President of UUA "Disappointed" in Boy Scouts' Response

Boy Scouts and the UUA

By Donald E. Skinner
from World, the Journal of the UUA, Sept/Oct 1998

As the conflict between the UUA and the boy Scouts of America over homosexuality and belief in God attracts the attention of the public and the media, Donald E. Skinner explores the history of the controversy and the experiences of Uus involved in scouting.

Jeff Wilson did his best to fit in with the Boy Scouts. A Unitarian Universalist kid from Connecticut who didn't believe in God, he tried to say all the words in the Scout Oath about "duty to God" and for a while it worked.

But the problem was larger than just a few words. "The scout culture was such that if you were a Protestant Anglo, you got one experience, and if you were culturally diverse you got another," says Wilson, now 22 and a UU Buddhist. "There was a rather narrow interpretation of God and there was a lot of discrimination based on religion. I had Jewish friends who didn't feel very comfortable with it."

Wilson, who had planned to work his way up to Eagle Scout, instead quit the Scouts in his middle teens. "I just couldn't take it," he explains.

A friend of Wilson's who was gay quit Scouting about the same time. Says Wilson, "He was afraid they were going to find out. He was always bragging about how far he got with girls, but I learned later he was just trying to cover himself."

Atheists and gays

UUs and the Boy Scouts have recently been at odds over the same two issues brought up by Wilson--homosexuality and religious belief. The UUA has filed amicus curiae briefs in support of several lawsuits against the BSA, including that of James Dale, expelled from his position as an assistant scoutmaster in New Jersey in 1990, after scout leaders learned he was gay. A New Jersey appellate court ruled in March 1998 that Dale had been discriminated against, though it prescribed no remedy. According to news reports, the court rejected "the sinister and unspoken fear that gay Scout leaders will somehow cause physical or emotional injury to Scouts or will instill in them ideas about the homosexual lifestyle." The scouts are appealing the ruling.

The UUA filed amicus briefs in two other cases decided this March. In both the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the BSA, a far more typical outcome than that of the Dale case. In one case, the court upheld the scouts in denial of a scoutmaster position to Tim Curran, after he was featured in a newspaper article about gay youth. In the other, the court ruled that twins William and Michael Randall could legally be dismissed from Cub Scouting in Orange County, California, because they told their leader they could not swear an oath of duty to God.

Another incident that put the UUA and BSA on opposite sides of the table goes back to 1985, when Paul Trout, a 15-year-old West Virginia Boy Scout, was denied advancement to Life Scout rank because he didn't believe in a "Supreme Being," terminology the BSA had adopted in a misguided attempt at inclusiveness. Because of the case's potential impact on UU Scouts, former UUA President the Rev. William F. Schulz championed Trout's case, meeting with scout executives, writing opinion pieces for the New York Times and Christian Century, and appearing on Phil Donahue's show. Trout was ultimately awarded his higher rank.

A sharp exchange

The tension between the UUA and the BSA reached new heights this May, when Lawrence Ray Smith, a high-ranking BSA official, wrote the UUA, ordering the denomination to quit offering a youth curriculum whose current edition, which dates from 1993, criticizes BSA attitudes towards atheists and gays. By completing the curriculum, called Religion in Life, UU Scouts can earn a religious scouting emblem from the UUA and a fabric knot from the BSA that they can sew onto their uniforms. Religion in Life is also used as a UU coming-of-age curriculum for youth who don't belong to the Boy Scouts.

Smith, a scout lay leader and chair of the BSA's Religious Relationships Committee, objected to a reference in the curriculum to the "trouble" some UUs may have with the "duty to God" phrase in the Scout Oath. In addition, the Boy Scout official wrote, the BSA has "noted with considerable dismay that this version of Religion in Life also includes an official expression of disapproval of Boy Scouts' membership policies relating to known or avowed homosexuals. The Committee believes that this expression of disapproval has no place in a . . . religious award manual."

The letter concluded: "Until such time as the UUA materials can be redrafted to a form acceptable to the [BSA] Committee, youth may not be awarded a Unitarian Universalist religious emblem in Scouting or wear the emblem on a Scout uniform."

UUA President the Rev. John A. Buehrens wrote back to Smith that Religion In Life will continue to be offered. He reminded Smith that many religions, including Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism, don't view God the same way as traditional Christian religions do. "Unitarian Universalism," he wrote, "has a special openness, ministry and mission to those who may have trouble with traditional ideas about God. We know that we are not alone in regarding doubt, as well as piety, as a part of faith."

He also disputed the implication in Smith's letter "that it will promote or defend scouting to refuse our awards or to have Scout officials tear them off the uniforms of boys.… Most Americans will see such actions for what they are: blatant discrimination against children on the basis of their religion."

The period of accommodation

This current disagreement between the two institutions dates back to 1992, when the UUA Board of Trustees adopted a resolution criticizing the BSA for its discrimination against gay and atheist or agnostic scouts. The next year, the UUA Youth Office rewrote the Religion in Life curriculum to reflect the resolution, a revision that seems to have come to the BSA's attention only recently.

At one time the two groups had better relations, reports the Rev. Wayne Arnason, who directed the UUA Youth Office from 1980 to 1984. In 1981 Arnason met with the BSA's Religious Relationships Committee, composed of representatives of most of the denominations involved in Scouting, at BSA offices in Irving, Texas, to discuss the Religion in Life curriculum, which had first been developed in the 1970s and was being revised for the first time. Arnason, now minister of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, Unitarian Universalist, in Charlottesville, Virginia, says the discussions were cordial. "We reached an understanding that they would approve our (revised) program and they would not do inquisitions into the nature of peoples' beliefs and would not make a fuss about the word God," he says, "At the time, my policy, and in some ways the UUA policy, was 'Don't ask, don't tell.' "

Since then, he adds, "The lines have been drawn more strongly, and a couple of religious discrimination lawsuits were brought, and they have felt pushed to the wall. Then the gay issue came up. That has hardened the line. I think that period of accommodation has long passed."

Caving in to pressure?

The BSA policy on atheists and gays, which the group defends as necessary to protect scouts from "improper influences," may result in part from pressures exerted by some large conservative religious groups like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) and the Roman Catholic Church, which together contribute about 720,000 Scouts, 15 to 20 percent of the total BSA membership. The Mormon influence, especially, is pervasive. Membership in Boy Scouts is virtually mandatory for Mormon boys, and Mormon leaders are prominent in the highest circles of the BSA.

UUs are not alone, however. Others who have spoken out for at least partial change in the Scouts' policies of discrimination include the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, United Way agencies, the AFL-CIO, and Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). In addition members of the Presbyterian church (USA) have organized to combat discrimination by the BSA, and a number of cities, including Chicago, have stopped sponsoring Boy Scout programs because of the discrimination.

What is to be done?

More than 1,400 of the chalice-shaped emblems given out to those who complete the UUA Religion in Life (Boy Scout) and Love and Help (Cub Scout) curriculums have been sold by the UUA Bookstore since 1995. Though. The awards go to not only scouts but to other UU youth who complete the Religion in Life curriculum as a coming-of-age program, the figure implies that many UU families have members involved in Boy Scout troops. How should such families react to the two groups' latest dispute? Do they go forward with the BSA, even in the face of its intractability, hoping that time and perseverance will bring the Scouts around, or do they leave and stand alone on principle?

"If they're saying a UU boy can't get his religious award, man, that just lights my fire," says Ed Selby, a member of the UU Metro Atlanta North congregation and a Cub Scout den leader for the past two years. Selby recently bowed out of scouting "because their principles didn't jibe with mine. I just couldn't do it anymore," he says. "I still feel that at the pack level, scouting is a pretty darn good thing for boys, but on the national level I can do without it."

Selby is right when he suggests that local scouting units have a fair degree of autonomy. UUs involved in scouting report that community-level units are more focused on helping youth have a good experience than on strictly implementing policy. But if an atheist, agnostic or gay Boy Scout should come to the attention of a zealous local or higher-level official, the Scout will most likely be asked to drop out.

Rich Vossel, a Boy Scout leader for 14 years and a member of Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, Williamsburg, Virginia, was part of the "inner circle" of local Scout leadership at Williamsburg until his work schedule caused him to withdraw recently. As the only liberal voice at the table, he says, "I had to be careful to not say the wrong thing at the wrong time so I'd be around to say it at the right time."

Vossel notes that scouting has changed for the better in some areas--in the growing number of female Boy Scout leaders, for example. Unlike Ed Selby Vossel also urges UUs not to abandon scouting. "If we walk away, then all we've done is walk away," says Vossel. "We should maintain our position and make it known and continue to work within the program."

Howard Guthman, a longtime UU and Scout leader from St. Paul, Minnesota, and a member of the BSA's legislative body, the National Council, urges restraint on both sides, predicting that the BSA will gradually yield on the gay and atheist issues to pressure from corporations that sponsor scouting units--but only if UUs and their allies hold their fire."If we make a big issue of it and there's a lot of publicity," he cautions, "everyone will get their back up and nothing will change."

The Rev. Richard Gilbert, minister of First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New York, agrees. A former Eagle Scout, Gilbert decided to go into the ministry at the age of 14 when he had a transformational experience at a Boy Scout jamboree. He says, "I guess my vote would be to work from within and keep needling. If we leave, then our kids would miss the opportunity to study nature, conservation, and ecology. And they'd miss the opportunity to get to know kids of other religious persuasions. For UUs, scouting is a way to be involved in the mainstream."

And Jennifer Harrison, director of the UUA Youth Office, says UUs can help make the BSA inclusive by working together and in coalition with other groups.

Distressed as he is about the scouts' policies on atheists and gays, even UUA President Buehrens advocates maintaining ties with the scouts. "We need to stay in relationship with organizations that perform elements of important service to young people," he says, "and continue to share with them our concern about how their policies create problems and are unjust. The last thing we should do is give ourselves the illusion of our own purity by simply washing our hands and stepping away."

Donald E. Skinner is a freelance writer who lives in Leawood, Kansas. He is a member of Shawnee Mission UU Church.

Other Scouting Groups More Inclusive than Boy Scouts

Other youth organizations have more inclusive policies on sexual orientation and religious belief than the Boy Sscouts of America. The Girls Scouts' policy on religion says, in part: "The organization makes no attempt to interpret or define God, but looks to each member to establish for herself the nature of her belief." In addition, in 1993, the GSA adopted a measure permitting any of its members to substitute another word or phrase for "God" in the official pledge. The organization also has a policy that states: "Girl Scouts . . . respects the values and beliefs of each of its members and does not investigate or intrude into personal matters. Therefore we do not have policies that focus on individual sexual preference."

As for the Camp Fire Boys and Girls organization, it does not require an oath based on duty to God. Its philosophy on religion notes that the organization "is committed to spiritual development" but leaves the definition of God to the individual child and his or her family. It respects "the right of every youth to practice her or his own religion" and urges its councils to be sensitive of religious differences.

-- DES

Group Fights for Rights of Gays in Scouting

In California a 10-year-old organization called Scouting for All, led by 13-year-old scout Steven Cozza, is organizing support for gay Boy Scouts. "We believe social change takes place with the people, through grass-roots efforts, people putting pressure on the scouts, saying, `Hey, this is not just,' " says Scott Cozza, Steven's father and an assistant scoutmaster.

Scouting for All can be reached at P.O. Box 2832 Petaluma, CA 94953 or on the World Wide Web at http://www.scouting for all.org.

-- DES

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