I don’t do much metacommentary any more. But when conservatives like Michael Medved are terrible, well, what can you do?
Should Eleven Year Olds “Come Out”?
It probably depends on the circumstance. Wait, what?
Should eleven year old boys who haven’t even reached puberty make public declarations about their sexuality? Of course not, but the disastrous new policy by the Boy Scouts of America encourages children to proudly announce their own homosexuality. Scouting is open to all boys at age 11, and those who’ve completed Cub Scouts with an “Arrow of Light” award join as early as age 10!
Medved has flipped all logic on its head. The Boy Scouts isn’t going to kick people out if they come out, but that’s very different from encouraging anyone to declare their sexuality. Saying that if at some point between 10 and 18 someone lets people know they’re gay, then that someone can still be a Scout is a very different thing than forcing children to declare their sexuality. In fact, the opposite is the case now, as before the Scouts had a de facto policy of making all of their members declare themselves heterosexual.
Anyway, please continue by making up some science.
But precious few children have formed fixed sexual identities at that age: every scientific survey of intimate behavior shows that even among the rare adolescent males who’ve experienced gay sex before 18, the majority grow up to identify as exclusively heterosexual after 25.
??????????????????????????????????????????
I feel like I’ve probably overused lots of question marks as a joke recently, but seriously, what the fuck?
The Boy Scouts still claim to ban both same sex and opposite sex intimacy, but raising questions of orientation at wildly inappropriate ages contributes to the destructive trend to sexualize immature children.
That’s why they stopped.
One of those things that came up when conservatives were advocating for a “Gay” scouts organization. “If you can’t be straight, you can be separate but equal. That ought to be enough for you queers.”
Right, ’cause everyone agrees that discovering your sexuality at 10 totally happens. I mean, why let a kid join at 11 and then kick him out at 17 when he realizes he should have joined the ‘other’ scouts.
The right wing is driven almost exclusively by fear and greed. The fear drives hate, irrational hate, and we see that here quite clearly.
Imagine a society were every human were precious, and we gave each other all the space and acceptance to be who we really are, and to express ourselves in the most varied and creative and loving ways? A society where we let children grow up exploring and testing and wandering, figuring out who they are and what makes them joyous on all sorts of levels, including sexually, is a supportive and loving and accepting way?
Or, as Ellen Degeneres says…
I was a Boy Scout. Made it all the way to 1st class before I realized that pussy, weed and beer were much more fun. Besides, While my Scoutmaster was a decent guy: took us on lots of hikes and created opportunities for earning the merit badges, his younger two boys were complete assholes and took every opportunity to piss me off, including pissing on my sleeping bag and snitching on me for every infraction there could possibly be.
I got sick of the whole thing by the time I was 14. Too many “true believers”. It is one of the primary factors that solidified my total atheism and distrust of dogmatic belief systems.
As a gay man, at 11 I had a pretty good idea that I was different (though I didn’t know the term gay applied to what I was feeling). I find it amusing that according to conservatives, straight boys can know they like girls at any age, but future gay boy’s do not have “fixed sexual identities” It’s only indeterminate if you are gay. Straight 11 year old boys don’t waffle and go gay. Only the gay ones could waffle and go straight.
Conservatives are just terrified that most sexuality is fixed and some kids are born gay. (There is always that small percentage that could go both ways, and that’s what they latch onto, ignoring the other huge percentage that don’t change.)
And just because the kid know he is gay doesn’t mean he has to act on it until he is older and mature enough to handle it. Don’t confuse the act with the emotional attraction.
@ 4
The act and the emotional attraction is considered the same thing, in the eyes of the “conservatives”. They cannot differentiate the concepts of love and sex. To them, they are one and the same. Thats why they cannot understand the fact that rape is a crime. The rapist rapes, because he loves his victim. The victim is victimized, because she isn’t doing enough to protect herself, and should probably have been more receptive to the rapist’s love. After all, if she didn’t want to be loved (lusted) after, she wouldn’t have been wearing that dress, walking around in public, or consuming alcohol in the presence of Men.
They have no concept of the emotional structure of the will to dominate and have that right of possession or control, because it is the major aspect of their own personality construct. Conservatives are authoritarians. Their will to dominate is absolute and is unrecognizable as a flaw, rather, it is seen as a virtue. The more force that can be demanded and applied by an individual, the greater the level of respect accorded to that individual.
Couple that with a sociopathic personality, and you have investment bankers, insurance company executives and right wing politicians.
I joined Scouts at 11, stayed in until I turned 18. I became an Eagle Scout, and earned Vigil Honor in the Order of the Arrow. My scoutmaster was/is a great guy, and became a father figure to me when my own father died not long after I turned 16. I had some great experiences – two times hiking the Smokey Mountain portion of the Appalachian trail, a month hiking at Philmont in New Mexico, and I attended an international Jamboree in Japan.
The subject of gays in scouting never came up while I was there. But back then, anybody who was gay pretty much kept it to himself.
I do remember a fellow named Elliot in our troop, a mentally disabled fellow who had a great attitude and worked hard to earn every merit badge possible – even long after he turned 18. When the local Scout executive told my scoutmaster he couldn’t do it any more, my Scoutmaster looked him in the eye with a look which could wither an ancient oak, and told him that if that’s the way he felt, HE could tell him that to his face, because my Scoutmaster sure wasn’t going to do so.
As a parent in an Evangelical church, our denomination had it’s own program resembling scouting, but based more on passing along church teachings. I didn’t think the two were in any way comparable. Having kids attend meetings on Wednesday nights just wasn’t a substitute for monthly hiking, camping, and “high adventure” types of activities.
As for Michael Medvid – he’s just stretching for an excuse. He seems to be supporting the Tea Party rumor mill – in this case arguing that scouting is dangerous because they require 11-year-olds to proclaim their sexuality (of course, they don’t). It’s just another example of the Tea Party types trying to destroy anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100%, no matter how valuable an alley they might be (Christie seems to be their current target).
@2 “The Right” consists of greedy rich people exploiting the fears of stupid people, with slimeballs like Medved serving as the interface between the two.
Obviously, 11 year olds coming out is the fault of Obamacare. When we repeal it, things like this will stop happening.
Bremerton Catholic pastor pulls parish out of the Boy Scouts
Now this I find really funny. Gays allowed in the Boy Scouts is really, really bad.
I mean, think about it. For decades (centuries?) Catholic priests have committed all sorts of perversions against their congregations (especially against children) and the church does what when the locals find out? It covers up the scandals and moves the priests to other congregations.
Only recently have massive lawsuits finally moved the church to start cleaning up that mess.
Come to think about it this is much like the sexual perversions going on in our armed forces today.
26,000 (estimated) attacks and less than 300 convictions. And the top brass says don’t change the current system because they have it under control and if you do change it things will get worse.
And what happens if you are the victim and report the attack? Your career in the military is toast.
Backward, creepy, and gross. In other words, a standard issue member of the far right establishment.
Let me see if I can follow the conservative logic:
Military Rapes are biological, “hormone levels created by nature”
but being gay, that’s a lifestyle choice, not part of nature at all.
So men don’t have a choice that they want to rape,
but men get to choose that they want to be same sex oriented when they love.
@9 After apparently copying the same idiot lie from Medved’s script, the guy went a giant step further and actually put this in writing…
“And so, we are going to redouble our efforts to create a community that is supportive of happy, healthy holy marriages. In our marriage preparation, we are going to try to get women to stop marrying such loser men who will never be capable of being good dads and husbands, and vice versa.”
That’s going way, way off the rails. Sartain’s got a real problem here.
I was in the Boy Scouts and I am gay but no one knew about it, hahahaha
@14
Wait, you weren’t recruiting from within? You weren’t trying to turn the whole troop gay? You didn’t suggest any man-on-dog merit badges? You didn’t try a reach around on every camping outing?
You can’t be gay. You don’t do any of the things Republicans know in their hearts all gays do.
Michael Medved’s 15 seconds were up several decades ago.