Posted on 11/19/2002 2:21:44 PM PST by madprof98
Darrell Lambert used to be a Boy Scout.
He taught kids leadership, earned 37 merit badges and racked up more than 1,000 hours of community service in one year.
Lambert, 19, is also an atheist. And his honesty about his beliefs has made him the poster boy for the intolerance and hypocrisy of a powerful American institution.
The Boy Scouts of America does great good in communities and in the lives of youngsters. It teaches boys to respect others, to conserve natural resources and to be leaders in thought and in deed.
Yet that admirable record has an odd, dark side.
Last month, Lambert, an Eagle Scout in Port Orchard, Wash., was training to be an adult leader. He engaged in a debate about faith, expressing his view that there is no higher power, and hence no God.
''I think the only power higher than myself is the power of all of us combined,'' Lambert said later. ''The interactions we do affect each others' lives."
The Boy Scouts, however, require a profession of belief.
Officials gave Lambert a week to change his mind, and when he refused, they gave him the boot. No matter that he was clean, thrifty and brave. He was not reverent in the manner the Scouts demand.
To defend that practice, Scout officials point to a shaky 5-4 Supreme Court decision two years ago that upheld the right of a private organization to ban certain members. It is the same ruling used to exclude homosexuals.
But the central issue is not the legal rights afforded a so-called private organization (one that happens to have a very public persona). The Boy Scouts of America puts teaching character and citizenship as its foremost goals, yet it is not upholding those principles with its actions.
Each of us, in our own way, must undertake the intellectual and spiritual journey that Lambert made in arriving at his atheism. There is no prescribed route and no predetermined destination. America was founded on that very premise.
Lambert has been forthright in explaining how he came to his views. He has been steadfast in his right to hold them. To have made that difficult journey in a manner that is both thoughtful and mature shows a remarkable strength of character. That should be held up as an example, not expunged like some malignancy.
''On my honor'' begins the Scout oath, in which boys pledge to do their best to uphold their duty to God and country.
Part of everyone's duty is deciding for ourselves what we believe and why, and standing behind those beliefs in the face of challenge. That is the very essence of character and citizenship.
Lambert appears to have taken those duties to heart, and put them into practice. He has upheld the oath he took 10 years ago when he became a Tenderfoot.
But the Scouts have not acted with similar honor. By punishing a young man who would not profess to beliefs he does not hold, the organization has directed youngsters within its ranks to value intolerance more than principles and honesty.
MARY SCHULKEN is editorial page editor for the Daily Reflector in Greenville, N.C. Her column appears occasionally.
Shot herself in the foot with this sentence. Any Scout who takes this pledge while not believing in a God has no honor.
It's so simple even a liberal can understand,even if she chooses not to.
And the Scouts have done a magnificent job of upholding their beliefs. FOAD, lady.
A Boy Scout who claims that he is gay or does not believe in God is no longer a Boy Scout by definition, no matter how much he insists that he still is. He can still "respect others," "conserve natural resources," and "be a leader in thought and in deed" -- he just can't call himself a Boy Scout in the process.
What makes this attitude truly pathetic is that these people have all placed a higher value on the organization to which they belong than they do on themselves. If I were gay or an atheist I would leave any organization that wouldn't accept me on those grounds, and consider myself better for doing it.
... I think the only power higher than myself is the power of all of us combined ...The power of all of us combined has not the strength or scope or efficacy of a single prayer uttered by a single child in a single moment. God help us if all we have is the power of all of us combined.
A vital point. Nor is he being denied a right.
If he had any honor, he would have walked away from the Boy Scouts graciously the moment he realized he could no longer subscribe to its fundamental principles.
This isn't about honor. This is about a joint gay activist/atheist effort to destroy the Boy Scouts of America.
Then how hard is it for each of us to undertake the same intellectual and spiritual journey to arrive at a conclusion that we don't want to be Boy Scouts any more?
If I were a parent whose kids were involved in the Boy Scouts precisely for the values that the Boy Scouts hold, I really wouldn't give two sh!ts about some atheist's "intellectual and spiritual journey."
And I wouldn't give one sh!t about what a third-rate columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thought about the organization my kids belonged to, either.
I'm so effen sick of this word.
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