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Bulls-Eye News Picture of Gay Eagle Scout is Shredded Rhode Island's Camp Yawgood Hosts Rifle Controversy |
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By Paul Barwick
The Scouts subsequently kicked the gun slinging troop leader out of the camp, not for giving the impression that it was OK to use gays as targets, but because, they said, he had violated a National Rifle Association rule that prohibits using a target shaped to resemble a human. The Scouts have not apologized. Neither have they indicated that they will say anything to the youths to indicate such violence is not condoned. Camp Yawgoog officials had not returned phone calls by press time. James Dale was "upset and horrified" when he learned that Boy Scouts had been using his picture as a rifle range target according to his friend and attorney Lambda Legal Defense Fund's Evan Wolfson. Wolfson, who as part of a nine year battle had successfully argued Dale's case to the New Jersey Supreme Court, said that he himself was "Outraged."
"This (use of photos) is a tactic seen in organized hate groups and the anti-government movement" Joe Roy, Intelligence Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out to this writer. He explained that such target practice is a method used by hate groups to demean and dehumanize their enemies. "So that you can do things that you normally wouldn't to another person. You have made them sub-human, like Furrow in Los Angeles, shooting children." Buford O.Furrow Jr., who has reportedly admitted to shooting several people, including small children, in and near a Jewish day care center described the people he shot, all whom he targeted because they were Jewish or non-white, as "mud people". According to police reports Furrow had planned to attack a gay bar in San Francisco after the Los Angeles shootings, but instead abandoned those plans and turned himself in to FBI agents in Nevada. Roy would have liked to check if the rifle toting Scoutmaster was known to have been a member of one of the fringe groups that the SPLC monitors, but Boy Scout officials have not released the man's name. He commented that the incident demonstrated "incredibly poor judgment at best." David Elliot, communications director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force told Gay Today: "The Boy Scouts' oath says a Scout must be 'morally straight.' Scout law requires the young men to be 'clean in thought, word and deed.' I see nothing moral nor clean about using a picture of someone for target practice. "Teaching this kind of hate and intolerance is the antithesis of what scouting is all about. The Scouts also pride themselves on their belief in God. But I know of no religious denomination that teaches kids to use a human face as target practice.
The 16-year-old, who has asked not to be identified in the media, is president of his school's Gay/Straight Alliance and is an honor student. He is now an openly gay Eagle Scout, free to work at Camp Yawgoog. To the best of this writer's knowledge he is the only officially out gay acknowledged and accepted by the national leadership of The Boy Scouts of America. |
