From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/why-the-boy-scouts-new-gay-policy-is-not-a-win_b_3329540.html
Brynn Tannehill
05/24/2013
Usually compromise in the realm of politics means the ball is moving forward. President Clinton’s strategy of triangulation was the epitome of it. Most people who work on LGBT issues also have to live with solutions that are far from ideal. They often embrace a philosophy of “half a loaf is better than none, and we will get the other half later.” Frequently they’re right. Sometimes they’re wrong. As a trans person, I tend to cast a rather jaundiced eye on opportunities for that philosophy to fail.
For example, when I was meeting with a group of LGBT activists in Ohio, the question of why a push for an employment nondiscrimination bill should come before a push for marriage equality was raised. “Employment equality is easier to convince people of than marriage equality and has come first in every state with marriage equality,” noted one (cisgender) woman.
I couldn’t hold back at that point.
“No, not really,” I replied. “New York passed marriage equality last year, and they have failed to deliver on workplace protections based on gender identity for over 10 years now. The workplace protections they passed back in 2003 didn’t include trans people.”
This sense of history tinged with cynicism makes me see the Boy Scouts of America’s admission of gay scouts under the age of 18 as something that will to set the fight for equality back a very long time and do a lot of damage in the interim.
Last month, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially endorsed the BSA’s new “young gays OK, grown-up gays bad” position, I pricked up my ears. First, given the influence of the LDS Church on the BSA, I became convinced that this new policy would pass. However, I asked myself, “What does this organization have to gain from it?”
Simply put: everything. Scouting is the official youth activity of boys in the LDS Church, so the BSA and the LDS Church are intimately connected. Meanwhile, the BSA had been hemorrhaging corporate sponsors because of its previous ban on both gay adult leaders and gay scouts. Appearing to make concessions, without really changing anything, has been a big part of the LDS Church’s post-Proposition 8 marketing campaign. (Literally. They hired two big-name firms to give their image a facelift.) If this latest “concession” slows down, or stops, corporations from pulling their support, it will allow the BSA to delay allowing adults who are LGBT into the organization for a long time.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/why-the-boy-scouts-new-gay-policy-is-not-a-win_b_3329540.html
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