by advicefrommarta | May 24, 2013 | Education, Family Life
Last Fall my husband and I spent a lot of time debating internally, on here, and on Facebook what to do about our Boy Scout problem.
Our son wanted to be a Boy Scout. His sister is a Girl Scout and I could not be happier with the benefits she’s seen from that. He wanted the same. Except, of course, the two organizations are not the same and the Boy Scouts had a policy against allowing gay members or volunteers.
Although I found the views of the BSA repugnant, I was at a complete loss as to how to explain the problem to my son. My son has always known gay people. He has always known that some families are made up of two dads, two moms, one mom, one dad. In fact, he has stated how much more fun life would be if he had two dads (especially during the Super Bowl). In Kindergarten when another kid said that two boys couldn’t get married because you couldn’t have kids, my son put him in his place, “That’s not true, my Uncle Ken is married to another boy and he has kids!”
What he didn’t know though was that some people didn’t like when two boys were married to each other. He also didn’t know the word “gay.” My kids have always known how babies are born, they know that’s called sex. I found it very easy to explain to them. But the reason I found sex easy to explain is because I simply explained it as something you do to have babies. I never explained that there are other reasons to have sex. Although at his age I was running around trying to force boys to kiss me, both my kids are surprisingly uninterested in kissing and surprisingly unaware of the over-sexed culture we live in.
I was squeamish about telling my son he couldn’t be a Boy Scout because I thought doing so would open up a whole new conversation about sex. So we simply stalled. We didn’t say yes or no about being a Scout, I just didn’t sign him up. I bought us some time.
Then, Jason Collins came out. My son was understandably shocked to find me reading Sports Illustrated and he wanted to know why. So, I told him. In telling him I realized what an idiot I’d been, that it was totally easy to explain.
We talked about what it meant to be gay, that even if you aren’t married to another boy, you know you would want to marry or date another boy. We talked about how some people were mean to others who are gay, they don’t want gay people to do things other people can do. We talked about Jason Collins being brave for telling other people something they might not want to hear. We talked about how he was or wasn’t like Jackie Robinson. We talked about his uncles that are married to each other, and which of his uncles would want to marry other boys (Hey, Richard, you’ve been outed and your godson wants to know when you’re getting married). We talked about the Save-the-Date for two men he doesn’t know that’s currently on my fridge. I assured him that no one was being mean to his uncles (well, you know, for being gay).
Then he took the magazine from me and that was that. But it let me know that whatever the Boy Scouts decided it would be ok. My son now had the info he needed to be able to make the decision himself.
I’m glad we stalled last year. I don’t think we could have had that conversation a year ago. I’m glad we stalled last year, because now even though the Boy Scouts didn’t make a perfect decision, it’s clear that they’re progressing and I won’t feel bad if my son decides to join.
So, thank you BSA for inching towards the future and thank you Jason Collins for forcing me to see how easy the conversation actually was.
by advicefrommarta | Jul 23, 2012 | Family Life
(You can read the original post about the boy scout issue, here)
I don’t normally react in writing to comments on my posts except to say, “thanks” when people say nice things. There’s a long explanation for that involving the difference between blogging and writing and getting a MA in Lit in the early 1990s when Reader Response was out of favor, but that’s a whole different conversation.
I’m very grateful for all the feedback I’ve gotten on my post about our family’s debate over whether or not to let our son become a Cub Scout. People have left comments on the blog, on my Facebook page, my Twitter and on the Facebook pages of friends who have reposted the blog.
I am extremely gratified to know that I am not alone in struggling with this issue. Very few people treated this as a black and white, easy to answer question. One of the few people who did present it as an easy answer is also the person I know who most consistently and bravely lives his values. It’s part of why I love him, and part of why he’s my son’s godfather.
I’m also pleased as punch that for the most part, my friends and my friends of friends are all capable of discussing a contentious emotional issue online without being nasty.
It might interest you to know that the gay men I’ve heard from have been on all sides of the question. Urging me to allow my son to join, saying it’s ok either way and saying that he shouldn’t join. The former scouts I heard from (gay, straight, atheist, Jewish, and Christian) were all universally in favor of my son joining the Cub Scouts. They all brought up the point that the quality and character of a scout troop had everything to do with the local leadership and nothing to do with the national organization.
These comments, and the comments of others have made clear to me that I did not do a good enough job of explaining that this difference between local troops and the national organization is really the root of my problem. It is not, as one person claimed, as simple as boycotting Chic-Fil-A because of their policies. It is more like not being Catholic because of the policies of the Vatican.
The Vatican is a gigantic multinational organization that openly and loudly discriminates against people. But, that does not mean that local Catholic Churches are bad, or that you should not be Catholic because you find the beliefs of the Vatican problematic. We accept that the local Church and the individual practice is different from what the Vatican says. We respect those people who remain part of the Catholic church while working against its policies.
I myself gave birth to both of my babies in a Catholic hospital, even though I know that the same hospital has risked the health of other women by making them jump through hoops to get ectopic pregnancies terminated. I live in a major metropolitan area with many non-Catholic hospital options. No one ever suggested that as a feminist I should choose a different, non-Catholic hospital. No one suggested that I was complicit in furthering these policies by using and giving my money to a Catholic hospital.
All of us make these imperfect financial and social decisions. One person may decide that Wal Mart’s union policies make them a no-no while ignoring similar policies at Whole Foods or ignoring the knowledge that Target supported Michelle Bachman’s campaign. My parents believed in boycotting certain products, but gave a ton of time and money to a synagogue that not only was part of a movement that discriminated against women and gays, but discriminated itself.
My parents did not work within Conservative Judaism or their synagogue to bring about the eventual changes, yet these changes happened (women ordained in 1983, gays in 2006). My parents paid their dues, sent their children to school and camp and hoped for the best because they thought the positive outweighed the negative.
Although I’d hate to have to explain bigotry and hatred to my son, I can do that. But I’m really not sure how to explain why he has to forgo hanging out with his friends because they are in a good group that is affiliated with a problematic national organization. I am not sure how to explain that THIS is where I choose to draw a line. There are so many other lines I have not drawn, how do I choose this one place where he is the only one who suffers?
So, we’ve decided … We need to do more thinking and more research.
We need to research the relationship between our local troop and the national organization. Am I fooling myself in believing that we can join one without really giving support to the other? We’ve already discovered that in 2001 troops associated with Oak Park grade schools were denied their charter because of their refusal to discriminate. Our school has a troop, so maybe there’s some sort of work around that someone else has already figured out.
We’ve discovered that there is an all-male Indian Guides group in a fairly nearby suburb and have contacted our local YMCA to see if they might be willing to start one here (yes, I know, racially insensitive but I’m doing the best I can).
We probably won’t make a final decision until we have to do so. Again, I truly and sincerely appreciate the feedback. Perhaps it’s a mark of the quality of everyone’s thoughts that instead of helping me make a decision, the feedback has just made the decision harder!
by advicefrommarta | Jul 20, 2012 | Family Life
About a year ago my son declared that if he decided to marry another boy they could just have his sister help them have a baby. Today, he proclaimed that he was excited to start Cub Scouts this year and that he would definitely go all the way to being an Eagle Scout.
If you’ve been following the news lately you know that these two positions aren’t really compatible. I’ve never been a big fan of the Boy Scouts (or really any other group, but that’s a different story). I’m not sure how Post-Nazi era any psuedo-para-military group for boys could choose brown shirts without you know, blushing a little.
Yet my daughter LOVES Girl Scouts and my son has looked forward to being able to join his own group. There’s a part of me that knows I shouldn’t let him join. Earlier this year I stopped him (at least temporarily) from taking up tackle football because I don’t know if it would be good for him or not.
Joining a group that discriminates against people cannot be good for my son. Except that their discriminatory policies are not the totality of Boy Scouts. I’ve seen what Girl Scouts has done for my daughter and I have no doubt that being a part of Boy Scouts would be equally good for my son.
When I was growing up we were not allowed to eat Nestlé products because they promoted formula instead of breast feeding in African countries without clean water. We did not eat grapes or lettuce because of, um, I’m not sure, it had to do with Cesar Chavez though. I was raised to believe in the power of a boycott, that your money should always follow your values. Certainly, your parenting should follow your values as well?
Yet, I live in Oak Park, a suburb so liberal even the expressway exits left. A man I like leads a local boy scout troop. I’ve been told that local troops are not tightly tied to the national organization and that very little dues money goes to the organization as a whole. I’m pretty sure that the local troops do not discriminate.
I have seen multiple Facebook posts over the past few days from people musing about starting their own “boy scout like group.” That’s great and I respect and admire them for it. I do not have the patience or time to start a new scouting group. I barely have the patience and time to be the mother of someone in a scouting group. What’s more, my son doesn’t want to be part of an alternative group.
He doesn’t want to sit around with a bunch of other well meaning liberal moms and kids. He wants a uniform and badges and camping trips. He wants a father/son overnight at the planetarium and to feel like he’s part of something bigger than Oak Park. I know there are a lot of gay kids and sons of gay parents out there who want that, too and it makes me furious that they are denied that opportunity.
But does that mean that I also have to deny the opportunity to my son? My son does not know the word “gay.” He knows that some of his uncles are married to each other. He knows that one of his uncles is married to another man and is the father of three boys. He does not know yet that this is a problem for some people.
How do I tell him that he can’t be a part of something fun and positive because some people are hateful? How would I possibly explain this discrimination?
But let’s say he is in fact gay. How will I explain to him when he’s 16 and kicked out of Eagle Scouts that, “Yes, I did know this could happen, but you know, I decided to give your time and my money to a group that hates you”?
My husband and I have not yet decided what to do. What would you do?
