Monday, February 11, 2013

Will scouts help gay little old ladies cross the street?


There has been much ado about the whether or the not the Boy Scouts of American will allow openly gay people join their club. At the very least individual chapters should be able to make their own rules about who they let in. Currently, progressive chapters like those in Madison are banned from welcoming in both gay scouts and leaders, and that is just silly.
Allowing local control makes sense for now. Progressive chapters in big cities will allow gays while conservative chapters in rural districts will still be allowed to practice their homophobic exclusion for the time being.
Eventually however, the Boy Scouts, like every institutions in America, will welcome people of every sexual orientation. That is just the way the world is moving. Within the next 10-20 years gay marriage will be the law of land, and discriminating against gay folks will be as socially unacceptable as discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity.
We are running out of groups to exclude and oppress, and that's a good thing.

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