Boy Scouts -No Gays, Agnostics,or Atheists allowed

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Author: Jennifer Ketchem

Started: March 29, 2009, 1:59:40 pm

Target: The Boy Scouts of America

Category: Civil & Human Rights

Supporters:

Goal:

100,000

Goal Progress:

Status

Closed

Not too long ago I discovered that the Boy Scouts of America prohibit membership to homosexuals, Agnostics, and Atheists. Memberships have been revoked because of the child or parent stating that they fit one of these criteria. Usually when thinking of Boy Scouts I would think of camping, crafts, and hiking but I never thought they had such a prejudice undertone. Even in my own community I have seen the results of a Gay member (a 14-15 year old boy) in the Boy Scouts and it was not pretty. It is sad to see that so much controversy arises from this young boy's sexual orientation; he was put right in the middle and it was completely unfair and cruel. The Boy Scouts of America are very active with revoking memberships based on their 3 G's: Gays, Godless, and Girls.

This is directly enforcing prejudice onto Gays, Agnostics, and Atheists by basically telling their young members that it is wrong to be one of those criteria. If a child gets their membership revoked the other children would assume that what they got it revoked for is wrong! This is terrifying because the Boy Scouts of America is such a large group and they are enforcing these ideals of Christian morality in a clearly discriminatory way. I do not mind that they have the Christian background but displaying these hateful and discriminatory actions should not be tolerated by anyone.

I am hoping that they will at least rethink what they are teaching these children or change their name to "Christian Straight Boy Scouts of America" just so people know exactly what they are about. But at best I hope that they abolish these prejudiced standards of their members and their members' parents and to cease in revoking memberships for a person's religious beliefs or sexual orientation. The Boy Scouts of America should only be about young boys learning the ways of nature, survival techniques, and other various lessons of life, not learning what types of people are not acceptable to associate yourself with or who you should not accept because of who or what they are.