Hans Zeiger earned many a merit badge in the boy scouts; I'm guessing he didn't earn one in logic. His latest column at the Worldnutdaily compares the Boy Scouts of America to the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts, a training group for Hezbollah that teaches young men how to be terrorists and suicide bombers. I'm not sure why he does this. The subtitle of the article is Exclusive: Hans Zeiger asks ACLU, which group advocates 'discrimination'? Comparing the fact that one is a terrorist group and one is not does not answer that question. Evidently, Zeiger believes that if he can point to a much worse group that does terrible things, it magically means the Boy Scouts don't discriminate. In fact, I suspect both groups share the same prejudices. I doubt you'll find gays or atheists in either one. Something tells me that Hans needs to stick to building fires with a couple of sticks and administering CPR. The badge for rational thinking is well beyond his grasp.
- Log in to post comments
I'm an atheist and I was in Scouts. Although Scouts is an officially Christian organization we really didn't pay much attention to it. In addition to atheists, our troop also had two Muslim brothers and one guy who was a Hindu.
Granted, every troop is going to be a bit different. I would imagine that this is probably due to how religious the leaders are. Of our three leaders, one was a pastor at the local Anglican church and two were agnostic.
Sticking to the topic at hand, though, last time I heard homosexuals were still not allowed to occupy leader positions.
For the sake of completeness I should also mention that I was a Scout in Canada.
A further thought: The rationale that's sometimes given for not letting gay men become Scout leaders is that they could abuse the kids. That's pretty stupid, but what is even stupider is that the people who believe this don't usually have a problem with hetero men being leaders in Girl Guides.
I agree with your point, but, like CaptainMike, have to disagree with "I doubt you'll find gays or atheists in either one." Yes, the national policy of the Boy Scouts is one of discrimination, but that doesn't always filter down to the local level. No one cared who did or didn't believe in what god in my area. Gays? That's not exactly an age when many are open about it (although you can be a scout until 18, most scouts seem to leave several years before that).
The last part should have read:
Gays? That's harder to say. It's not exactly an age when many are open about it (although you can be a scout until 18, most scouts seem to leave several years before that).
CaptainMike: in the Dale case, the BSA admitted that fear of child abuse was not part of their anti-gay rationale and that it's leadership was aware that gay men are no more likely to abuse children than straight men. Nevertheless, many right-wing commentators and bloggers continue to assert that the policy was intended to prevent the sort of scandals associated with the Catholic Church; they seem unaware that they're basically saying that the BSA leadership perjured itself before the Supreme Court.
Okay, I read through his articles, and I don't see any claim that Zeiger was ever a Boy Scout. Where did you get the idea he was, Mr. Brayton?
Ed -
Zeiger is an eagle scout now attending Hillsdale College here in Michigan. He is the founder of the Scout Honor Coalition and has written an entire book about the scouts. In other words, he's Sean Hannity larvae.
I suspect he didn't get the Journalism merit badge, either, and thought it's Eagle required, I worry about the Citizenship in the World badge, too.
While the Hezbollah Scout group he cites is not a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), according to their website, it's clear that they are modeling themselves on the Scout model. So, consistent with your perplexion, one must wonder just what Zeiger's point is. Those unfamiliar with WOSM may simply assume that the Hezbollah group is part of the WOSM, to which Zeiger (and I) belong. Those familiar with WOSM will note that the founding members of the Arab branch of WOSM were in Iraq and Syria, and that the Libyan Scouts have been members for years.
So I'm confused. If Zeiger is trying to say we should be wary of Scouts, he's just being a twerp. If he's tryign to defend U.S. Scouts, he's done a bad job of it. If he's trying to slam ACLU, he's not very effective there, either.
And, as an Eagle Scout, he should know that it's considered untoward to use Scouting for political purposes. He should be pround of his Scouting heritage, which includes great people like Sen. Bill Bradley (an Eagle), former Rep. Dick Gephardt (another Eagle) and the late Sen. Jennings Randolph. But he should also be aware that there are a lot of former Scouts, and Eagles, who are members of ACLU, working on the values they learned working for their Citizenship in the Nation merit badge.
In the end, you're right: There is no patina from Scouting which makes Zeiger's column shine. He needs better material to work from.
BTW, I wouldn't bet the farm on there being no gays or atheists in Scouting. As a pragmatic matter, kids 7-years old often are somewhat unaware of their sexual orientation; we don't query kids coming in as to their sexual preferences, nor should we. And while atheists could self-exclude at their initial registration, religious belief and unbelief often are not set when a kid joins Cub Scouts. We used to have a fair number of atheists in Scouting, and we even had a path to a "religious" award for most of them; my experience as a Scout was that those atheists generally came to unbelief during their Scouting (not necessarily as a result of Scouting), and no one bothered to ask a good kid with high ethics and great leadership potential the acid question as he progressed to Eagle.
Scouting is a great program for kids. It can be twisted by a wrong-headed national council, though.