Scouts’ Honor

These days, I spend one night a week in the basement of a local church, watching six boys in blue uniform shirts and yellow neckerchiefs. I stand, hand over my heart, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, watching my sons pause their kinetic energy briefly to salute the flag. Somehow, I am a Boy Scout Mom.

When the ultrasound midway through my second pregnancy confirmed my woo-woo hunch that both little people inside me appeared to be boys, I felt like I’d just learned I was going to visit a country where I’d never been before. My firstborn, daughter, had never been a particularly girly-girl, her one princess dress was blue not pink. So we already had the wooden trains, some trucks, and an array of plastic farmyard animals, appropriate for young farmers of any gender. I was used to a highly physical child, an early climber, fearless adventurer with trees and cats, the kind of toddler who, upon meeting a new potential playmate would knock the kid down; if they got up, she’d play with them, if they cried, she’d walk away. I thought I was ready for boys.

I looked forward to raising sons in the same sort of (relatively) gender-bias-free household I’d begun for my daughter. Despite what your Happy Meal tells you, there aren’t ‘boy toys’ and ‘girl toys’, there are just kid toys that you either enjoy or don’t enjoy. I figured that without an everyday household structure that differentiated boy behaviors and girl behaviors, I had a shot. The boys loved the play kitchen we gave them for their second birthday, although I was surprised by how many times I walked into the room to find the little purple telephone being used as a weapon (”pow-pow!”).

As they got older, and their other parent, X, left us and transitioned F to M, I’m sure our family’s discussion of boys and girls was a little different than most preschoolers’ families.

“Is Nigel a boy cat or a girl cat?” “He’s a boy cat.” “How do you know?” “Well, under all his fuzzy, he has a penis, like you do.” “But X doesn’t have a penis and he’s a boy now… you told me he’s a boy because he says he’s a boy. What if Nigel says he’s a girl cat?” Sighhhhh. Five-year-olds don’t like ambiguity. It was an interesting time.

Back when my daughter was born, I had declared No Barbies, and over the years had filled her toybox with various stuffed animals and funky soft dolls. But still the Barbies appeared, from grandparents, uncles, and especially at birthdays from her friends, ensuring her fall from innocence into a world of tiny clothes, shoes, and accessories. In the same way, my sons’ friends introduced them to a world of uniforms and weapons, as well as the idea that some things were Boy Toys, from the World of Men.

When they came home declaring that RED and BLUE were Boy Colors, their sister shot them a glare and pointed out her red shirt and blue jacket. When the dress-up clothes box got separated into one pile of hard hats, firefighter hats, and neckties, and another pile of princess dresses, high heels, and silk kimonos, I made an effort to remind all the kids playing over that it was okay to wear whatever looked like fun. My house was a place where anyone could wear a Darth Vader helmet and a Cinderella dress together. As the parent in charge of soccer trophies one Fall, I selected ones without little boy or girl figurines on them just in case there were girls who didn’t like to be reminded that their soccer skills required a pony-tail. Really, I tried.

But slowly, my kids moved more into the world, and the world crept in in odd ways. Television shows I didn’t mind at all were bookended by commercials that deeply reinforced the World of Girls and the World of Boys.

Through happenstance or temperament, my daughter moved in an existence filled with Pokemon and plastic animals. Her grandmother’s indulgence in American Girl dolls came with storybooks full of adventure and resilience. Even Girl Scouting reinforced a message of empowered self-sufficiency - camping, photography, world-awareness (okay, okay, and sewing and cooking). And the Girl Scouting organization is surprisingly inclusive, its policies written to strive for common character among personal difference. I didn’t even consider that by being a Girl Scout Mom, I’d put myself on a slippery slope to someplace I’d sworn I’d never go.

The Boy Scouts as an institution have planted their flag square on the mountain of homophobia and intolerance. They’ve spent millions of dollars to defend their right to be there, and lost millions of dollars more in support from organizations who won’t endorse their positions. Their requirement that Scouts be “morally straight” has stripped years of accomplishment and recognition from young men who later acknowledge their male lovers. It means no matter how much I love my sons, I cannot be a den leader like some of the other moms. The requirement of a belief in God would now remove my late grandfather from an organization he loved, having spent years as a Scoutmaster, leading his son and many other young men on the path to Eagle Scout. That day when the ultrasound threw us into guyville, we sat for hours and debated the circumcision decision. We were wholly united and adamant: No Boy Scouts.

What I hadn’t counted on was the day one of my sons came running out after school, yelling “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease can I be a Cub Scout?”

Maybe for him it was an opportunity for that sense of belonging. Maybe it was the promise of events and camping. Maybe it was the spiffy uniform (this). I told him I would consider it. That night I sat and, as the Grinch would say, puzzled until my puzzler was sore. I talked with his classmate’s mom who would be the den leader, a woman who I knew and liked. She understood what the issue was, and tried to reassure me that at the local level the institutional policies had little effect on the great experience of Boy Scouting. In the end, I came to a conclusion that it’s about my son’s life, not mine, and that until I see evidence that he is being taught intolerance, we’d give it a try. At meetings, he looks sharp in his uniform. I always feel vaguely unclean.

Once his brother discovered there were snacks at the meetings, he joined up too, and I’ve watched them rise from Bobcat to Tiger to Wolf. I’ve sewed badges on shirts, and proved to them that moms can build the little wooden Pinewood Derby cars just fine. I accompanied them to Boy Scout daycamp last summer, and we all learned to shoot bb guns together (!). This is about them, not me.

It’s still awkward, though, at area-wide events with families we don’t know, when one of the other parents asks if their dad was a Boy Scout. I launch into the history of Boy Scouting on my side of the family, while inwardly wry that until my sons were four, their dad wasn’t even a boy, let alone a Boy Scout.

Beyond the registration fees, I do not give money to an organization that requires its members to be ‘morally straight’. I question my own cognitive dissonance, and bristle at the implication that I am not good enough. I’m hopeful that in a year or two they’ll move on to some other activity, guitar lessons or some sport, so my two-activity-per-kid policy lets this experience pass out of my world as fluidly as it appeared.

If not, as they get older they’re going to hear from me about the organization and its policies. They’ll have to set their own moral compass. For now, I stand, reciting, hoping someday my children get to live in a world where “liberty and justice for all” is true.

Written by Darby Blue

How do you deal with sending your kids to organizations whose policies you don’t support, such as religious organizations or even, sometimes, Grandma’s house? How do you raise kids to appreciate tolerance when intolerance is taught in so many organizations?

For those of you without children, you likely face the same issues for yourself, such as in the workplace. How do try to live your beliefs when it can be so difficult?

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