Gay Scouts of America.

The Boy Scouts of America announced on Monday that they will consider changing their policies regarding the inclusion of gays in the Scouts.  To be sure, the conversation regarding gays in the Scouts is not at all like the conversation about gays in the military.  That is, BSA is a private association and may exclude whatever group they like.  Nevertheless, they've decided to review their policy, which will likely result in allowing individual troops to establish their own policy at the local level.  Certain commentators are up in arms regarding the change.  However, their opposition is entirely uninformed--it would be incredibly offensive were it not for the fact that it reflects no familiarity with reality.  Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association argued that opening the doors to homosexuals would effectively make "Jerry Sandusky the new posterboy for Scouting".

There are two major flaws in Fischer's argument; one sociological, the other historical.  First, the suggestion that there is any relationship or causal connection between homosexuality and pedophilia has no basis in reality whatsoever.  His argument for the overlap between homosexuality and pedophilia, by the way, is a priori nonsense. 

Suggesting that an overwhelming percentage of pedophilia is committed by males against males does not mean the pedophiles in these instances are homosexual (not in any accepted sense of the term).  The second has to do with Fischer's fear that the BSA will suffer the same fate as the Catholic Chrurch--namely, a spree of molestations that will threaten to crumble the institution (notice the threat here is to the institution and not the actual victims).

The problem here is that Fischer has evidently not seen the news lately regarding what are being referred to as the "perversion files", a number of files containing information that points to "pattern of molestation" within the Scouts.