roachboy

i was not going to participate at all in this thread because i found the way in which it was framed from the ouset to be thoroughly repellent.

then i read through it.

frankly, i cannot believe that it devolved into a question of whether bigotry directed at people who happen to be gay can be justified or not, and whether therefore the boy scouts are in turn justified in their policies of excluding people who happen to be gay from their ranks.
every single conservative cliche about gay people has turned up here.
every single ridiculous trope that serves in conservativeland to counter critiques of conservative bigtory has been dutifully trotted out, defended etc.
worse still, from the beginning of the thread, the aclu has been characterized by these same people as "anti-american" because they, in this case, work to oppose the extension of this type of bigotry into law on the one hand (restricting the protections afforded gay people by the legal institution of marriage) and organizational policy (the bsa) on the other.

these arguments are repulsive.
they really are mirror images of earllier forms of bigotry.
every racist has felt racism justified.
every bigot here feels his bigotry justified.
every bigot seems worried that he or she will be called a bigot, so the same type of justifications for bigotry get recycled.
what the conservative arguments here come down to is simple--the slogan "god hates fags"--and nothing else.



as for the question of the bsa--in order to make this move, to discriminate against gay people, they fundamentally altered their social position, fundamentally undercut whatever good the organization might have ever accomplished (i was a boy scout as a lad--it was kinda goofy fun, in a strange, sometimes paramilitary kinda way--i liked dressing up in uniforms as many adolescents do--i liked trees--i liked being in uniforms while surrounded by trees)...at this point, i figure the organization has committed a kind of political hara kiri, made itself into a relic, emphasized its worst aspects, destroyed any illusion that its paramilitary aspects are not ideologically motivated, and that this ideological motivation is linked to the far right.

maybe this was always the case--but it seems to me that the bsa was understandable as other than that, at least by me and everyone i knew who had a useful experience passing through the organization.


obviously the problem is the aclu.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite