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All scouts should remember the people who made sacrifices to ensure the safety and prosperity of its citizens.
The US Scout Service Project very loosely defines “morally straight.” They define it as merely keeping relationships honest and open.
This program was meant to help protect youth from abuse.
It took until 2003 for the BSA to require criminal background checks all new leaders.
He also said Scouting ranks, such as the Eagle Scout, represent a past achievement and the BSA did not revoke them once they were awarded.
Most of the Scouts pledging their pins were heterosexual, Kimball said, though a number of gay Eagle Scouts made similar offers in emails sent to NBC News since hearing of Andresen’s story. I want him to get an Eagle award even if it’s mine,” he said.
What Happened to Our Boys?
Founded in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has expanded to include the involvement of up to 2.3 million youth, both girls and boys. Parental involvement in local BSA councils is highly recommended.
Courtesy: whitehouse.gov
The alternative is to seek out a new scouting organization.
We will also continue to work with families to find scouting unites that are the best fit for their children.”
What that means is that each troop must now work to find a place for children who identify as the opposite sex. This is endangering thousands of children’s lives.
The LA Times has built a database tracking the sexual abuse allegations found in these files, dating from the 1940’s to the 2000’s.
It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. Later, in 2015, it lifted its ban on gay scoutmasters, despite the organization’s history of sexual abuse by the same.
However, the latter was not a choice made by the BSA but forced on the organization by litigation. An all-male organization including gays should have secured the protection and safety of the young Scouts participating in the BSA.
When looking at individual cases, as in the case of the Catholic Church, there are many situations where teens were preyed upon. “But I just felt like I had to.”
Andresen, 18, had completed the requirements to earn the Scouts’ highest honor, but his Scoutmaster would not sign off on the award because he is gay, his mother said.
Instead of returning my award to the BSA however, I would like to send it to Ryan, so that if he does not win his fight against this organization, he may in one way be granted what he has rightfully earned.”
Karen Andresen, who had started an online petition calling for her son to get his Eagle rank, said the Scoutmaster knew about her son's sexual orientation and that Ryan was led to believe he would nonetheless get the award.
But Boys Scouts spokesman Smith said Andresen was no longer eligible for membership in Scouting because he did not meet the membership standard on sexual orientation and he had informed his unit leadership that he did not agree to Scouting’s principle of "Duty to God." The family disputed that, saying the only reason Andresen was denied the rank was "because the Boy Scouts of America has a problem with Ryan being gay."
Kimball, who knows Andresen’s father, Eric, the troop's chief administrator, attended a troop meeting earlier this week on how to resolve Ryan’s case.
The Boy Scouts of America functions with the assistance of 900,000 adult volunteers. In deviating from its original values, it fails appallingly in promoting moral integrity in its youth.
This article was most recently updated in April 2023.
Morally Straight: How LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts
Weaving in his own experience as a scout and journalist, Mike De Socio’s Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts ― and America (Pegasus Books, 2024) is a deeply-reported narrative that illuminates the decades-long battle for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
De Socio – a resident of Troy, NY – tells a story that plays out over the course of nearly forty years, beginning in an era when gay rights were little more than a cultural sideshow; when same-sex marriage was not even on the radar; and when much of the country was recommitting to conservative social mores.
It was during this time that accidental activists emerged, challenging one of America’s most iconic institutions in a struggle that De Socio argues changed the country’s view of gay people and the rights they held in society.
In Morally Straight (the name comes from the Scout Oath), we meet James Dale, the poster child of Scouting who took his fight for inclusion to the Supreme Court; Steven Cozza, the 12-year-old scout in California who started a movement for inclusion called Scouting for All; Jennifer Tyrrell, the lesbian den mother whose expulsion from the Scouts reignited the gay membership controversy; Zach Wahls, the son of lesbian moms who led the final push for policy change; and an array of other previously unknown Scouters who played smaller roles in the fight for full inclusion.
De Socio recently appeared on the Troy Story podcast to discuss his book.
In addition to this, guidelines specifically prohibit any sexual conduct with Scouts. Then, in 2013, the BSA lifted all restrictions on sexual orientation. Andresen, de Lora wrote, had completed the requirements for the Eagle, including building a “tolerance wall” for victims of bullying such as himself.
“This week I have finally decided that the best use of my award, short of giving it to Ryan, would be to donate it to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco,” he wrote in an email to NBC News.
The solution is to find the underlying problem and work with children who feel gender dysphoria so that they can learn to love themselves without living as the opposite sex.