Scouting in a world as it is....

From the New York Times...

Robert M. Gates, the president of the Boy Scouts of America and former secretary of defense, called on Thursday to end the Scouts’ ban on gay adult leaders, warning the group’s executives that “we must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.”

Speaking at the Boy Scouts’ annual national meeting in Atlanta, Mr. Gates said cascading events — including potential employment discrimination lawsuits and the impending Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, as well as mounting internal dissent over the exclusionary policy — had led him to conclude that the current rules “cannot be sustained.”

If the Boy Scouts do not change on their own, he said, the courts are likely to force them to, and “we must all understand that this will probably happen sooner rather than later.”.  In a nod to the religious organizations that sponsor a majority of local Scout troops, he said they should remain free to set their own guidelines for leaders. “I support a policy that accepts and respects our different perspectives and beliefs,” he said, adding, “I truly fear that any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement.”

Conservative religious groups that sponsor many Scout troops, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Roman Catholic Church and some evangelical churches, opposed the participation of openly gay members, while local leaders in more liberal regions have called for an end to discrimination.

A Scout group in New York has defied the rules by employing an openly gay 18-year-old as a camp counselor, and several other councils around the country have expressed opposition to the ban. 

Mr. Gates said Thursday, in prepared remarks released by the Boy Scouts, that the national leadership would take no action against defiant local councils.  

At the same time, he said that in the name of religious freedom, the Scouts should allow local sponsoring organizations “to determine the standards for their Scout leaders.”

The Mormon church issued a guarded statement Thursday: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will, of course, examine any such changes very carefully to assess how they might impact our own century-long association with the B.S.A.” If the Scouts’ executive board adopts the policy Mr. Gates has recommended, letting local groups set their own leadership rules, the church is not likely to be affected.
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Well this should come as a surprise... to nobody.

This  sort of "compromise" was pretty much inevitable,  because of the chaos the bizarre  youth policy change created in 2013.   Where a 17 year old gay scout was fine but the day that kid turns 18 he suddenly is a threat to Scouting and must be banned. 

This was starting to create serious issues around Summer Camp Staffing.  Where you have a Camp staffer who works as a volunteer counsellor when he is 15, then gets a paid position on staff as a  16 and 17 year old.  Suddenly  this experienced  employee who is a tremendous asset to your program has to be banned because he is now 18 years old. 

Interestingly enough the camp staff issue may turn out to  have been a key driver in this.  The BSA was about to start running afoul of employment discrimination laws in multiple states.  Cases they knew they would have a very hard time  winning should they end up in court. 

Also. The issue was a huge  problem for some  organizations within Scouting.   The Order of the Arrow and Sea Scouts both considered a "Youth" to be  someone under the age of 21.  Which suddenly was in conflict with the overall membership standards.   The whole attempt to avoid dealing with the larger issue by changing the policy on Youth just created a bigger administrative mess.

A "live and let discriminate" compromise was inevitable. Where membership standards can be  decided at the local level by sponsoring organizations.  Where scouting units sponsored by the Mormon  and Catholic Churches can still cling to their homophobia,   while more progressive organizations can take an inclusive approach.   This keeps the BSA intact.   The reality is,  if the LDS or Catholic churches pulled their support for Scouting,  the BSA would cease to exist.   This sort of compromise,  imperfect as it may seem. May be the best option at this point.

As news of Gate's  speech in Atlanta yesterday began to be widely reported, my phone started to buzz with emails and text messages from old friends,  who all were asking the question;  Should those of us who left scouting rather than lie about who we are (and in many cases who we are married to...). Re-Register if we live in areas where the local council is inclined to be more inclusive?   I think the answer is  No,   or at least, not yet.    


At the1992
National Order of the Arrow
Conference

Scouting's discrimination has been incredibly painful to many of us who gave decades of our lives to the program, and value it tremendously.  So it is very tempting to seize this development as a pathway back to being able to give of our time and talents to an organization we dearly love.   Yet this issue is far from resolved. 

The. BSA National Executive Board  had no plans to take up the membership standards issue this year.    Now that was before Robert Gates went ahead and  put the issue front and center.    So  this summer may see more developments on this .
 
So at the end of the day, yes this IS good news and cause for "Cautious Optimism". But. It's too soon to claim a victory for equality just yet.

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them....

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit..."

- Matthew 7: 15-17 

From the Guardian

A married Michigan reverend with five children who publicly came out against homosexuality has resigned from his associate pastor job after his profile on the gay hook-up app Grindr was exposed.

 

Reverend Matthew Makela of Midland worked at St John's Lutheran Church where he was called a man who enjoyed 'family, music, home improvement, gardening and landscaping, and sports'.  During his time at the church, Makela reportedly made negative statements about the gay and transgender communities and once compared homosexuality to alcoholism.

 

In a comment that has since been removed from a Midlands Daily News story, Makela wrote: 'I love people who have same sex attraction, and so does God.  The proof is in the sacrifice He made for all of us who sin... We don’t tell a person born with tendencies to abuse alcohol to keep on giving in to his innate desires because he can’t help it. 'We try to help him in his struggle.'

 

He also made unkind comments about gay and transgender people on his Facebook page, according to Queerty.  Screenshots obtained by the site reveal Makela called himself a 'top' who loved 'make out naked and cuddle' as well as 'oral and massage'.   He confirmed the Grindr profile was real, according to Queerty. When word of the profile reached church officials, Makela decided to step down. 

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There is nothing good to be found in any of this. There is no silver lining in this story. The sad self hating homophobia and hypocrisy of Reverend Matthew Makela was the inevitable outcome of a trajectory in life that Matthew was set on long ago. It is the result of trying to live a double life, half in, half out of the closet. A closet constructed in no small part by the rabid obsession with all things Gay that runs rampant thought the. Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. (LCMS)

I am sure there was a point in Makela's life when this could have been avoided, It would have been a road not taken.  A moment when he could have been told that as scary as self acceptance is,  it does get better.   A moment that a faith community which  truly followed the teachings of Christ, could have made real.   Instead, from the earliest age,   Matthew Makela,  along with  so many others like him,   was bombarded with messages  from the LCMS of how he needed to hate ... himself.

 

Messages from the both the pulpits and classrooms of the LCMS of how Gays are "attacking" the church and family. Near constant rants against welcoming and affirming churches and how God will (at some point) destroy those churches for daring to say that God loves everyone. 

 

Sadly the story of Matthew Makela is not new.  He is just the latest chapter in  the LCMS's long story of  damaged self hating closet cases. 

 

 

I am not saying that any of this can  excuse  Matthew Makela for his actions and choices, and let's be clear they were his own conscious choices. Decisions that have destroyed not only his life, but that of his wife and children as well. As easy as it is to dismiss that destruction, as just another hypocrite getting what he deserves, there is more here to be pitied than scorned. The fact is,  the road to those choices was paved in no small way, long ago with the messages of self-hatred and fear that were pummelled into him from childhood on,  by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

 

The great Stephen Fry has often remarked how the obsession with sex, all too common among many of the publicly self-righteous, is similar to those with unhealthy relationships with food. The only people who are truly obsessed with food are the anorexic and the morbidly obese. This in sexual terms describes the LCMS, to its core. 

 

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod suffers from a institutional obsession with homosexuality that, trumps all else, even the message of the Gospels.   

 

It is an obsession that continues to claim victims. Be it with the deaths of gay kids driven to suicide, or adults like Matthew Makela, driven to try live double lives of desperate hypocrisy.

This whole sad and sordid outcome is in no small part, the. LCMS reaping what it has so enthusiastically sown.

 

American Poltics: Why I Still Care...

This past weekend was a Bank Holiday here in the UK , so we had a long weekend to enjoy the on-again, off-again sunshine.

We had the great honor and privilege to attend the wedding of two incredibly dear friends of ours. Peter and Simon have been together for over twelve years, and on Friday they tied the knot and got married. The celebration that followed I have jokingly referred to as their “big fat communist wedding” as dozens of the their friends all contributed to help throw what on Saturday evening, turned out to be an epically awesome party.

Today is the UK General Election, The election campaign here has been very sedate compared to what passes for normal in the US.  It's safe to say compared to the current hype  in the US over the 2016 Presidential race, the UK election seems comatose by comparison.  I did have to hand it to Sky News, they came up the best TV ad in the election run up.

The  conversation at the wedding party last weekend, occasionally turned to politics. A number of people knowing that I am American and therefore cannot vote today here in the UK, asked me who I would be supporting next year, in the 2016 US Presidential contest.    Friends of mine here on this side of the Atlantic, ( including my husband), have often asked me why do I still care about American Politics?  

After all, the eight years of insanity the world endured during the Bush-Cheney Administration were far worse for Americans than it was for Europeans. If next year the American electorate is stupid enough to vote against their own best interests and elect any of the current or potential GOP Clown car occupants, then let them.    If Americans are truly gullible enough to swallow the steaming pile of BS that the GOP is going to serve up to protect the interests of the top one-tenth of one percent, all at the expense of everyone else, Well then, Americans deserve everything they get. 

Other wedding guests, chimed in, pointing out that  while the United States engages in an all out cultural civil war over the idea that the Bill of Rights, actually applies to all Americans;    Here in the United Kingdom, same sex couples like Peter and Simon, and Eric and I  enjoy all the same rights as everyone else.  Rights that have actually increased over the past year,  as Britain's conservative government pushed ahead with the expansion of Civil Unions, into full and equal  Marriage.

The GOP has made it clear they want to mortgage the lives of vast majority of the American  people by turning the American health care  system back into economic Darwinism - Survival of the Richest.    While the rest of the world expands the boundaries of medical science and harness the potential  of stem cell research, at the same time,  addressing  the issue of Abortion by dealing with the causes of it, rather than simply attacking women. Bush, Walker, Cruz, Huckabee, etc. will turn back the clock for American Women to the 19th Century.

Meanwhile, here in the United Kingdom, the National Health Service will go along just fine, side by side, with sensibly regulated private insurance providers, (Yes that's right Fox News dimwits. The UK has both), All ensuring that in when it comes to average life expectancy of a child born in 2015, the UK will continue to climb from its current rank of 13th in the world, while the best the United States will be able to hope for is not to slip too far down from its current ranking of 38th.  

So why bother?   Knowing what America, under a Republican Presidency would become; A rabid right wing home-schooled theocracy, where what is left of government, serves the needs of only the wealthiest of the wealthy. A nation of Tea Party idiots, who will wave the Constitution like a banner, but have never read it., nor understand  it.   American Talibangelicals, who scream hysterically about the threat of "Sharia Law", but want to impose their own fundamentalist extremist beliefs on everyone else.

Should my fellow Americans be so stupid as to forget the consequences of their choices in 2000 and 2004 2010, and 2014, rest assured Europe and Asia won't be following the U.S. off the cliffs of economic, social and cultural insanity that  Jeb Bush, Scott Walker or Ted Cruz would go hurtling off at full speed.

While the United Kingdom and the rest of Western Europe, and Asia moves on to harness renewable energy and tackle the challenges of climate change, across the Atlantic,  Sarah Palin, Ben Carson and Donald Trump want to  hand over America's National Parks to Oil Companies, Timber Companies and Mining Corporations.  

While students here  train for the jobs and challenges of tomorrow, look for the GOP to eliminate science from public schools. As the likes of Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee demand that American students are only taught that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and the human race began with two fully formed people, who rode around a garden on dinosaurs, chatting it up with talking snakes.  Climate Change is liberal conspiracy, and taxing the poor and middle class, all to bankroll the greed and privilege of the top one percent, is a magical path to prosperity for all.

So why should I care? After all, there is no point in trying to reason with American Conservatives . Reason involves facts and reality. Two things the American Conservatives have learned to be quite comfortable living without.

My friends smile warmly and assure me that the rest of the World will, for a little while, feel bad about America's demise. But soon, everyone will get over it, quite content to move on without the United States. China, Russia, India, and many others will smile and applaud, as the GOP completely destroys what is left of the American Manufacturing sector.

Mexico, Japan and South Korea will quietly cheer as the talking heads on FOX News gleefully report on Scott Walker’s great achievement of the end of the rights of unionised workers. While at the same time, insisting that multi million dollar bonuses (at middle class taxpayer expense) for Wall Street executives are necessary to "keep America's Job Creators strong."

Why, one person asked, did  I feel that I  have to do my part to try to reason with people who rather than just come out and admit they just couldn't  accept the fact the President of the United States was Black; instead have spent the last 8 years in a rabid rant and rave about a coming "UN Invasion" as Barack Obama's UN Storm troopers are going to come "for your guns".
  

Many of my friends both in Europe and  Asia  ask me; Why not leave the United States to the racist, homophobic misogynistic theo-facist nutjobs who believe it should be easier to buy an automatic weapon than it is to vote? Why not just let America go the way of the dinosaur, After all, the rest of the world will smile and thank the GOP for all they have done to eliminate their competition 

Why not indeed.... I guess for me, the problem is unlike Sean Hanity and the scared gullible bigots that hang on his every twitter posting, I really do believe that the greatness of the United States lies in our diversity. "E Pluribus Unum" - Out of Many , One.   At the end of the day, I may live in Great Britain, and I may be married to Brit, and yes I may even occasionally eat baked beans on toast for breakfast.  But I am an American and yes I care what happens in 2016. 

I care, because I love my country and believe that even when we fail miserably to live up to our stated ideals, the United States of America remains far more potential than we have ever been actualized.

The GOP says they "want their country back". The vision of America they hold as "their country" is one where an ultra-conservative religious social agenda is made into Civil Law. Women's Rights to control their own bodies, Affirmative Action, Gay and Lesbian Rights, Separation of (their) Church and State, the social safety nets of Medicare/ Social Security and Public Education are all abolished.

I care because the Republican Party has lost its mind, and sold its soul.

For the good of America, for the good of the rest of the world, the progress America has made over the past eight years under President Obama and the Democratic Party, needs to continue.   The current crop of Republican Presidential hopefuls has made one thing painfully clear;   the GOP is addicted to crazy, and like many addicts, the only way they will ever kick their destructive habit, is to finally hit rock bottom. 

American Presidential Elections are always rife with superlatives. Sweeping statements of how THIS next election will be the most important in our lifetime. How the choice Americans will make in November, 2016 will be a pebble thrown in the pond of history, the ripples from which, will be felt for generations to come...etc..etc.   

Oddly enough, this time. It's the truth. The United States is at a cultural and economic crossroads. Will we all move forward together, or will we sacrifice the future of the many, to subsidise the very few? Will the United States of America continue to more towards the  future, or stumble backwards to a fearful, small minded past where the American Dream exists only for a select few?

I care because I want America to keep moving forward.