Posted on 07/23/2005 10:39:02 PM PDT by Coleus
by Aaron Atwood, assistant editor
TV's Food Network takes Boy Scout idea off the table.
When the Food Network asked "How do you Iron Chef?" on its Web site, Boy Scout Troop 99 of Colorado Springs responded. They were accepted—then rejected because they pledge to "being morally straight."
The troop had been doing Iron Chef competitions at campouts and Scoutmaster Dave Maher thought a vignette of his troop cooking up a storm would make a great promo for the company.
The competition gives two chefs an identical cache of food and challenges each to outdo the other in creativity and taste. Maher's crew takes cooking seriously and had the Boy Scout version of the popular TV program down to a science. Maher said some of the food threw the Scouts for a loop.
"One of the foods I put in initially was an eggplant," Maher said. "A lot had never seen it before."
Maher answered the casting call and the producers responded. In a few weeks Maher was discussing with the show's staff the logistics of hauling cameras to its next campout. Would there be electricity? Do you need parking? What date works best?
The excitement faded when Food Network producers took the idea to parent company, E.W. Scripps.
"It went to Scripps for a rubber stamp but got shot down at corporate approval," Maher explained. "Scripps was unwilling to work with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) because of the Boy Scouts' position—policies which they perceive are the Boy Scouts' discriminatory practices on gays."
This isn't the first time BSA has been singled out for a perceived anti-gay agenda. Several lawsuits have been brought against the nearly century-old organization by the American Civil Liberties Union in recent years. In fact, Congress is getting involved after the Department of Defense balked at allowing Boy Scouts to use military facilities. As Scouts from around the world converged on Fort A.P. Hill, Va. for the 2005 National Scout Jamboree, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., took to the floor of the Senate to propose the Support Our Scouts Act 2005.
"This legislation . . . is necessary to press back on the lawsuits that seek to sever the ties between our military, which has hosted the Boy Scout Jamboree on its bases, and the Boy Scouts of America," he said. "America's youth can learn so much from the men and women in uniform today: love of country, commitment to values, sacrifice for others. It is simply wrongheaded to conclude that Pentagon support of the Boy Scouts of America violates the establishment clause. It is time to return some common sense to the courts."
The lawsuits stem from the unabashed religious thread woven through BSA policy. In 2002 the Executive Board of BSA issued a resolution stating, "(T)he national officers agree with the report that 'duty to God is not a mere ideal for those choosing to associate with the Boy Scouts of America; it is an obligation,' which has defined good character for youth of Scouting age throughout Scouting's 92-year history and that the Boy Scouts of America has made a commitment 'to provide faith-based values to its constituency in a respectful manner.' "
The resolution continued in waters where many politically correct are unwilling to tread: "WHEREAS the national officers further agree that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the traditional values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law and that an avowed homosexual cannot serve as a role model for the values of the Oath and Law."
The Scripps decision to nix the Boy Scouts' campout would have little consequence had it only affected Maher. However, Forrest Eaglin, a 12-year-old Tenderfoot in Troop 99 had to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't considered worth being on TV because of the oath he'd taken.
"I was really amazed (at being on the Food Network) because this has pretty much never happened in the troop," he said. "Everybody was thrilled."
But when they got the message that the deal was off?
"I felt really disappointed. We were, like, all excited to have them come and film us. It really bummed us out."
Eaglin will still go on the July camping trip. He's excited because he has earned enough rank to sleep in his own tent. But the Food Network will miss the opportunity to show what America truly values—not the Iron Chef—the Iron Will.
TAKE ACTION
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Absolutely, and look at the Home and Garden homosexual support. Fine living has shown households where the owners were obviously homosexual men. Other shows are making it plain that the area of home and family are in the spotlight for homosexual normalness.
BTW, it irks me a little when the Scout Oath is used to show an anti homosexual agenda. The term, "morally straight" only means staying on the "straight and narrow". And has nothing to do with homosexuality. Scouts and prospective scoutmasters are asked not to join if there is something that would disqualify them from the Scouting lifestyle. Homosexuality is not specifically mentioned although a sexual predator would clearly not qualify as a role model for the scouts.
The scouting organization led the country in recognizing that homosexual predators do attempt to gain "closeness" with adolescent young boys by joining organizations that work with youth. This anti predator movement has spread to most city and community organizations now, and is not really at issue. The scouts practice the rule of not allowing adult and child pairings of one on one. There must always be additional scouts, or more than one adult.
If a homosexual individual were to join the scouts, and keep his sexuality to himself, he would be more than welcome in the scouts. (This is obviously true because of the occasional Scout who comes out of the closet and admits that he went through the scout program.) The BSA is certainly within their rights by saying that homosexuality is not a valid role model for their programs. If this offends the homosexual supporting communtiy that is too bad. No one has a "right" to go through life not ever being offended by someone or something. Get over it.
Thanks for posting this.
FYI
Agreed; but the Scouts catch hell. It is certainly in order to put some heat on the Food Network.
So, they are queers! I wondered that when happened to catch the very last part of a commerical for FoodTV's latest series. I stopped dead in my track, esp. when the "fluffier" of the two gushed how he just loved that british cooking show "Two Fat Ladies". 
Thanks for the ping CK. It just one more "Hey, where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?" moment.
(Well, it's a little funny)
Have you forgotten the FReeper Code of Ethics?
POST the photos, Please!
Oh yeah, the two of them bragged about being a gay couple. They thought it was time to have a gay couple host a cooking show. I didn't even have to watch the show to know who was going to win.
It's the same way on HGTV. About 75% of the "couples" on that network are gay or lesbian. That isn't counting the "designers" who are also on. I just wish they would stick to cooking and decorating and stop the PC crap.
I like and support the FOOD CHANNEL.
I like and support the BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA.
If I have to give up one one of these two which one would it be.?
Oh Yeah Babe !! Bye Emeril.
She should try taping a show in the South. His audience would only be shocked if he *didn't* include garlic, hot sauce, or booze.
This was the same type of argument used by gays attempting to get into the RC priesthood. It was the mid 1960's or so and the argument was, "If you [the RCC] demand that straight men become celibate to become priests, why can't homosexuals? Just require them to be celibate too and there's no problem..."
And b/c Vatican II had just been implemented, b/c of the radical social changes of the 1960's, and, IMHO, b/c of an unhealthy degree of moral timidity on the part of the Curia, the RRC caved and began admitting gays to the priesthood...a bad seed that yielded an evil harvest 30 years later.
That was my experience in the Boy Scouts as well.
Scouting was all about camping, getting merit badges and doing things for the community. We learned how to properly whittle wood, start a campfire, use a compass, etc., etc. We used to go around Saturday mornings picking up trash in run-down neighborhoods and blazing trails in the nearby woods.
Right. It was about citizenship, teamwork, responsibility, and self-reliance. About boys growing up into good men.
"It is certainly in order to put some heat on the Food Network."
I disagree. FoodTV is not a political organization and it is unfair to expect them to do anything controversial that could hurt their ratings. They aren't taking sides. They are avoiding controversy.
Actually, it sounds like the producers at Food Network were in favor of the BSA participation and went to Scripps for what they believed would be a rubber stamp, only to have it rejected there. The focus should be on Scripps, not the Food Network.
Still, can't help but notice on HGTV and such when they show those Sell This House, or Designed to Sell, or what have you that everytime you see the three prospective homebuyers, one is always a lesbian couple.
Sure it does. Being homosexual isn't disqualifying, but living as an active homosexual is another matter. It's the doing that does it. And the problem is that being an active homosexual man carries with it the 20-30% likelihood that one is disposed to cross the line with youth -- the clinical term is "ephebophilia," but it's just the ancient gay slavering over youth and beauty. I've got a coffee-table book someone gave me on Greek civilization, and it's shot through with editorializing in favor of gay values. Every homosexual episode in Greek mythology is represented in that book somewhere. The editor was gay, and he tarted up the book as a big, fat message to educated breeders.
If a homosexual individual were to join the scouts, and keep his sexuality to himself, he would be more than welcome in the scouts. (This is obviously true because of the occasional Scout who comes out of the closet and admits that he went through the scout program.)
Gay campaign orgs are always surfacing these guys. Did you ever wonder why they didn't surface any of them who are doing state time for statutory rape and indecency convictions?
A truly closeted, non-active gay is hard to imagine. Surely such people exist, and I don't think they'd hit any screens; but if someone is out and gay, even if he (at the moment) is celibate, that's a problem. If he's active but closeted, that's still a problem. The BSA's problem is, if they let 1000 of these guys in nationwide, they're going to have 250-300 incidents that they otherwise wouldn't have.
The model for what happens when gay and bisexual men get access to a youth organization is the Nazi SA, the Brown Shirts. Their command staff was 100% gay or bi, and the commander, Ernst Roehm, was an aggressive and brutal predator. Those guys went through the Hitler Youth like the Fire of Rome. They were so bad, that they impaired Hitler's plans to take control of the Wehrmacht: the general staff of the Wehrmacht wasn't having any of Ernst Roehm and his rapists. So Hitler purged the SA, sending the SS to kill the top staffers in the notorious "night of the long knives". That episode doesn't get a lot of ink, but a couple of books have been written in the last 10 years. You can probably find them on Amazon or B&N, if they're not too PC. Try Pink Swastika.
I've long had a crush on Alton Brown. He's the only reason that I occassionally watch the channel.
Actually, there were gay men in the seminaries already, had been for a long time, and they were protecting each other.
Those guys hit my grandfather's radar in the early 50's when he attended his brother's funeral at a big cathedral church in Detroit. His nephew was also in the seminary (he was about 22 at the time), or the old man would have tried to talk him out of it, after what he saw at the post-funeral dinner.
When I was in high school, some guys I'd known at a Catholic school I had attended down the road went off to the seminary. They came back less than a year later, and when people asked, they just said "well, the priestly life just wasn't for me after all." Never did figure out what happened, but in retrospect it sounds like they ran into trouble, or perhaps they got run off by the other seminarians themselves. I don't plan on asking them.
It's a thought. Discrimination against religionists? Against Levitical religionists? It could be seen as religious factionalism: "reconciling" (gay-friendly) versus "non-reconciling" (straight and moral), something like that.
It's systematic persecution, but it'll have to run for a while in order to establish a pattern and a roster of bad actors, identifying the NGO's and personalities who are pushing it.
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