News from the Plains. All this Red can make you Blue
Gay scouts! Run!
by Barry Friedman
If you’re keeping score at home (and if you’re not, you should start), area churches in Tulsa, Oklahoma have weighed in on the decision from the Boy Scouts of America to allow homosexual boys into troops.
(BSA does want them out, though, by the time they're eighteen, so the organization can still keeps its Homophobic Merit Badge)
Ed. note: Have your face and palm ready
Tulsa’s largest United Methodist Church, Asbury United Methodist Church, said it is considering dropping its entire scouting program altogether rather than have its youth share the scouting experience with homosexual boys.
"This is very troubling decision, but we're leaning in that direction. I don’t know exactly what we’ll do,” said the Rev. Tom Harrison.
How about this? Act like a church. You're supposed to lead on issues like this. If not, you might as well sell the facilities to Cabela's and become a docent at the Family Research Council. How is this a "troubling" decision? They're boys, they want to do good in the community, live by a moral and ethical code, race Pinewood Derbies, help old Methodist ladies across the street ... and you can't make the call?
"We would," he said, "like for the scouts to be about scouting, and it’s gotten another agenda.”
No, it hasn't. None of the homosexual boys who want to join Scouts—and God knows why they still do. But I digress—are doing so to be able to teach show tunes to young heterosexual Cubs who are sitting and whittling around a campfire. It's you, reverend, who changed the agenda; it's you who keeps worrying about a gay-straight-group circle jerk during the making of the S’mores.
Because Baptists are not autonomous, the SBC lacked the authority to demand churches drop their Scouts. However, the resolution implored the organization to expel board and executive leaders who advocated the policy change. The SBC said it feared the change was a stepping stone to allowing gay Scout leaders.
Well, as long as they're not getting pissy about it. Anyway, quickly, Robin, to the Baptists!
We steered the bus to Woodland Acres Baptist Church and a visit to its pastor, The Rev. Kriss Haymes, himself a former Boy Scout and scout chaplain--two seminal moments in the pastor's life, which, evidently, didn't take.
“It kind of turns Boy Scouts on its ear,” he said. “I can imagine how I would feel as a father sending my boy to a camp where he might be in a tent with a boy who was attracted to him. That’s why we keep Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts apart.”
Really? You're that worried about your son being in proximity to a homosexual who might smile at him? It's nothing like you think.
Gay person: “Morning.”
Straight person: “Hey, you want to sodomize me, don't you?"
Surely not all Baptists think like this, so we made an unscheduled stop before lunch (we promised the agnostics on board barbecue if they behaved) to see Reverend Ted Kersh at South Tulsa Baptist Church who, though saddened, blames the organization for bringing these troubles on itself and hastening the end of western civilization.
“This may just end scouting as we know it. The Boy Scouts have been an organization that has carried on the traditions of America. When they made that decision, they lost one of their great traditions.”
What great American tradition is that ... the one that restricts membership based on ignorance and bigotry and refuses to acknowledge an individual's dignity?
To the Lutherans we go, and the Rev. Leonard Busch, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, who said he will try not to be as vindictive as the mother ship, the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church.
“We’ll deal with it one case at a time. We strive to be open and welcoming to people. We have a profound sense that all of us are broken people, and that we can’t stand in a sense of superior judgment over other people.”
Did y’all read that last part about not getting high on your superior judgement?
Hello. Hello!
We head now, downtown, and while we've visited the Methodists out south, no tour of Tulsa's churches is complete without a stop at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, a place, for years, sensitively and carefully ministered and run by Rev. Dr. Mouzon Biggs Jr., now retired. Rev. Bill Crowell, current associate pastor, said his organization will be making no changes to its troops or its support.
That's the ecclesiastical version of Snap
At this point, we should have just gassed up the coach, bought some souvenirs and "Don't hate the 918" t's, and headed to one of the 1.2-million casinos in the area for some Red Ball, but we decided to make one more stop ...
The Catholic Church.
A worried Bishop Edward J. Slattery said that many Catholic Churches in his Diocese have troops, knows they do great work, and wants them to continue, so he doesn't want to hurt the organization.
But in this case he'll make an exception.
“What do they mean by openly gay? I assume that means they are sexually active. “This culture of ours is crazy, no rules,” he said.
No, no, no, no, no, that's not what it means! For the love of St. Vincent de Paul, Bishop, nobody's going to make your church troop put on a production of
Rent.
Considering the Catholic Church’s handling of its own scandals, involving priests abusing young boy, its refusal to work with civil authorities, its transferring of known-offenders to cushier gigs, including the Vatican itself, and the lovely tactic of blaming the victims themselves for the abuse, perhaps it might want to go a little easy on the breakdown of rules and order in our culture.
The only fashion accessory that mutates a man's ego more than a clipboard and a whistle is a cassock.
Tulsa World, Baptists, Boy Scouts