the startling findings, as summarized by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service:
“Each year from 1971 through 1989, an average of 21 male Boy Scout leaders and camp workers were banned from the organization or arrested for sexual misconduct with Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Explorers. The acts ranged from proposing sex and fondling boys in their sleep to performing oral sex and intercourse with them. During the period, an average of 60 Boy Scouts were abused each year, with some abused multiple times before they told anyone. Boy Scout officials tried to hide the sex abuse problem from the public, the press, parents and the police. Camping trips were the most popular places for Boy Scout leaders to have sexual relations with boys. In many ways, the problem of child sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts organization reflects the problem of child sexual abuse in the United States.”
And — disturbingly reminiscent of the Catholic church’s pattern of overlooking priest abuse of children and/or attempting to cover up sexual abuse by moving its child molesters to other parishes (and even other countries):
“The molesters often joined troops and molested boys even after being caught. While the vast majority of cases do not state whether the offenders had criminal records, at least 21 of the men did — mostly for sex offenses with children. Others had left troops or youth groups under suspicion but weren’t charged.”
** Boyle also cites studies which “repeatedly show that most [men who molest boys] are not homosexual with adults … ‘It is a faulty assumption that if an adult male selects a young boy as a victim, that this constitutes a homosexual orientation on the part of the offender,’ several researchers wrote in a study of 148 convicted molesters. ‘Offenders attracted to boy victims typically report that they are uninterested in or revulsed by adult homosexual relationships and find the young boy’s feminine characteristics and absence of secondary sexual characteristics appealing.’ Dr. Gene Abel says that of several hundred molesters he has studied, 21 percent of the men who molest boys were exclusively homosexual. Some were bisexual, but most preferred women as adult sex partners. He considers pedophilia a separate class of sexual preference, independent of a man’s preferences with adults.”
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