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FOCUS | Greece: Is the European Union Too Pig-Headed to Survive? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 28 July 2015 11:39 |
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Weissman writes: "Laugh, cry, or scream at their demands for even harsher austerity, the European Union is now doing to Greece what President Big Dog never did to Monica Lewinsky. But, with the terrifying justice of classic Greek tragedy, the ultimate victim will likely be Europe itself. Just watch as German chancellor Angela Merkel and her hubristic Eurocrats make themselves a much-too-easy target for the growing hordes of Euro-skeptics, many of them Christian Nationalists, white supremacists, and born-again fascists."
German chancellor Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras. (photo: Getty Images)
Greece: Is the European Union Too Pig-Headed to Survive?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
28 July 15
 augh, cry, or scream at their demands for even harsher austerity, the European Union is now doing to Greece what President Big Dog never did to Monica Lewinsky. But, with the terrifying justice of classic Greek tragedy, the ultimate victim will likely be Europe itself. Just watch as German chancellor Angela Merkel and her hubristic Eurocrats make themselves a much-too-easy target for the growing hordes of Euro-skeptics, many of them Christian Nationalists, white supremacists, and born-again fascists.
“Today we’re talking about Grexit,” the Front National’s Marine Le Pen said last month of Greece exiting the Euro. “Tomorrow it will be Brexit, and the day after tomorrow it will be Frexit.” By “Brexit” and “Frexit,” she was talking up her hope that Britain and France will leave all of the EU.
“I’ll be Madame Frexit if the European Union doesn’t give us back our monetary, legislative, territorial and budget sovereignty,” she said.
For or against the European Union or the Euro, giving Le Pen and her far-right allies such a sweeping victory would not have a happy ending. Not for Europe. Not for progressive change on either side of the Atlantic. And certainly not for non-Europeans living in Europe – especially Muslims, who have largely replaced Jews as the prime scapegoats and targets of hate.
Groups like Podemos, in Spain, are already fighting to build a less xenophobic and more socially just alternative, and are publicly showing solidarity with the Greek cause. So are political leaders like Bernie Sanders in the United States. But the movement remains relatively weak and badly needs a much clearer understanding of neo-liberal economics and the role it has played in making the EU so much of a government front for coddled capitalism and tax-havened high finance. If you think Wall Street and the .1% totally control Washington D.C., you really need to spend some time in Brussels and Frankfurt.
No one has done more to dramatize this subservience than Greece’s former finance minister, the congenitally undiplomatic Yanis Varoufakis. An internationally respected economist suddenly thrust into government, he repeatedly tried to discuss with his Eurocratic interlocutors the most basic questions of his academic trade as they applied to his homeland. Call it a Socratic version of Econ 101, which Professor Paul Tyson has neatly summarized for Open Democracy.
How would asphyxiating Greek banks and killing the Greek state help the economy recover and repay its debts? How would a contractionary austerity agenda make it possible to generate surpluses sufficient to repay impossible debt burdens? Where was the economic rationality?
The answers from Brussels were always the same: No answers at all. Europe’s cocksure commissars of capitalism did not want to hear what a real economist had to say. And, I would add, they certainly did not want to hear from one who had been teaching in the United States and understood first-hand why Washington and even the economists at the IMF were backing away from the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the Washington Consensus that President Clinton had once preached as gospel.
In short, the Eurocrats were not about to discuss with Varoufakis their outmoded and discredited economic theories. Their job was to defend a quasi-religious orthodoxy, and they honestly felt offended when Varoufakis warned that the “reforms” they were imposing on Greece will “go down in history as the greatest disaster of macroeconomic management ever.”
Tyson sees the orthodoxy as imposed by the multinational industrial and financial giants, for whom “even big players, such as Chancellor Merkel, are pawns.” After all, the titans are well represented within the IMF and European institutions. Mario Draghi, now head of the European Central Bank, was formerly managing director and vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International in London, while several other “technocrats” in the European institutions and IMF have enjoyed similar if less exalted career paths. In Brussels, as in Washington, the revolving door plays a large part in the way the world works.
This is clearly part of the story. But with apologies to Professor Tyson, austerity is not some economic commandment handed down from CEOs on high. It is more a political and ideological construct, and one that weakens capitalism by reducing growth, as economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have argued for years.
Never having been a lukewarm leftist, I hardly want to strengthen capitalists, but let’s tell it like it is. Frau Merkel and her flinty finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble are largely hawking the shopworn ideas of “libertarian economics,” the scientifically bogus and historically flawed doctrine spelled out by the Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. The ideas were then popularized and expanded by an inbred and overlapping network that included Hayek’s Mont Pelerin Society, his one-time mentor Ludwig von Mises, Herbert Read’s Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) at Irvington-on-Hudson in New York, the John Birch Society, ancestral home of the Koch Brothers, Milton Friedman’s “boys” at the University of Chicago, and Antony Fisher’s Institute for Economic Affairs in London, one of the think tanks that most shaped Margaret Thatcher’s remake of Britain.
Call them “libertarians,” “neo-liberals,” or by the narrower term “austerians,” these groups generally attracted corporate backing to fight an ideological Cold War against Soviet Communism, the New Deal in America, and welfare states across Europe. But they did the intellectual, ideological, and political work – and not just what the bosses told them to do.
In much the same way, EU politicos unleashed the austerian mumbo-jumbo initially to justify using public money to bail out the big European banks that helped Wall Street spread the global economic crash that began in 2007-2008. Now Merkel & Co think they need to continue it to keep their economically illiterate voters in line and hold together their tattered dreams for a more united Europe.
We’ll soon see if they’re right, but if the traditions of Greek tragedy hold, they have mostly fooled themselves. Unless new forces on the left emerge with a more persuasive ending, Europe’s pig-headed austerity will only help the far right destroy much of the Euro, gravely weaken the EU, and use their victory to usher in a dark night of anti-migrant, anti-Muslim mayhem.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS: In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, or Less? |
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Tuesday, 28 July 2015 10:37 |
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Taibbi writes: "For sheer entertainment value, the Trump-as-political-anvil phenomenon is pretty hilarious. But history shows that if the Republican Party pushes further in the direction of brainless nativism and economic reaction, the Democrats will probably follow right behind them."
The cover of 'TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,' by Timothy O'Brien. (photo: Warner Books)
In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, or Less?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
28 July 15
The collapse of the GOP gives the Democrats an opportunity to abandon "lesser evilism" — but they probably won't
 ver the weekend, polls showed that that the Trump-fueled collapse of the Republican Party is reaching historic depths. According to CNN, the GOP's approval rating is now down to 32 percent, the lowest level in over two decades. It probably won't be trending up anytime soon, either, now that the Trump campaign is turning "you can't rape your spouse" into this week's political catchphrase.
News of the Republican approval-rating slide came not long after the release of a Gallup survey showing that 32 percent of Americans now believe animals should have the same rights as people. That number is likely to keep climbing – though one can't say the same for the GOP's numbers, given the nation's demographic situation. Animals are now a better political futures bet than Republicans.
This is leading to a lot of "the witch is dead"-style celebrating among Democrats. Many believe Trump has triggered a long-overdue Credibility Event Horizon that will sink the loony right forever as a mainstream force.
"Donald Trump is Democrats' greatest gift," applauded The Globalist, via Salon. "As Donald Trump surges in polls, Democrats cheer," countered The Washington Post. Even before Trump surged in the polls, Democrats were smacking their lips, a la DNC spokeswoman Holly Schulman, who cheekily applauded Trump for bringing "seriousness" to the Republican debate.
For sheer entertainment value, the Trump-as-political-anvil phenomenon is pretty hilarious. But history shows that if the Republican Party pushes further in the direction of brainless nativism and economic reaction, the Democrats will probably follow right behind them.
Theoretically, the collapse of the GOP should mean we can ease up on the whole "we must accept the lesser evil" argument. After all, the Greater Evil is now shooting itself in the face on TV every day.
But it turns out that mainstream Democrats believe just the opposite – that with the GOP spiraling, the party should now brook even less dissent within their ranks. They'd like a primary season with no debate at all, apparently.
We saw a preview of how this rotten dynamic will work last week, when former Democratic congressman and current Signature Bank board member Barney Frank wrote a piece for Politico entitled "Why Progressives Shouldn't Support Bernie."
Frank's core point is that progressive voters should terminate all discussion even before the beginning of the primary season, and jump on board with the frontrunner Hillary Clinton, so she can save her money to fight the evil Trumps of the world:
"Of course it is not only possible to accept the legitimacy of Clinton's liberal-progressive credentials and still prefer that [Vermont Senator Bernie] Sanders be president….But wishful thinking is no way to win the presidency. There is not only no chance — perhaps regrettably — for Sanders to win a national election. A long primary campaign will only erode the benefit Democrats are now poised to reap from the Republicans' free-for-all."
This isn't about Hillary. The lesser evil argument has been a consistent feature of Democratic Party thought dating all the way back to the late Reagan years, long before Hillary Clinton was herself a candidate. The argument always hits the same notes:
–The essentially antiwar, anti-inequality platform progressives want will never win a national election in this country, because McGovern, etc.
–Therefore we must instead support corporate-sponsored Candidate A, who will help us bridge the fundraising gap with the evil Republicans.
–And we should vote for Candidate A anyway, because even though he doesn't always (or even often) show it with his votes, deep down, he's a true believer on the issues.
Frank hit all of these notes in his piece, with special emphasis on point #3. He insisted that people like Hillary, John Kerry and Joe Biden didn't mean it when they voted for the Iraq War, that they only did it out of political expediency. "I regard liberal senators' support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation," Frank wrote, "rather than an indication of their basic policy stance."
Since the Republicans got really crazy, life in some ways got easier for the Democrats. All they've had to do to keep 90 percent of their support every election season is point at crazy John Ashcroft and his fear of stone boobs, or human SNL skit Sarah Palin, or Rapture prognosticator Michele Bachmann, and a lot of their voters have been ready to run to the ballot box to vote blue, if only to keep the Supreme Court away from such people.
Everything became about beating Republicans. If you inhabit the dreary world of lefty media, you can't help but be familiar with the phenomenon, because in the last decade or so it's changed countless careers and taken over whole publications and TV channels.
A lot of media outlets became thinly-veiled proxies for the Democratic Party. They hammered Republicans for goofball transgressions large and small but soft-pedaled the darker developments on the Democratic side, like for instance the worsening surveillance issue or the failure to fight Wall Street corruption.
It's not an accident that The Daily Show turned into the most trusted political news program in America during the Bush years. When the traditional lefty media became so convinced by the "lesser evil" argument that it lost its sense of humor about the Democratic Party, people had to flee to comedy shows for objective news.
Even worse, a lot of Democratic-leaning campaign reporters are to this day so convinced by the lesser evil argument that they go out of their way to sabotage/ridicule candidates who don't fit their idea of a "credible" opponent for Republicans.
I've seen this countless times, usually with candidates like Dennis Kucinich who didn't have a real chance of winning the Democratic nomination (although early 2004 frontrunner Howard Dean also fell into this category). Sanders, who was ludicrously called the Trump of the left by bloviating Meet the Press hack Chuck Todd last week, is another longshot type getting the royal treatment by "serious" pundits now.
But framing every single decision solely in terms of its utility in beating the Republicans leads to absurdities. Not every situation is a ballot with Ralph Nader on it.
The Democrats insisted they had to support the Iraq War in order to compete with Bush, but they ended up not competing with Bush anyway and supporting a crappy war that no sane person believed in. All it won Democratic voters in the end was a faster trip into Iraq, and the honor of having supported the war at the ballot box.
When the Democrats had a legitimate electoral threat in the Republicans to wave in front of their voters, they used that as currency to buy their voters' indulgence as they deregulated Wall Street, widened the drug war, abandoned unions in favor of free-trade deals and other horrors, and vastly increased the prison population, among innumerable other things.
But now that the rival electoral threat is mostly gone, they want permission to take the whole primary season off so they can hoard their money for massive ad buys targeting swing votes in Tennessee or whatever. In other words, even though the road ahead is easier for them, they want increased latitude to take their core voters for granted.
The Democrats could take this godsend of a Trump situation and use it as an opportunity to finally have a healthy primary season debate about what they want to stand for in the future. But nah to that. They'll probably just hoover donor cash and use press surrogates to bash progressives the way they always have. Trump or no Trump, if politicians don't have to work for your vote, they won't.
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Let Me Be Very Blunt and Tell You Why I Am Running |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15102"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 28 July 2015 08:36 |
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Sanders writes: "This country faces more serious problems today than at any time in modern history, and establishment politics will not successfully resolve them."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Charlie Leight/Getty Images)
Let Me Be Very Blunt and Tell You Why I Am Running
By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
28 July 15
et me be very blunt and tell you why I am running.
This country faces more serious problems today than at any time in modern history, and establishment politics will not successfully resolve them.
Corporate greed is rampant, and the very rich keep growing richer while everyone else grows poorer. Despite an explosion in technology and a huge increase in productivity, the middle class continues to disappear, most Americans work longer hours for lower wages, and 45 million live in poverty.
The skyrocketing level of income and wealth inequality is not only grotesque and immoral, it is economically unsustainable. It is unconscionable that 99% of all new income goes to the top 1%. It is absurd that the top one-tenth of 1% own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%, and that one family (the Waltons of Walmart) has more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans.
As a result of the disastrous Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United, the billionaire class is spending huge amounts of money to buy candidates and elections. We are now witnessing the undermining of American democracy and the rapid movement toward oligarchy where a handful of very wealthy families and their Super PACs will control our government.
The scientific community is virtually unanimous in telling us that climate change is real, is caused by human activity, and is already bringing catastrophic damage to our planet. Yet, the Republican Party is prepared to reject science in order to gain campaign contributions from the Koch brothers, Big Energy companies and others who make billions on fossil fuels. If we do not act boldly on climate change, the planet we leave to our grandchildren may be uninhabitable.
The United States once led the world in terms of the percentage of our young people who had college degrees. Today, in a highly competitive global economy, we are now in 12th place. Hundreds of thousands of bright young people have given up on the dream of higher education, while millions of others leave school with oppressive debt.
Our infrastructure -- roads, bridges, rail, airports, water systems, wastewater plants, levees, dams -- is crumbling, and Congress refuses to appropriate anywhere near the necessary funds to rebuild it. If we do not invest substantially in infrastructure, a bad situation will only become much worse.
Despite substantial gains, we still have a long way to go to achieve equality for minorities. Instead of investing in opportunities, we are locking people up at an incredible rate. We now have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world with over 2 million in prison and millions more on probation or parole. We have a broken immigration system that divides families and keeps millions of hard-working people in the shadows.
Most of the major Wall Street financial institutions that we bailed out because they were "too big to fail," are now bigger than they used to be. The six largest financial institutions now have assets equivalent to nearly 60% of our GDP, issue 35% of the mortgages, and oversee 65% of credit cards.
Our tax system is wildly unfair - rigged to benefit the very rich. Major corporations that earn billions in profits stash their money in tax havens and pay nothing in federal income taxes, while billionaire hedge fund managers pay a lower effective tax rate than nurses or teachers.
Despite growing poverty among seniors, almost all Republicans, and some Democrats, want to cut Social Security and benefits for disabled veterans. They want more austerity for the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, and more tax breaks for the rich.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. The United States spends more on the military than the next nine biggest-spending countries combined. Today, there are massive cost over-runs with defense contractors and the Pentagon cannot even pass an independent audit.
We are at a moment of truth. We need to face up to the reality of where we are as a nation, and we need a mass movement of people to change that reality.
Let's be clear. This campaign is not about Bernie Sanders. It's about a grassroots movement of Americans standing up and saying: "Enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires."
I have discussed some of the major crises that we face. Let me give you the outline of an agenda which addresses these problems.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: The truth is that real unemployment in our country is not the "official" and widely-reported 5.4 percent. Counting those who are underemployed and those who have given up looking for work, real unemployment is almost 11 percent. Even more disturbingly, real unemployment for white and Hispanic youth is over 30 percent, while African-American youth unemployment is over 50 percent.
We need a major federal jobs program. The most effective way to do that is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. To do that, I have introduced legislation which would invest $1 trillion over 5 years to modernize our country's physical infrastructure. This would create and maintain at least 13 million good-paying jobs. It would also make our country more productive, efficient and safe.
As a member of Congress who voted against NAFTA, CAFTA, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR) and is helping to lead the opposition against the TPP, I will continue my opposition to trade policies which have cost us millions of decent paying jobs as corporate America shuts down plants here and moves them to low-wage countries.
Raising Wages: Today, millions of Americans are working for starvation wages and median family income has declined by almost $5,000 since 1999. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is totally inadequate. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage - $15 an hour over the next few years. Our goal must be that no full-time worker in this country lives in poverty. We must also bring about pay equity for women. There is no rational reason why women should be earning 78 cents on the dollar compared to men who perform the same work.
Further, we need to implement "family values" for American working families. It is unacceptable that the United States is the only major country on earth that does not guarantee family and medical leave, sick time and paid vacations.
Wealth and Income Inequality: Today, the richest 400 Americans own over $2.2 trillion in wealth, more than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. Meanwhile, nearly half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings and have no idea how they will be able to retire with dignity.
In order to reverse the massive transfer of wealth and income from the middle class to the very rich that we have seen in recent years, we need real tax reform which makes the wealthy and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes. It is fiscally irresponsible that the U.S. Treasury loses about $100 billion a year because corporations and the rich stash their profits in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and other tax havens.
We need a tax system which is fair and progressive. Children should not go hungry in this country while profitable corporations and the wealthy avoid their tax responsibilities.
Reforming Wall Street: I have introduced legislation which would break up the largest financial institutions in the country. In my view, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself investing trillions in risky financial instruments. We need banks that invest in the job-creating productive economy. We do not need more speculation and gambling in casino-type activities.
Campaign Finance Reform: We need to return to a one-person, one-vote democracy. It is not acceptable that the Koch brothers and other billionaires are spending endless sums of money to buy elections. I have introduced legislation which would overturn the horrendous Citizens United decision and will only appoint Supreme Court justices who are prepared to do that. We must also demand disclosure of all large campaign contributions. Long term, we need to move to public funding of elections.
Fighting Climate Change: The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good-paying jobs.
Health Care for All: The United States remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for all as a right. Despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, 35 million Americans continue to lack health insurance and many more are under-insured. Yet, we continue paying far more per capita for health care than any other nation. The United States must move toward a Medicare-for-All single-payer system.
Protecting Our Most Vulnerable: Today, the United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major nation, and millions of seniors and people with disabilities struggle to put food on the table because of insufficient Social Security benefits.
In my view, we have a moral responsibility to make certain that no American goes hungry or sleeps on the street. We must also make certain that seniors and people with disabilities can live in dignity. Not only must we vigorously oppose Republican attacks on the social safety net, we must expand benefits for those most in need. That is why I have recently introduced legislation which would extend the solvency of Social Security until 2065, while increasing benefits for those most in need.
Expanding Opportunity and Equality: We need to stop using prisons as a response to poverty. Our criminal justice system needs to be reformed so that we do not continue to house non-violent offenders at huge expense when that money could be used to rebuild communities and create opportunity. We need federal leadership to reform policing in America, to end racial profiling, and to fight the illegal activities of hate groups. We need comprehensive immigration reform that protects families and leads to a responsible and realistic path to citizenship.
Dismantling Structural Racism: Throughout much of our history, the elite in America has divided people along racial lines in an effort to consolidate wealth and power. We need to simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism which exists in this country while at the same time vigorously attacking the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is making the very rich much richer, and everyone else - especially the African-American community - much poorer. Meanwhile, too many people of color in this country find themselves subjected to a system that treats citizens who have not committed crimes like criminals. We have more people locked up in jail than any other country on earth. We need to invest in jobs and education, not jails and incarceration. Finally, no person should have to worry that a routine interaction with law enforcement will end in violence and death. Black lives matter: we must reform our criminal justice system, move away from the militarization of police forces, and invest in community policing.
College for All: The United States must join Germany and many other countries in understanding that investing in our young people's education is investing in the future of our nation. I have introduced legislation to make tuition in public colleges and universities free, as well as substantially lowering interest rates on student loans.
War and Peace: I voted against the war in Iraq, and that was the right vote. We must be vigorous in combatting terrorism, but we can't do it alone. We must be part of an international coalition that includes Muslim nations which not only defeats ISIS but which works hard to create conditions for lasting peace. I will vigorously oppose an endless war in the Middle East.
My approach to campaigning is pretty simple and straight-forward. We hold a lot of public meetings in towns that are big and small. People ask questions and make comments. We discuss the important issues facing our country. And that's it. Nothing very fancy. It's called democracy and I like that approach very much. It's something I've done my whole political life.
I hope very much that you will join me at one of our meetings. I hope that you will become part of our campaign team. And I hope that you will watch our video and make a contribution to our campaign:
https://go.berniesanders.com/sneak-peek
Let us never forget: This country belongs to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.
Sincerely,
Senator Bernie Sanders
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The Boy Scouts Move One Step Closer to Being "Morally Straight" |
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Tuesday, 28 July 2015 08:32 |
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DeSocio writes: "Under the new policy, there is no longer a wholesale exclusion of gay adults from the organization. However, the religious groups that sponsor many troops will be able to pick adult leaders who fit their moral principles."
Members of Scouts for Equality hold a rally to call for equality and inclusion for gays in the Boy Scouts of America, May 2013. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The Boy Scouts Move One Step Closer to Being "Morally Straight"
By Mike DeSocio, Slate
28 July 15
 n a year that has seen a major legal victory for same-sex marriage and growing exposure for a range of LGBTQ issues, queer people and their allies have one more reason to smile today. On July 27, the Boy Scouts of America’s top leadership voted to end its ban on openly gay adult leaders. (The organization allowed openly gay scouts in 2013.) This is a huge step forward for the typically conservative BSA, a century-old American institution that has been battling public pressure on this issue since affirming its right to discriminate in a Supreme Court case in 2000. However, this policy change won’t bring an end the BSA’s difficulties on LGBTQ issues—in fact, it’s just the beginning of a larger cultural shift that’s sorely needed.
Under the new policy, there is no longer a wholesale exclusion of gay adults from the organization. However, the religious groups that sponsor many troops will be able to pick adult leaders who fit their moral principles. In essence, inclusion is now allowed by national policy, but the BSA is still willing to defend churches that exclude gay leaders from the troops they sponsor.
This compromise is better than nothing, but the Boy Scouts must go further to fully live up the principles the organization espouses. Now that the BSA has rid itself of blanket discrimination, it must create a culture that refrains from identity-based social judgments and actively supports diversity. When the Supreme Court secured same-sex marriage as a national right in June, many critics pointed out that while marriage equality was a big win, our culture is still fraught with discrimination. The BSA’s role in shaping American youth can be the seed of a culture that doesn’t hate and doesn’t make judgments based on sexual orientation, a culture that finds more reasons to accept rather than to exclude. These are the morals that the BSA was built on. This vote is not a vote for radical change, but rather to remind ourselves of what our own values have instructed us to do from the very beginning.
The BSA remains inextricably connected to religious organizations, which would seem to limit its imperative to become more inclusive. According to 2013 self-reported BSA data, religious charters operated a vast majority of troops in the organization. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alone served nearly a quarter of the 2.6 million youth members that year. While a number of major Christian faith denominations—Presbyterian, Catholic and Methodist among them—are opening their troops’ doors to all, regardless of sexual orientation, some still choose to exclude gay men.
The BSA must recognize the conflict between its foundational values and the urge to exclude that is present in certain religious contexts. Randy Cline, an Eagle Scout and retired Girl Scouts of the United States of America council executive, believes that both religion and inclusion, while seemingly in discord, can exist in harmony. As troop members and leaders, we can navigate that unease by relying on the words of our Scout Oath. “On my honor, I will do my best … to help other people at all times,” it reads. To Cline, it’s clear that this means all people—not only the ones who share your religious preference. And as for being “morally straight,” as the oath commands? We must reclaim that phrase from those who redefined it to wage a war on sexual orientation. Morally straight is about knowing right from wrong, not about whom you love.
Monday’s change in policy is a crucial step, but it is only the first. Robert Gates, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and current president of the BSA, implies this move was a reaction to legal risks: a business decision, not a moral one. The BSA has rid itself of discriminatory policies for the wrong reasons—to assuage liberal and corporate pressures while preventing a departure of church sponsors that could balk at mandated inclusion of gay adults in their troops.
In a nation where 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT and same-sex marriage is enshrined in the laws but not necessarily the minds of our citizenry, the right thing to do is to create a BSA that proudly preaches acceptance of all members and fellow citizens. All troops of the BSA have to become a safe, affirming space, where youth can find themselves and gain the respect of their peers without concern for sexual orientation.
As an Eagle Scout, I know this will not be easy—but I also know our moral foundations are more powerful than any justification for hate. We must push back against all the subtle indignities ingrained in certain parts of this debate: the jokes about gay adults raping boys, the assumption that one who is gay cannot at the same time be clean or reverent, and the damning belief that faith and acceptance are mutually exclusive.
The BSA has a unique opportunity to shape the minds of our nation’s youth, and we must do so carefully and purposefully. In becoming an organization that doesn't make judgments based upon sexual orientation, the BSA will come closer to actually embodying the moral vision that it has aspired to from the beginning.
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