Now that this has happened, I suppose I can think more kindly on parents being willing to put their kids in Boy Scouts, something I found pretty awful prior to it.
The vote to end the ban on gay leaders is huge progress for the Boy Scouts, but they remain a culture that has lagged behind in appreciating diversity. Boy Scout troops in the South were not fully desegregated until 1974, while Girl Scouts elected their first African American President of the Girl Scouts USA (Go, Dr. Scott!) in 1975. Girl Scouts have long honored diversity and it shows in their organizational culture, while my little brother once brought home a Confederate flag "southern pride" patch from Jamboree.
I am truly glad at the progress the Boy Scouts USA is making towards honoring diversity but would caution parents to be aware that organizational cultures change slowly and it is important to monitor the attitudes your child is exposed to if you want him to grow up respecting people of all races, creeds, gender identities and sexual orientations.
2 comments:
I've always been relieved to have raised my kids far away from my parents for this reason (although raising them nearby my parents would have been great in so many other ways)--they would have pushed them (me) into boy scouts. While I'm sure there are great things that organization offers, no thanks to the quasi-military, anti-gay, popcorn-selling craziness (and confederate patches!! OMGZ). A friend of mine whose son is in BS, was telling me about the (mild) hazing he endured from the older boys--but far from being appalled, she thought it was good for her kid!! (Then again, she was raised in a prep school environment, so I suppose hazing seems like a normal fact of life for her).
Girl Scouts, on the other hand, are the bomb - working hard on the MDGs. The closest thing we have to hazing is the gray squirrel song when you lose stuff at camp.
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