Despite a proposed change at the national level, if you’re gay the Boy Scouts in Houston still don’t want you.
On Monday, Sam Houston Area Council members said they would continue the current national policy of the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America.
Like the military’s former “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy about gay troops, the Boy Scouts don’t ask about the sexual orientation of a prospective member or adult volunteer but won’t grant membership to openly gay people or those who engage in behavior that would “become a distraction’ to their mission, the Sam Houston Council said in a statement.
A recent survey of parents, volunteers and backers in the Sam Houston Council showed strong support for keeping the policy as it is, officials said.
They said 75 percent of respondents to the survey were against changing the current national membership policy.
The Boy Scouts of America recently proposed to change its policy to allow scouts who are gay, but not scout leaders. Apparently, that was too inclusive for the Sam Houston Area Council. I haven’t had a positive view of the Boy Scouts for a long time because of their retrograde policies, so stuff like this doesn’t surprise me. I don’t know what to say, so I’ll just post this:
Of course, the BSA hasn’t voted on that inclusion for some but not for all policy yet. If the Sam Houston Area Council is any indication, even that small step forward may not happen.
I promised when I was a candidate for Eagle Scout that I would become a scout leader one day. But I became an atheist first, and gay or not, they still won’t admit Buddhists. It’s probably for the best — the camping was fun, but the faux Indian stuff was embarrassing even when I was a teenager.