Why is it that the most hateful and/or intolerant groups seem to be the ones with the most to hide? While railing against the evils of contraception, freedom of choice for women, and the sinfulness of homosexuality, the Catholic Church harbored and covered for hundreds of pedophiles.
And now, as the LA Times has discovered, while discriminating against gays, the Boy Scouts routinely covered up sex abuse allegations, dating back to 1919.
[read full post at ABLC]
Cris (without an H)
We just got some materials from our local boy scout troop, and while I know the intentions are good, I was a little disquieted by the four pages of “how to talk to your child about sexual predators” at the front of the parent handbook. First thing, like, before the table of contents even. I was like, “so this must be a problem then.”
WereBear
Man, that Freud was a genius.
Joel
Just a minor thIng, I think it’s worthwhile linking the original story if possible. I understand the copy is the same…
LanceThruster
Boy Scout#1 – Had a pot luck dinner with the scoutmaster down by the lake.
Boy Scout#2 – Fish stew?
Boy Scout#1 – No, I was able to get away.
Villago Delenda Est
Projection. It’s what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
Frankensteinbeck
Tolerant people have room for their own evils, and find healthy, harmless ways to express the worst of themselves. Intolerant people are more concerned with hiding the evidence.
@WereBear:
He actually was. His sexual development theories were fucked up (no pun intended), but he’s the father of modern psychology for a good reason. It is from Freud that we learned that humans don’t know what we’re thinking, we only THINK we know.
WereBear
@Frankensteinbeck: Very true, and I am an even bigger fan of Jung.
He was the one who pointed out one cannot destroy their shadow self, yet this is the operating premise of the current Republican party and their demented fundamentalist religions.
Jung’s father was a minister.
shortstop
Not one person who should be ashamed and horrified will be. Watch as the BSA and all its homophobic supporters successfully spin this as proof that gay people should not be Scout leaders because they’re all pedophiles. The ignorance on this topic runs extremely deep.
pluege
surprise, surprise! another authoritarian organization of adults providing “guidance” to juveniles. Do we see a pattern here?
The Red Pen
The founder of the Boy Scouts was a notorious pedophile. He was quoted expressing the enjoyment he got watching young boys swim naked.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame an organization for the sins of its founders, but only when those sins have been denounced and the organization changed. This isn’t the case with the BSA.
The Moar You Know
I was in Scouts. Back in the pre-Mormon takeover days (1970s). Seriously, good times. Learned a LOT. Fantastic troop leader and assistant – in fact, the assistant Scoutmaster is more directly responsible than anyone else for me doing what I do for a living these days.
I cannot stand to see what the magic underwear fundie crowd has turned Scouting into. I’d rather send a kid to Uncle Elmer’s Bible And Child Rape Camp than a Scouting troop these days.
But yeah, the gruesome fact of the matter is that Scouting was started by a guy who preferred to be surrounded by lots of healthy, athletic teenage boys rather than women, and you could say that what you’re seeing today is merely a return to Scouting’s roots.
WereBear
@shortstop: It is willful ignorance.
Because they refuse to use science or even logic to operate, they are going to continually do the wrong things to combat their problems. Then they blame their problems on their enemies and double down on doing stupid and counter productive “remedies” to fight something that isn’t there.
The only thing to do is to admit when they are wrong, yet, like the Catholic Church, that is the one thing they cannot do.
The stupid is baked in.
Litlebritdifrnt
I got thrown out of the Brownies cause I wouldn’t go along with all the god bothering stuff.
Todd
My observation on scouting is not positive (I was a scout through age 15, when I made serious inroads on the cars-girls-beer-weed front). In hindsight, there were severe deficiencies in the training regime on personal development, as the whole thing seemed to rely on platitudes and lip service, with an excessive amount of energy devoted to routine camping/hiking activity. The adults who embraced that method and were drawn to long term involvement in scouting (either as paid staff or hanging on without boys actively involved in troops) just seemed juvenile in outlook.
I remember thinking about them as being laughable, dweeby failures.
This is why such a huge percentage of Eagle projects appear to involve hiking trail improvement, improvement around the kids’ own churches or some other meaningless blather.
For the adolescent me, one lesser and easily done service project away from Life rank (and only a few merit badges short on Eagle), it was a no brainer to choose partying and nookie over doing some dork-assed, boring and meaningless Eagle project approved by a bunch of men who I thought were jokes. I’m still not sorry.
Anyway, expecting weak men like that to man up and deal with their perverts is an impossibility.
The Bearded Blogger
Sing it again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CQg9f7z9eg
If you are homophobic, you are probably gay!
Roger Moore
@Joel:
Unfortunately, the LA Times has followed the NY Times by giving only a limited number of free views in a month before demanding you pay to see their content. It may be more practical to link to a copy of the article at a site that has friendlier policies.
Zifnab
The Boy Scouts is big money. All those badges and camps and jamborees don’t pay for themselves. Same thing with the Catholic Church. With all that money in play, these people simply don’t believe they can afford to address the scandal like adults. It’s going to cost the Scouts in the end, but not before they make a whole lot of people’s lives miserable for trying to do the right thing.
In a way, it’s a lot like the cigarette industry in the 70s and 80s, or the fossil fuels folks in the 90s and 00s.
The Bearded Blogger
@Todd: ditto on the infantile character of adults at the scouts. Heightened by the use of caps and shorts. Never saw what was to like in a pseudo-military organization dedicated to boring shit.
Culture of Truth
This is a good thread for my Fantasy Psychoanalyst Team
Joey Maloney
@Litlebritdifrnt: Really? ‘Cause I was thrown out of Cub Scouts for eating a Brownie.
…wait, you weren’t making a joke? Oops.
Culture of Truth
I enjoyed the cub scouts, but I didn’t see point as I got older. I’m sure it’s great for some people, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Litlebritdifrnt: While my impression is that the Girl Scouts are far less insane on this front than the Boy Scouts, that language is still in the Girl Scout Promise, and my atheist daughter is running into it, which provided a teachable moment about social game-playing in a society where you’re an invisible but still theoretically mistrusted minority. I told her that if she’s uncomfortable with it I’m okay with her leaving the Scouts, but she didn’t go for that. We’ll see how it goes.
Cassidy
I was a Socut up into my early teens and just lost interest. I think the big thing is how segregated it was. The cool kids and the not cool kids were split into different squads and whatnot. So I quit. I was one of the outcasts at school and didn’t see the need to feel that way in a recreational activity.
Anyway, I worked on one Eagle project as a Scout: painting fire hydrants. Seemed decent enough. When I was older, one of the guys on my Crew team somehow got it approved to build a dock for our team as his Eagle project. The whole thing just seemed so not public servicey.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Matt McIrvin:
It is going to be a neat trick if she can pull it off. I am sure that the organization is not nearly as religious as it was back in my day (many, many, many moons ago).
Todd
@The Bearded Blogger:
Mentioned it on another thread way back when, back when I was about 12 at summer camp, a district executive with thinning, greasy hair, shorts and a badge covered shirt was sitting at our mess table and sharing a really disgusting lunch consisting of sandwiches made of “going green” bologna and stale bread, with what looked like commodity mayonnaise.
He sat there and went on about how great he thought the sandwich was, when most normal middle aged men would say something like “this is disgusting, but I’m so hungry its almost good”, and would make a joke about it – but he actually meant it.
That was when I thought “gah, what a loser. What the hell does this guy eat on a regular basis?”.
SatanicPanic
Is it inappropriate to point out that its name is pretty NAMBLA to begin with?
Cassidy
@Litlebritdifrnt: My girls just joined and my wife became a Girl Scout to help run the troop and it doesn’t seem that way at all, anymore. It seems so decentralized though, that it could be different between individual groups. Hell, I’m thinking of becoming a Girl Scout just to help out.
patroclus
I am an Eagle Scout who is appalled by the way the BSA has changed since I was in it. Back then, there were plenty of gay Scouts and gay leaders (as well as atheist Scouts and leaders) and they tended to be some of the very best in the organization. I would not even consider getting re-involved in the organization unless and until they change their now-ingrained policies. It’s really sad what has happened – Scouting has/had a lot of good attributes.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Bearded Blogger:
Duh.
Just look at the closeted legions of the GOP. ZOMG, if gay marriage is allowed, I will ditch my beard and kids and become a lustful cockmonster!
Everyone has figured this out but the incredibly non-self aware closeted cockmonsters.
John Dillinger
1919 huh? Just like the molestations in the Catholic church that date to the 30’s in Ireland, this can all be traced to the permissives mores that took root in the 1960s. Those damn hippies.
Chris
@Todd:
To me, it’s like a frat. You’re paying (or your parents are) to have friends, half of whom you don’t end up liking anyway, to go out and do things that you could just as easily do yourself with a group of people you yourself chose to be with. Don’t see the “it builds moral character” thing as vital either, regardless of my opinions on their particular morals. That’s what parents are for, and churches if you’re religious.
I know people who’ve found Scouting to be valuable and fun (not just right wing psychos), and good for them. It just doesn’t do anything for me. Then again, always been somewhat of a loner.
The Moar You Know
@Todd: My troop was led by the following non-juvenile folks:
Scoutmaster: Head of the Del Mar Fairgrounds district.
Assistant Scoutmaster: Professor of Engineering, UCSD
Assistant Scoutmaster: District Supervisor, Cal Fish and Game, San Diego and Imperial Counties.
It all went to shit when, within six months:
Our Fish and Game guy got transferred to NorCal
Our Professor had a heart attack
Our Scoutmaster got transferred to run the other state fair district (Fresno).
Who took over? Some facepicking Jesus-freak dweeb whose fat Christ-sobbing wife was a hoarder. Our first troop meeting under the new leader was the last we ever had as a troop.
RIP Troop 796, you are missed.
Villago Delenda Est
@John Dillinger:
That explains it.
They’re using Obama’s time machine to go back decades and plant the seeds of their moral depravity in the 20’s and 30’s.
Of course.
It’s so simple. Why the fuck didn’t anyone on this site think of that? It’s because we don’t know how to critically think and objectively evaluate, that’s why!
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know:
I had a great Scouting experience, too, a few years before your time. Scout troops varied wildly; some were run like paramilitary outfits, while the motto of our troop’s leaders — literally the motto, they’d say this all the time — was “Let the boys have fun.” And did they ever. They mostly sat around a campfire all day and half the night, talking and drinking coffee and farting, while we ran wild. Somehow I even learned how to put up a tent and tie a couple of knots.
At summer camp every year the troop did go to Chapel, which meant Jesus stuff, which meant that the Jewish kid (me) dug in his heels and stayed behind at our campsite. When everybody got back they pretended nothing had happened, like they’d been on a nature hike and I’d had a sore ankle or something. Nobody ever said one word to me about it, clearly under the instructions of our (great) leaders.
In short, I was one of the lucky ones. I have a daughter, but I wouldn’t let a son of mine anywhere near that ferkakta organization.
(Hey, Moar: I was about 20 miles north of you, in Carlsbad. Troop 784.)
Gex
I have no idea why people let tribalism and not due diligence be their guide as to how to protect their kids. There’s a certain kind of mentality that will take problems that are a concern in all areas of human life and deny that they could ever have that problem too. And those people will, when the inevitable happens, feel a desperate need to make it appear as though it never did.
They will not protect your children. They will sacrifice them.
Todd
@The Moar You Know:
Your second experience as things devolved was much more akin to what happens here.
El Cid
When anyone stands up too much for male identity, development, and above all cultural traditional values, run, and await the news of the latest sex offender or if lucky just tacky pervert news from that person or organization.
The Moar You Know
@Hungry Joe: You probably did Mataguay back in the day as I did, that was the only summer camp that had chapel as I recall. Fucking horrible what ended up happening out there (and very on topic with the thread, I’m sure that’s one of the first things that got subpoenaed out of their records). Thankfully that was well after we both were out.
Did you get to go to Catalina? There are people who’d spend a couple of thousand bucks a day to get that kind of vacation experience. We were so damn lucky.
Ruckus
@Todd:
Late 50s early 60 scouts here. Small troop, all friends in school, various dads as leaders. Met in a church but using the space was the extent of church involvement.
I remember thinking about them as being laughable, dweeby failures.
Did think all the dads involved were dweebs but none I would call failures. I spent most of my free time with adults at that age, going to work with my dad during summer and many weekends so my perspective may have been different.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Went to Catalina twice, was a pretty good time. Other than that the girl scouts were on the other side of the island.
Our troop, OK the kids, decided that we wanted to do something else for summer camp and we all ended up camping at Yosemite. Now that was grand.
Nina
We’ve gotten into Girl Scouts recently with our daughter, and it’s been a wonderful experience. There are a lot of safeguards in place to ensure that the kids are gently supervised but allowed to take measured risks and explore, and that the adults in the group aren’t given too much unsupervised power.
And cookies are now on sale in many states. Now is the time to show that you support organizations for children that are tolerant of all religions or no religion, alternate lifestyles, and expanding the opportunities for girls from all economic strata.
And the cookies are quite yummy and made with love. And butter.
Comrade Dread
Wonder how long before they go the Catholic route and blame teh gays?
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
@patroclus:
Are you guys sure it’s something that’s happened since you left, or could it just be that you happened to be in good troops run by decent people, and your memories of that don’t click with what you’re seeing from the national organization?
I’m only asking because during the brief time I tried out BSA, there was definitely at least one kid that everyone knew was gay, nobody gave a crap, it was discussed openly, and this was the late nineties, well after the Mormony stuff had taken over the organization. I suspect that like the Catholic Church, the BSA overall is run by a bunch of major-league assholes, but there are lots of pockets left at the grassroots level that are actually decent people.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: It changed. It started to even when I was in it, and went seriously off the rails when Reagan won and the evangelicals discovered that they finally had some political power.
Yes, there are pockets of decent Scouting left, but they have gotten much smaller. By way of example: no one cared about the God shit when I was in, save for a very perfunctory observance at summer camp as I mention above. No atheist kids would have been booted, even vocally atheist kids like me.
Now, there are no troops in San Diego that are not explicitly sponsored by churches.
That’s a huge change.
Steeplejack
@The Red Pen:
Got a source for that? On the other hand, Wikipedia:
Or are you talking about someone else?
ETA: Not defending Baden-Powell as a paragon, but “repressed homosexual” is a long way from “notorious pedophile.”
Original Lee
@Cassidy: Girl Scouts has more hierarchy (in terms of forms that have to be turned in, etc.), but the part that the girls see really depends on the troop leaders and other parents. (N.B., I have been a troop leader for 10 years and currently have a multilevel troop.) It also is dependent on the the girls in the troop. One year, the girls were very interested in service projects, another year, they were into driver safety and car maintenance; last year, they were into fashion. I think this year they are leaning towards food (cooking, feeding the homeless, etc.).
By all means, become a Man in Green and help out. My husband has found that there are a lot of teachable moments when you hang out with a group of girls.
WRT Boy Scouts, again, it really depends on the leadership. If you have fathers who want to be involved and actually help out and are visibly around, I think there are fewer problems than if the troop is run as a drop-off activity. Incidentally, Venturers has been a really good idea for those boys who (a) want to hang around girls who like high-adventure activities and (b) aren’t too interested in merit badges or reaching Eagle rank. I have yet to hear of any problems with adult leaders of Venturing crews.
Brachiator
The story has been around for a while. If being covered very late by the Times helps bring the issue to the fore, then all is good.
BTW, since the Boy Scouts has not always been a hotbed of homophobia, it is dumbass to suggest that this scandal somehow follows naturally from the organization’s supposed authoritarianism and bigotry. And I knew plenty of atheist scouts. I was one of them.
ABL
@Joel: I did.
The Dude Abides
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I got thrown out of the scouts for eating a brownie :(
YoohooCthulhu
@The Moar You Know:
Another ex-San Diego scout here. As of the mid-90s, I can attest that it still wasn’t totally nuts, but it’s entirely possible that as my troops was based at a local catholic church rather than mormon temple/fundie megachurch, we were probably insulated from a lot of the nuttery. I remember some rumors about man-on-boy stuff at Mataguay but I always chalked it up to the scouts I was around being immature snarky preteens/teenagers and not anything of real consequence. Boy was I surprised when I found out I was wrong.
Interestingly, a couple years after I left, our troop was disbanded and a new one formed at the “new” Catholic church which was presided over by one of the trendy new fundie-lite priests. Judging from the experiences of my younger brother’s friends with that troop (late 2000s), I can certify that it’s totally nuts now.
Jonny Scrum-half
What I don’t understand is why anyone would choose to cover-up the child molestations, rather than report them. I can’t imagine the Catholic Church, Penn State or the Boy Scouts looking the other way if a pastor/coach/troop leader was embezzling money or committing some other crime. What is it about child molestation (and specifically man-boy abuse) that makes the people who run these organizations want to cover it up?
ExBoyScout
At a certain Boy Scout Camp outside of Milwaukee, there was a certain Tent Group Scout Master who was a serial molester of boys in his tent groups in the 1960’s. I was one of his victims. There is no way they didn’t know about this guy. I wonder how many boys left camp that summer as traumatized as I was.
AHH onna Droid
@WereBear: couldnt have put it better myself. This is how ignorance does real harm.