I’m a single mother from a state where laws against “homosexual conduct” were only recently struck down. I did a lot of research into the core values of scouting, the beliefs of the church in which they’ll meet, and hey – what my kiddo will have to do in order to get to the next plateau. I knew that my son was tailor-made for this stuff.

I see BSA as just another frontier into which we might sometimes have to journey. Will there be discrimination? Maybe. Will I be told that I can’t go on “Mom and Me” campouts? Maybe. But I roll with the punches and lemme tell you – I can go downright “scarecrow” when it comes to letting my son do something he loves.

I know that no organization, no matter how big, can ever dissuade my son’s love for me. He knows who I am. At the same time, he knows that no measure of the being that is me will ever try to stop him from something that he loves. I am, as I try to explain to him through my every day actions, in existance solely in order to make him the very best man he can be.

Every day that we wake up, we take a 50/50 shot on everything we put a hand to. There might be a day when my son looks at me and tells me that he hates me or that I’m going to hell. But that could happen despite my gender or sexual orientation or status in life … or whether or not he becomes an Eagle Scout.

We were, after all, put on Earth to ruin our children’s lives :)

Change happens from within. It would do me no good with my son to move to a more tolerant place or put him in a sub-par organization simply because it agrees with my politics.

Since joining the mommy brigade I’ve noticed that lots of kids in straight families have very little contact with men. It made my anxieties about male influence seem a bit silly, not that I approve of our society’s extreme division of childcare labor by gender.

I feel it’s important for my kids to get to know both men and women, just on principle. And perhaps someday there will be topics that the kids would prefer to talk about with a guy.

We live far from any of our male relatives. so we chose 2 godfathers — 1 gay, 1 straight. We spend time with one of them almost every week. My partner and I out-butch both of these men, but at age 2, my son highly values two things godpapas can do that we can’t: lift him up to the ceiling, and grow those fascinating, sandpapery whiskers!

Wearing the patch has led to some good and hard conversations from both of them. I’m pretty proud of my dad for having been open and outspoken on the issue, though as a straight person he wouldn’t be challenged as a leader simply for his views. I promised I’d let my kids join scouting if he can get them to change their policy by the time I have any old enough. His understanding is that the position of the BSA is largely a result of strong influence on the national organization by the Mormon church. The decision by the church to integrate scouting into their community is a very significant event in the history of scouting.

Some alternatives I know kids have participated in are the YMCA’s Adventure Guides, Camp Fire USA, and if your local BSA troop is fairly progressive Venturing might be a good option. It is co-ed and much more variable than regular scout troops. Since venturing doesn’t include the “morally straight” line in any kind of code that scout lawyers use to justify their position, the court decision allowing the BSA to discriminate doesn’t apply to Venture troops. I’ve also hear of, but don’t know much about Spiral Scouts. Also, worth watching is Navigators USA, started by members of a boy scout troop in NYC and sponsored by All Souls UU church. It got going directly in response to the BSA’s exclusionary policies.

His troop leaders never made us feel unwelcome and we were even encouraged to register as members. When we would remind the leaders that the national Boy Scout organization wouldn’t allow us to register, their response was, “Well, they don’t really mean YOU.”

As we refused to lie about our family structure and we refused to join an organization that didn’t want us, we did our best to walk the thin line between supporting our son and supporting a discriminatory organization. We could have denied our son what he wanted but we also know that it is easier to change an organization you have some contact with rather than change one you have no connection to.

Every year, at the Blue and Gold Banquet when some “executive” from the local organization would pitch for money, I could have simply not given anything but I didn’t feel that would carry the power that making a statement would. So, I would write a ONE DOLLAR check. With it I would include a note saying “If this organization didn’t discriminate against me, this check would be at least twenty times this amount.”

Will Boy Scouts ever change? We don’t know but we continue to be avid, active supporters of Girl Scouts.

I am, however, glad you stopped playing with our new Wii long enough to catch up on my blog.

xoxoxo,
Dana

Have pity on the femmes! Surely there are many families, where the Moms don’t want to camp for fear of chipping the paint on their nails. Just because your camping nickname is Vulcana (you should see the fires she makes!), doesn’t mean that everyone shares your love of the bowsaw and hatchet.

As you say, put the kids’ needs first. If the kid wants to camp, let him join the BS and then attend every meeting to make sure that they know you and that you’re paying attention. If it ever gets ugly, then pull the kid out (See above about putting kids’ needs first).

xoxox

Helen (Dana’s real life sweetie).

As for other programs I love the Taekwondo suggestion. I have been training a teaching for over 20 years and I can tell you the amount of life skills one can learn is life changing for kids.