On Boy Scouts and Gay Leaders

In 2008 I earned the rank of Eagle Scout as a member of Troop 51 in Fayetteville, New York. I have bragged about this in the past, but this is not bragging--I simply want to put my viewpoint in context.

On Monday, the Boy Scouts of America revoked the charter of a Seattle Boy Scout troop who stood behind their openly gay Scoutmaster. This was in keeping with a longstanding BSA rule refusing the leadership of "open or avowed" homosexual men. The BSA only recently acted to allow openly gay youths in Boy Scout troops, with that decree coming last May via a vote from the BSA's national council. 

I will put this as plainly as I know how: The Boy Scouts of America, by holding onto this policy, are committing a moral and social wrong. Their ban on gay leaders within the Scouts reflects the ignorance borne of an outdated understanding of what homosexuality is and who homosexuals are. 

The official policy of the BSA, as of 2004, reads as follows: "Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed." This revision, while still ethically disastrous, was changed from the 1993 resolution, which stated that "homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement...that a Scout be morally straight and...that a Scout be clean in word and deed...homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts."

The BSA is making the problematic choice to espouse the belief that being sexually straight is akin to being morally straight. And by doing so, they are doing an untold number of their members a great disservice. 

What are scouts who are struggling with their own sexualities, their own identities, to make of this? Boys who might love every moment they've spent with their troop, love all the new skills they've learned and the sense of community they've gained, essentially being told that when they grow up they will be unfit to lead, because of who they might love? Or boys who happen to have gay fathers, unable to understand why their dad wasn't invited on the camping trip when everyone else's was?

Look. I understand that joining the Boy Scouts, either as a boy or as an adult leader, is a choice. No one can make you, and there are those who would say that if a gay leader didn't want to be removed from his position, he never should have joined an organization that was so contrary to his own principles in the first place. But (at the risk of building a straw man here) I would be willing to bet that most people who would say that have never spent any great length of time inside a Boy Scout troop.

I refer back to my own experience as a scout, which spanned from 1998 to 2008. In Cub Scout Pack 153 and BSA Troop 51 I interacted with and served the community alongside boys and leaders from all walks of life. This included a number of scouts who were "open and avowed homosexuals" (to borrow the BSA's own troublesome phrase), as well as some who were neither open nor avowed but weren't heterosexual, either. Young boys are shitty to one another for any number of reasons, but in my memories of Troop 51 no one was outwardly shitty to anyone else strictly because of their sexual preference. In the ways that counted, we were by and large a very open, if strange and occasionally lazy, bunch. 

It is in this way that individual Boy Scout troops, and individual Boy Scouts, are a far cry from what the BSA claims to be as a whole. Troop 51 harbored its fair share of gay scouts during my time in it, as well as a number of atheists and agnostics (both of which also fall in the "unacceptable" category as far as BSA is concerned). And in a twist that will hopefully surprise no one, there were good and bad gay scouts. There were good and bad agnostic scouts. There were good and bad hetero scouts. There were good and bad rigidly Christian scouts. It was, frankly, an awful lot like real life.

One of the things Boy Scouts are required to learn is the Scout Law, which lists the twelve characteristics that all scouts must have. They are as follows: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The idea is that these twelve points are all equally valuable and important in the life of a scout.

I suspect I, like many, struggled hardest with the law of "obedience". What I've learned as I've grown older is that obedience is only valuable when it's reflected upon--we should stay accountable and obedient to those we trust and respect, but blindly obeying orders is not exactly healthy behavior. By stripping Troop 98 of its charter, the BSA has made that most troublesome of scout laws, being obedient, more valuable than my personal favorite scout law, being loyal. These scouts, as well as the Reverend Monica Corsaro, stayed loyal to a man who they believed was a good man and a good leader. They stayed loyal to their principles at the expense of remaining obedient to a faceless superior. 

In doing so, these boys ascribed to a much higher "standard of manhood" than that passed down by the BSA's ruling council. The troop as a whole, including Rev. Corsaro, displayed their open minds and open hearts and received a national rebuke. The BSA is allowing each of them to join up with other troops, but that seems like so much wishful thinking on the council's part--who would want to continue on in such an institution? An institution that upbraids and degrades those people who don't fit the narrow, outdated ideal of what it means "to be a man"? 

I will always be proud to be an Eagle Scout, because I know what I've accomplished and I know the years of work it took to attain Scouting's highest honor. But as long as this foolish, archaic policy remains in place, I will find it impossible to be proud of the Boy Scouts of America. 

Untitled Story, Chapter 2 (excerpt)

The ship rose out of the water taller than anything Solomon could have imagined, taller even than the highest trees he had climbed on his father's land. The scope of everything in the port dazzled him, from the dock jutting into the waves like a piece of road transplanted in the ocean, to the mooring lines as wide around as his waist, to the ocean itself, impossibly vast, rolling and frothing just as he had envisioned in his daydreams. The one element he had never considered was the smell of it all. He was hypnotized by the tang of salt on the air, something he had only ever tasted on rare occasions in town when the butcher had slipped him pieces of cured meat as his father conducted business across the street. But this...this was salt as he had never imagined it. It filled his nostrils, his lungs, and his mind as he stood on the bustling path that led from the seaport market down to the docks. Dizzy with the sights and smells, he sat himself on top of a barrel out of the way and took it all in as best he could. 

For a boy who had spent the better part of his life wandering the woods alone, such a place was a shock to the senses. He saw all manner of men either rushing or lazing about, clad in strange clothes and speaking to each other in tongues he did not understand. Strange as it may seem to those who are well-read, and knowledgeable of the world, and who have spent their lives meeting all kinds of people, Solomon Hyrax had never before considered that there might be whole groups of others that didn't speak in the same language as he. This revelation and the observations that led to it were enough to keep him fixated in his seat for well over an hour. 

He gazed at the crowded tumble of stores and homes that vied for space in the town that stretched out behind him. They were ramshackle, mostly, painted in pale pinks and blues and yellows. Where the paint had chipped away old boards showed through, eroded in strange patterns by the salt wind and turned an odd green by the moisture. Solomon's eyes took all of this in, so new and different from the dry and comfortable Naweego that he had grown up in, eventually alighting on a building nothing like the others. 

It was shaped like an odd sort of cone, black and white stripes spiraling up its sides, with what appeared to be a tiny glass house at its top. This building stood far apart from the rest, perched at the end of the ancient stone seawall that led across the mouth of the town and out into the rocky shoals. Solomon never left the barrel, but his mind was working overtime processing all the rough-hewn majesty of the oceanside town. He was chewing without thought, barely cognizant of the matronly woman who had come out of a nearby shop and pushed a steaming, meat-filled pastry into his hands.

During this time, the older Hyrax was dashing about attempting to haggle for last-minute supplies and making sure all preparations had been made in advance of their arrival. In truth he was in a state of anxious panic, setting the wheels in motion for an undertaking full of possibilities both hopeful and terrible. Jacques was and always had been an exceptionally brave man, and the anxiety clawing at his chest and suffocating his breath was a new sensation to him. He was not a man readily given over to hoping for things, practical as he was, but that emotion was fighting for space within him as well. Though he never could have vocalized it, part of him hoped he was doing right for Solomon's sake as much as for his own.

He need not have worried, at least on Solomon's account. One of the things that marks children as children (and which marks them as nearing adulthood when they begin to lose it) is the unwavering belief that their parents know what to do in any situation, particularly the tough ones. Solomon was no different, and had always believed his father to be a man whose decisions were correct. This too might seem curious, given the utter lack of socialization or emotional connection developed in the Hyrax home, but Solomon's lifelong isolation must again be taken into consideration. 

After a great deal of time Jacques emerged from the cobbled street's dry goods store with another man. Two others followed them, one pushing a roughly hewn wooden cart piled high with sacks of flour and potatoes and the other rolling a veritable flotilla of barrels with skill. Though Solomon knew nothing of such matters, there was no mistaking that the man striding beside his father was a person of importance. This newcomer exuded an air of power and authority, and though he was at least a head shorter than either of the Hyraxes, it was apparent to Solomon that he ought to stay out of this man's way. 

Jacques summoned Solomon with a twitch of his head as he kept pace with this authoritative newcomer. Solomon lifted himself down from his perch, working a kink out of his saddlesore backside as he hurried to his father's side. The new man was talking away, in a manner as rough as the boards of the shop they had just left.

"...can't promise that. But my best guess is eight days out before we reach the Chasm. Can't take ya no further. My crew and I'll be banking straight north once we reach it to finish our supply run and start fishin'. If your people are where you say they'll be, we should be able to pass ya across to 'em without too much trouble."

"Thank you, Captain. Solomon..." His father paused. "We're off to sea. Can you understand?"

There seemed to be more to the question than that, but whatever it was went unasked. Solomon retrieved his trunk from where it lay behind the carriage as their walk wheeled them down towards the dock, the great ship looming larger and larger as they approached. Solomon scarcely dared believe it. After his long years of sleeping and dreaming and imagining the sea, he was about to sever the invisible ties that bound his feet to the land and set sail for the first time. The destination hardly seemed to matter; indeed, the thought of where they might be headed barely crossed his eager mind as he made his way up the gangplank onto the sturdy timbers of the vessel that lay waiting for him. 

                                      .                    .                   .                      .                .

They were at sea for three nights before Solomon was able to lie down for bed without feeling as though his insides were down below the deck, rolling around the cargo hold among the barrels of wine and smoked meat and gunpowder. Those first few days were among the most unpleasant of Solomon Hyrax's young life. All of his romantic notions of life at sea, all of his yearning to know the most intimate details of a ship's handling and operation, had seeped out of him through the planks of the Windjammer's deck as he lay curled up and immobile behind an enormous spool of rope. 

He had never felt so acutely aware of being sick; consequently, he had never felt so little care about the things going on around him. Men came and went, his father among them (though for much longer periods of time than anyone else who came to sit with him), carrying out duties and affairs that Solomon could not muster an ounce of interest in. He had spent those three days inwardly cursing himself, his stomach, and the sea. Here was the clear beginning of an adventure that he had spent a short lifetime pining for, and he was too violently ill to take any more part in his oceanic journey than a piece of driftwood takes in its own. 

Now, as all seagoing folk know, these kinds of ailments are usually temporary. Before he knew it, though long after he began silently begged for it, Solomon was feeling almost himself again. He found that he was absurdly hungry, and it dawned on him that he had not eaten a bite since the pastry he had savored from on top of the barrel at the docks of Merriport. The tingling excitement that had electrified him the moment he stepped on board had been deadened by the rolling of his stomach. Now, as his seasickness started to subside, Solomon's feelings of flighty happiness began to well up in him again. He rose from his makeshift quarters, steadying his weakened knees by propping himself up on the massive coil of rope. 

"Well, well. Finally decided to join us, lad?"

Solomon pushed a limp coil of salt-bleached orange hair out of his face and saw standing before him the same dubious-looking man that had come to his house (could it only have been four nights ago?). His weatherbeaten face was wreathed in the acrid smoke of his black pipe. Solomon nodded slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements in case his innards decided to betray him again. 

"Good to see yeh on your feet. Yer father'll be lookin' for yeh. Give your corner there a moppin', when yer feelin' up to it."

The man was gone. He had still given no explanation of who he was, or why his coming had created such a momentous frenzy in the Hyrax home, or where they were going. 

                                                  .            .              .              .           .            .            .

Despite what the strange man had said, Solomon did not hear a word from his father for another two days. He would see the older man every few hours, usually deeply engaged in the work of the ship. Jacques' sinews bulged visibly even beneath his salt-stained cloth jacket as he went about his work. Solomon had always assumed his father to be a man of prodigious strength, but to see him in action tying off the sails or carrying up whole crates of dried food from below deck was something else entirely. At fifteen years old Solomon was quite strong himself, though he did not help with any of the work taking place on board save for the mopping requested by the strange man. No one spoke to him except to bring him food, and somehow it didn't seem to be his place to ask for a job to do. 

What Solomon did do was what he had always done: climb. The rigging of the massive ship provided ample opportunity for a boy as skilled as he to pull himself up, hand over hand, into the highest places. A quick test of any line's tension told him whether or not it was already secured in place, and if it was he could make use of it. He found the climbing of ropes and  masts to be a welcome challenge, as the whole apparatus was fundamentally more unsteady than anything he had climbed all of those lifetimes ago--or was it only weeks?-- in the colorful woods of his father's land.

From his vantage point high in the rigging of the Windjammer, Solomon could see the sailors going about their business far below. As he had done on trips into town with his father, as he had done his entire life, he imagined what the people far below were like. It troubled him only a little that he was not actually getting to know them, only creating lives for them in his own head, because he had no reason to believe that they had any inclination to get to know him in return. If they even knew he existed.

He finally spoke with his father on a hot bright morning, quite by accident. Solomon had taken it upon himself to sweep out the deck in front of the captain's quarters. Having finished early, he decided to sweep the inside as well. He had yet to find a locked door on board the ship, and guessed that this would be no different. He eased his way through the well-worn door, moving quietly in his fashion, and was startled to see his father sitting at the captain's desk poring over a large and fraying map. The older man's shirt was completely unbuttoned, and in the dusty half-light filtering through the porthole he saw what looked like ink stains covering his father's sizable chest. Jacques Hyrax was sweating considerably in the stuffy cabin, but his perspiration was not making the ink run, and Solomon stood transfixed as his eyes began to focus on the strange shapes and patterns swimming across the torso of a man who had never been anything but primly dressed in front of his son. 

If the elder Hyrax was startled by his son's presence, he didn't show it. His ice-blue eyes locked on Solomon's as he buttoned his shirt all the way back up and buried the pictures on his skin once more. He reached for a cloth that lay to the side of the desk, and slowly mopped his glistening forehead. Solomon detached his eyes from his father's chest, now covered by Jacques' rough blue shirt and utterly unremarkable. 

He rarely ever spoke to his father, especially without being spoken to first, and never asked him a question without good reason. But Jacques was just sitting there, calmly and with jaw set, as though expecting one to come. Hundreds of them danced across the front of his son's mind, begging to be asked, and Solomon blurted out the one he thought might bring him the least trouble.

"Father…who is that man? The one who came to the house, I mean. I…" 

For a few more moments, agonizing to the ever-placating young man, Jacques remained quiet with his  eyes fixed directly on his son's. When he finally broke his rigid pose, his magnificent red beard was matted by the force of his sigh. 

"I'm afraid I don't know his real name. I have always known him simply as Rip Rap. He is an old sailor and now serves as the keeper of the lighthouse that you may have seen when we were in Merriport. As such he's perhaps the best-informed man on the entire coast. He brought me some news on the day that he came to the house, and Rip Rap's news is always worth something…for good or ill."

Sweat was beading on Solomon's forehead and he could see the dust motes filtering down in the strong beam of sunlight that came through the closed porthole behind his father's head. The air in the room was becoming stifling. He dared not ask what the news had been. 

"I'm glad to see that you're up and about. Ships take some getting used to. Give it another few days and you'll be moving around like you've spent your whole life on board. I'll sweep this office from now on, so you can leave it out of your list of duties. I'm sure there's plenty of dirt in the galley for you to clean up, while you're in the mood. And please tell Rip Rap I would like a word, if you come across him."

Solomon took the hint that his interview was over, and left the room with his broom in hand. As he made his exit he saw his father begin to unbutton his shirt once more.