On my honor, I will exclude

First of all, this is another gay article. Sorry, but this one struck too close to home to take lying down.

Last week, Jennifer Tyrrell, an Ohio mom and den leader of her son’s Tiger Scout chapter, was asked to resign because she is a lesbian.

Tyrell received a letter from the Boy Scouts of America saying that because she is gay, she did “not meet the high standards of membership” that the organization upholds.
Really, Boy Scouts?

Due to both my advocacy for equal rights and my former Boy Scout rank standing, this incident doubly irked me.

The equal rights field is fairly obvious. Personally, I thought that we were beyond this blatant discrimination solely based on sexual preference.

I thought that we were at the point in which we can see a person as a devoted mother who is trying to be there for her son and help out with a Tiger Scout troop, not reduce her to only being a lesbian.

It’s not even as if Tyrrell was preaching some radical gay agenda to her scouts. She was helping the troop with volunteering at the local soup kitchen, collecting canned goods for church distribution and other noble community deeds. She simply happened to be gay while doing this.

Even if Tyrrell were to have been exposing all of the 7-year-olds to extreme gay content, the Boy Scouts could have used it.

Speaking from personal experience, the organization is often times stuck in the past. You can earn a merit badge for web design, but you still come out believing that men need to chop wood and that fighting is really cool.

Women? They’re never seen. Loosening up these rigid gender roles could really do the organization some good.

I remember hikes at various points during my BSA career spent listening to the older boys constantly talk about what they wanted to do to their girlfriends.

Taking a “boys will be boys” philosophy, the scoutmasters normally chuckled and thought of their own rampant hormones at that age, but no one ever stepped up to suggest a different approach to the topic of women or sex in general.

I never made it to Eagle status.

I only had to do my final project, but I couldn’t make it. Mostly because when I grew up, I realized that I was never going to be 100 percent the same as the rest of the boys. I could never fully fit in.

If Boy Scouts became a little more aware of the times, all boys and parents could fit in. And the organization could shape truly fine young men.

Boy Scouts gave me some of the best memories of my life. It brought me all across the United States, taught me leadership skills and even basic dentistry.

But it never taught me to hate.

According to the scout law, a scout is friendly, kind, brave and etcetera. I’m sure that Tyrrell will be a better display of these adjectives than most leaders I met in my scouting days.

Especially bravery.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu