Holy war

Why do the Boy Scouts make such a big deal about gays when the Girl Scouts don't? The boys rely on donations from the Mormon Church while the girls sell cookies.

by Patrick Boyle

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, members of the health-and-safety committee of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) would periodically try to initiate discussions and workshops about sex. For the adolescents and teens among Scouting's more than three million boys, sex was a source of wonder and worry; the BSA might have been able to provide guidance on sexual development and abuse. But the BSA's most powerful constituents refused to allow it.

Psychiatrist Walter Menninger, the health-committee chair, later explained it this way in a deposition for a sex-abuse case against the BSA in 1987: "There are a number of sponsoring organizations, particularly the Mormon Church, that have made it quite clear they want Scouting . . . but they want . . . moral, sexual aspects to be strictly part of the church's teaching." Churches, he said, "have a substantial percentage of registrations [of Scouts] and [have] become a much more potent factor" in the organization's decisions.

Several months ago, the Mormons drew another line in the sand over a controversial issue: if BSA units (the troops and packs sponsored by religious and other organizations) must accept homosexuals as leaders, the church would drop out and take its 400,000 scouts -- about 12 percent of the BSA's total membership -- with it. (Sponsoring a Scout troop or Cub pack means taking the responsibility for running it -- everything from providing a meeting place and raising funds to choosing leaders.)

Gay friendly The nation's major youth-serving organizations all operate on principles of morality, some of which are based on religious teachings. But except for the Boy Scouts of America, they do not define homosexuality as immoral, and they have no position on gays' serving as leaders. How can they do that, when the Boy Scouts can't seem to? One answer is cookies. The Girl Scouts sell more than three million cookies a year, according to the Washington Post, bringing in more than $10 million. Revenue from the sale of Girl Scout cookies accounts for about half the funding for Girl Scout units, says Carol McMillan, national director of council services. About 20 percent comes from donations by organizations such as the United Way and by individuals. The rest is a mix of fees paid by the girls (to attend camp, for instance), proceeds from the sale of items such as uniforms, and investments. Few Girl Scout units have one direct sponsor, as in the Boy Scouts, McMillan says. The 318 Scout councils are what keep the troops going. "It is really at a minimum level in terms of any authority the sponsoring organization has," she says. If a sponsor pulls out because it disagrees with a Girl Scouts policy, it's no big deal; the council continues supporting the unit, which finds another place to meet. When it comes to choosing leaders, "we don't discriminate against anyone," says Girl Scouts spokeswoman Lori Arguelees. Homosexuality "is a non-issue." The difference between the organizations is ironic because Juliet Low, the well-to-do Savannah widow who founded the Girl Scouts in 1912, was a friend of Robert Baden-Powell's and set out to create a female version of his movement. "Both groups are sort of the children of Robert Baden-Powell," writes Mary Rothschild, a history professor at Arizona State University who is writing a history of the Girl Scouts. How about the YMCA, which is Christian-based and served as a midwife for the fledgling BSA? It has no policy on gays as volunteers or employees. Its youth workers must demonstrate four core values: caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility. "Those values are seen in all people, no matter what their orientation," says Dan Maier, director of association advancement. The YMCA issues charters to local boards that run the clubs. Those boards usually consist of community members, including business leaders and church leaders, but they do not come from one organization, such as a local church or school, as they do in the BSA. Over at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the volunteer background checks for the youth field include inquiries about sexual orientation, says president Judy Vrendenburgh. But gays are not excluded. Parents have final word on youth/adult matches, she says, and gays have served as Big Brothers and Big Sisters. How about the Boys & Girls Clubs of America? "It is really a non-issue for us," says spokeswoman Jan Lindenman. Most of the B&GC "club houses" are in "independent structures," such as club-owned buildings. A few are in churches, but the clubs do not have sponsors, and "we are not religious in our orientation," Lindenman says. How about Campfire Boys and Girls? Last month it issued a statement to its councils saying that it "works to realize the dignity and worth of each individual and to eliminate human barriers based on all assumptions which prejudge individuals." Although it does not ban gays, the organization supports the right of the Boy Scouts "to determine their core values." -- PB

The ban on gay leaders is based on the last two lines of the Scout Oath ("To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight"). Ironically, the oath is modeled after the mission statement of the YMCA, which does not ban gays. Although the Scouts' ban has been enforced for decades, a growing segment of the religious organizations that sponsor Scout units now oppose it. And even the most ardent anti-gay denominations have no trouble sponsoring units in other organizations, such as the Girl Scouts, that welcome gay men and lesbians. All this raises a question: how did the Scouts get into this mess in the first place?

More than any other factor, the close relationship between the BSA and religious organizations like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) -- the Mormons -- explains why the BSA pursued its anti-gay policy all the way to the US Supreme Court. It also explains why the BSA stands alone among Boy Scout organizations around the world, and among other youth-serving organizations including the Girl Scouts, the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Association, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (see "Gay Friendly," this page), in barring homosexuals.

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When the Scouts first formed in the United States, the Catholic Church considered them hostile because the BSA worked so closely with the largely Protestant YMCA. There was "a lot of anti-Scout bias" in the Church because Scouting "had a very strong Protestant flavor," says David Peavy, a former member of the National Catholic Committee on Scouting, who is writing a book about the Catholic Church and the BSA.

Imported from England just after the turn of the century, the fledgling Boy Scout movement had found quick friends in the YMCA, largely because William Boyce, a BSA founder, and Edgar M. Robinson, the YMCA's first international secretary for boys' work, were acquaintances, according to Peavy and to a YMCA history being developed by the organization. Some YMCA clubs hosted Scout troops, and Peavy describes Robinson as essentially the Scouts' first chief executive.

The plan was for the BSA eventually to break out on its own, which it did after receiving a congressional charter in 1910. Modeled on the Scouting movement launched in England by war hero Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the American version differed in one key area: its more formal connection to religious practice. Baden-Powell had built British Scouting on religious principles, but the BSA added an 11th element to the Scout Law: "A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful to his religious duties." In case anyone missed that "go to church" message, the BSA constitution said, "No boy can grow into the best kind of citizenship without recognizing his obligation to God." And the BSA borrowed from the YMCA's three-tiered focus on "mind, body, and spirit," Peavy says, when it developed its oath:

On my honor I will do my best

To do my duty to God and my country

and to obey the Scout Law;

To help others at all times;

To keep myself physically strong,

mentally awake and morally straight.

Who could object to a boy's saying such a thing? Even the Catholic Church came around, prompted by priests who started Scout troops in their parishes and found the program to their liking. Several Christian denominations were struggling to create youth programs that would instill their religious values and also be fun for the kids. Catholic and Protestant churches alike found Scouting to be a perfect fit: the boys loved it, it had Christian underpinnings, and the BSA encouraged churches to mold their local Scouting programs according to their own religious-education standards.

This was the "genius" of the Boy Scout movement, according to William Murray, an early Boy Scout official who wrote The History of the Boy Scouts of America, published by the BSA in 1937. The LDS Church, in an amicus curiae brief filed with the Boy Scouts case before the US Supreme Court, put it best: "Because of Scouting's devotion to the spiritual element of character education and its willingness to submerge itself in the religious traditions of its sponsors, America's churches and synagogues enthusiastically embraced Scouting."

The BSA's approach benefited both religion and Scouting, as the Mormon brief says: "For many religious organizations . . . the Scouting program is a means of youth ministry. At the same time, sponsorship by religious organizations has enabled the Scouting movement to expand and increase its influence on the nation's boys."

By 1915, 4000 of the nation's 7373 Scout units were chartered to Protestant churches, according to an analysis by the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy, a conservative Christian group. By then the BSA also had a "Commissioner for Scout Work in the Catholic Churches," whose job was to promote Catholic units. In 1918, Peavy says, a letter from the Vatican bestowed the blessing of Pope Benedict XV on Catholic Scouting.

But no group embraced Scouting more enthusiastically than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the years, Scouting became the official youth-ministry program for Mormon boys. In a 1990 LDS newsletter, Apostle Thomas S. Monson said the Church and its troops "serve together; they work together." He added: "Every program I've seen from Scouting complements the objectives we are attempting to achieve in the lives of our young men, helping them strive for exaltation." Today the LDS Church sponsors 31,000 Scout units, more than any other group -- although United Methodist-chartered units account for slightly more Scouts (424,000).

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Patrick Boyle is the author of Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution (Prima) and editor of Youth Today, where this article first appeared. Youth Today is a publication of the American Youth Work Center, 1200 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Call (800) 599-2455, e-mail info@youthtoday.org, or visit www.youthtoday.org for more information.