Quiet storm raging around Boy Scouts' policy on gays

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

"On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight."

But not talking about it hasn't made it go away. Gov. Ben Cayetano's wife, Vicky, reopened the debate when she wrote a letter to The Advertiser last week after accepting the Boy Scouts' Distinguished Citizen of the Year award. Gay advocates had pressured her to refuse the award or to speak up about the homosexuality policy. While she kept quiet on the issue when she accepted the award, her letter said she hoped the scouts would "open their arms and leadership positions to all capable individuals."

While her letter was a veiled reference to the Boy Scouts' ban on homosexuals, Cayetano said later that she really meant to send a broader message to the community about tolerance. People in Hawai'i are too homophobic, she said, and she wants to see more business and organizations adopt more inclusive policies.

"Though there's aloha for many things in Hawai'i, when it comes to this issue, there's not much aloha," she said. "I think there should be more of a willingness to talk about this."

Local Boy Scout leaders would rather let the issue go back to sleep. Their national board voted this spring to keep its homosexuality policy the same, and that's the plan here.

"We certainly aren't in the position to want to put others down," Aloha Council director Rees Falkner said. At the same time, he said, the scouting organization is a private group responsible to its supporters, who expect scouts to teach traditional family values.

While gay advocates complain Cayetano was too subtle in her criticism, other people are rushing to the Boy Scouts' defense.

"Boys have lost their ability to be boys in our world today," said Bobby Thurston, 33, of Kahuku, a firefighter whose letter in response to Cayetano's message of tolerance applauded the Boy Scouts for "protecting the children."

There is too much political correctness in the world, Thurston said, and an assault on the Boy Scouts is like an assault on manhood. "We've got too much Oprah," he said. "We've got too much feminism influence in a boy's life."

Making boys into men

When it comes down to it, masculinity is what the Boy Scouts organization is all about, said Jay Mechling, a professor of American studies at the University of California-Davis and author of "On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth" (University of Chicago Press, 2001, $30).

Mechling, who joined scouting in the 1950s and rose to the top rank of Eagle Scout, has researched scouting academically and has explored the organization's views on God, gays and girls. He found scouting to be a business as much as it is a model of how to turn boys into men.

The scouting experience is as individual as each troop makes it, he said, and when individual troops stray from the national mold, the Boy Scouts acts like a hierarchical church, revoking memberships of individuals. But many troops operate under the radar, he said, allowing admitted gay members and self-avowed atheists. "There is a very active counter-movement of scouters who are trying to get the Boy Scouts to change their charter."

That movement includes Scouting for All, started by an Eagle Scout who opposed the organization's exclusion of gays and atheists. It is led locally by Michael Golojuch Jr., a gay advocate and former Cub Scout, and was influential this spring in urging the Hawai'i Department of Education to forbid the Boy Scouts from recruiting during the school day or requiring scouts to recite an oath that refers to God.

Scouting for All will monitor public schools this fall to make sure faith-based principles are kept out of school-time activities. If it finds the Boy Scouts teach what Scouting for All considers discriminatory, it will ask that the Boy Scouts program be removed from public schools altogether.

"I know what good the Boy Scouts do," Golojuch said. "But it's still an ongoing thing, trying to get them to understand that their policy does hurt."

Mechling said he doubts the national organization will cave in to critics. The Boy Scouts, which started in 1910, now count 5 million members. In the next seven years, the organization will focus on planning its centennial. That, Mechling said, is business.

Wrestling with morality

Still, the controversy shows no signs of letting up for people such as Dann Perrin. He knows what it's like to be a gay man excluded from a volunteer leadership position, although in his case, it was a church that did the excluding.

The Boy Scouts' homosexuality issue is close to his heart because it reminds him how angry he was at a world that made him feel unacceptable, said the 45-year-old Makiki man, who wants to rid society of the idea that a gay person could "turn someone gay" and the perception that all gay men are pedophiles.

"If they would just talk to us, they would realize we're not a topic," he said. "We're people."

Parent Jon Blumhardt of Kailua says he can sympathize with Perrin, but he can't advocate homosexuality. Blumhardt, a scoutmaster for nearly 30 years, said he wouldn't want his own son to have a gay leader.

"I've wrestled with this quite a bit, mentally and morally," said Blumhardt, a Roman Catholic who works with gay colleagues but feels uncomfortable with letting gay leaders be scouting role models. "The way I see my job is to help boys grow into men with appropriate values."

Even if public schools ban Boy Scouts from reciting the oath at school, for Blumhardt, the oath is more powerful in its silence than its vocal critics: "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight."

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.