The Nuclear Kid moved out of state with his mom last June, so I wasn’t involved in his decision to re-join the Boy Scouts. And I figured that his mother talked to him about their homophobic attitude a month later, when they restated their bigotry. Turns out, she hadn’t. He was unaware of the policy – but that’s not my point here.
It was a national policy. Even if he’d known, it would have been easy to imagine that his council and district would not be bigoted, given the chance. And he loves the camping trips and activities, so I kept my mouth shut and let him make his own decisions.
And then the national BSA decided to lift the national ban, making it a local issue instead of a national one. (UPDATE: The BSA just decided to delay this decision until May.) When I asked earlier this week how his scout meeting went, he told me:
“I didn’t go. They were meeting about how to keep gay people out of the Boy Scouts.”
“Oh,” I replied. “How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I mean, I like the trips and camping, but I don’t think I want to hang around a bunch of people who discriminate against gay people. That’s like being racist. I just don’t want to be around people who discriminate like that. I’ll stop going unless my mom makes me.”
I am damn proud of my kid. Without any prompting, without any encouragement, he said:
I don’t want to be around people who discriminate like that.
Good on you, kiddo. Good on you.
