Word: scouting
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...place is in the kitchen. The jokes are moronic: the '50s mom tries to use 1990s lingo with malaprop results ("My, don't you look squirrelly," she says, meaning "foxy"). And when the punkish '90s kid asks for a high five, his '50s counterpart, who wears a Boy Scout uniform, gives him $5. Oh, pooh...
Michael and William Randall, twin nine-year-olds from Anaheim Hills, Calif., have been just as stubborn. They were excluded from a Cub Scout pack in February because they could not, as atheists, pledge duty to God. One of their attorneys is their father James, but he emphasizes that the legal battle was the twins' idea, not his. He calls the lawsuit "the kiss of death." Says his son Michael: "I just want to be a member of an organization and not have to say the word God and not have an organization force me to say it. They...
Timothy Curran, 29, already had his chance for happy memories of scouting. Now a videotape editor for a local TV news program in Los Angeles, Curran joined a Berkeley troop in 1975 and quickly progressed to Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster. In 1981 he was expelled because officials had seen a newspaper photograph of him taking a male date to his high school senior prom. Curran was a student at UCLA when he was banned. He sued immediately; a decade later, the case is still unresolved. While an antigay posture might seem predictable for scouting, Curran argues that the organization...
...these controversies the motives of the Boy Scouts, and in some cases their challengers, involve more than the legal niceties. Curran, for example, is by any reasonable definition a gay activist. For their part, the scouts are tending to business interests. In the majority of scout troops, for example, the religious component is negligible and almost any professed faith is welcome, from Methodism to Zen. But about 30% of scouts are sponsored by church groups, and those partners would probably take a dim view if scouting suddenly made belief in God optional. On the issue of female membership, many young...
...silliest pretense is that the Boy Scouts do not now number many present or future atheists and homosexuals among their members. Curran was gay and a scout. Elliott Welsh evolved agnostic views shortly after leaving the scouts. Their participation in scouting did not keep them from choosing their lives and values, nor did their participation destroy scouting. What is most troubling in the Boy Scouts' new emphasis on privacy is the hint that the group serves as a retreat for parents who dislike the diverse and tolerant world of today. But that is the world their children will grow...