Written: 01/22/2011

We have this thing at work that allows employees from across the country to submit ideas.  Users can then comment and vote on ideas.  More often than not, there are a lot of duplicates, and some are, of course, just veiled tirades of bitching and moaning about something.  Note: ScoutNet.  Seriously, fix ScoutNet.  But to be fair, there have been some good improvements made from it, and I love watching this version of crowdsourcing working in action.

An idea came across last week about changing the membership standards.  It wasn’t really a step in the right direction, it was a lateral move at best, maybe even a step backwards.

I will step back for just a moment to add something.  In the latest edition of the Boy Scout Handbook, there is a page about sexual responsibility.  And that is fantastic.  We can’t be so sex-negative as a society or organization to believe that people are not having sex, that is what has led us to the abhorrent abstinence education, which has been proven time and time again to be a determent to people’s health.

So this idea was basically to make any expression of sexuality forbidden.  I’m going to guess that the person suggesting it, while having their heart in the right place (he or she mentioned that it was unfair that the BSA only specifically mention homosexuals), I can’t help but wonder if there was some kind of scandal with a Scoutmaster and a Committee Chair (or any other combination) that caused him or her a lot of headaches in a unit.  But I digress.  Also ignoring the fact that when people get up in arms about gays “flaunting their sexuality,” they forget that heterosexuals flaunt theirs constantly, but it is taken for granted.  Talking about your wife being pregnant is flaunting your sexuality.  Complaining about your husband is flaunting your sexuality.  Discussing where you, your spouse and the couple next door are going to go to dinner on Saturday is flaunting your sexuality.  It is flaunting your sexuality, but it is taken for granted, so the double standard continues.

Well, someone from another council jumped in the comments and was railing against the homosexuals, once again bringing up the wrong, outdated and hateful “research” that states that gays just want to prey on boys.

That really put me in a funk.  And it was like a car crash, I just kept looking back at it to see if there were any other comments.  The first commenter jumped in again after a few comments and said that in his ideal world, any sex outside of marriage, from a youth or adult member, would automatically kick that person out of the program until they had completed a probationary period.

I really hope someone can get some sense into his head, the national organization is moving forward, at a snail’s pace, but forward none the less and accepting reality.  Maybe it is too much to hope that that would trickle down to everyone.  Or you know, they would listen to the sixth point of the Scout Law: A Scout is Kind.

So all of that leads to one of my bosses talking with a coworker while I am at my desk.  They are out of sight but within ear range, and I hear them talk about this idea in particular, which was originally floated due to the end of the federal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  I hear the coworker, whose brother is in the military say that he is totally against the repeal of DADT because his brother thinks there will be wasted time on training to end the policy.

Needless to say, I will be talking even less to that coworker (who I really didn’t like before, so this just makes it easier I suppose).

Anyway, the stunning truth is that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has cost over two hundred million dollars…since 2005 alone.

Forgive me if I’ve written about this story before, but even so, it bears repeating.  Also, I’ve asked him multiple times about different things that he feels comfortable talking about, and I always end up apologizing because I don’t always know the proper terminology, so I apologize in advance for any details/terms that are incorrect.

Note: I did mention this before, but I write about it in greater detail here:

One of my best friends is a veteran, he served in Afghanistan after graduating from High School.  Every week, his unit would gather, usually on a basketball court or something similar (large, flat) and if anyone had a problem with anyone else, they would beat the crap out of each other.  Any reason at all.  It got rid of any drama, made them a better unit, made them cohesive and able to rely on each other for absolutely anything.

To a pacifist like me, it sounds crazy, but the more he talked about it, and the more I thought about it, it’s brilliant.

Well, at some point, a laptop was borrowed from a member of the unit and they found some gay porn.  They confronted the soldier and he said that yes, he was gay.

Well, the next week when they got in their circle, he got the shit beat out of him.

Not for being gay.

For lying.

My friend said it with words so eloquent, that I can only hope to remember how he put it: “We had to be able to trust each other with our lives.  And he was lying to us, we had to make sure we could all trust one another, no secrets.”

They could have cared less who he loved, who he slept with.  Because they are adults and they are professionals.  They cared about the trust they had to have with one another as they put their lives on the line for us back home.

And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank him enough for that.  He always brushes it off, but I’ll keep trying, but that’s a discussion for another blog.

So for those who say unit cohesion will be destroyed, or that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has helped the military: they are wrong.

For now, I just have to keep hoping that cooler heads will prevail while I keep remaining silent.

Until those cooler heads can finally lead,

All my best,

The King of Spades