What's wrong with the Boy Scouts?

Hans Zeiger

Are the Boy Scouts of America really so awful that they are no longer welcome in our schools? On June 1, the Portland (Maine) School Committee voted six to three to ban the Boy Scouts from distributing promotional literature to students. The committee argues that it wishes to uphold its commitment to diversity and nondiscrimination. Far from doing so, the committee has discriminated against one of the most diverse and valuable organizations in America.

This summer will commence the national Boy Scout Jamboree. It will be a diverse gathering of people from every geographical region of the country, every ethnicity and race, every economic class, every political belief, and every major religious practice. The Boy Scouts celebrated diversity long before it was the popular thing to do. Anyone wishing to stand by the idea that the Scouts are behind the times on diversity ought to visit the Jamboree and see for themselves.

The Boy Scouts is not a hate group comparable to Hitler Youth (“brown shirt” has become common epithet against the Scouts) or the Ku Klux Klan, or a militant terrorist corps like the Taliban (as the Philadelphia Daily News editorialized). Neither is it a church (as federal Judge Napoleon Jones defined it) or a public accommodation (as several courts have defined it).

The Boy Scouts is a private organization that begins meetings with this simple oath: “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.” And what is wrong with that?

That oath is a Statement of Self-Government, if ever there was such a thing. In America, - though they teach it not in Portland, Maine – self-government is the foundation of all other kinds of government. If we are to have laws, we must have order. If we are to have a political charter, we must first have personal character. And what is wrong with that?

A Scout is “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent.” What is wrong with that?

A Scout does a good turn daily. What is wrong with that?

A Scout is prepared. What is wrong with that?

The answer, enemies of Scouting might suggest, is honor. The problem with the code of character that Scouts must adhere to is the idea of honor, the idea that an individual is accountable before God and his fellow man to uphold his duty with integrity, service, and selflessness. For if one is subject to moral laws higher than himself, and his honor is bound up in duty to those laws, the supremacy of the individual must meet its defeat.

Boy Scouting is a bold resistance to the rising individualism of the age. Scouting teaches self-government, not selfishness. It should come as no surprise that the Boy Scouts are hated by the most vocal of the individualists whose moral agendas have no compatibility with Scouting: atheists and homosexual activists.

So the school committee in Portland, Maine is making a mistake. They’ve declared war on the best things America has to offer. They’ve set themselves firmly against self-government. And they’ve violated their own commitment to nondiscrimination by discriminating against the nation’s finest youth organization.

Perhaps the Portland School Committee should hear from supporters of the Boy Scouts. Contact Superintendent Mary Jo O’Connor at superintendent@portlandschools.org. Tell her to continue allowing the Boy Scouts to have promotional literature in the Portland Schools.

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Hans Zeiger is a columnist, political activist, and student leader from Puyallup, Washington. At age 18, Hans is an Eagle Scout and president of the Scout Honor Coalition. He is the past chairman of Washington Young Americans for Freedom and a former research analyst at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. He is a freshman at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

hanszeiger@yahoo.com