Local Boy Scouts won’t be selling bottled water or volunteering on the clean-up crew for Montpelier’s July 3 parade this year. The reason?
City councilors earlier this month balked at approving a vendor request for the Scouts, citing unease about the Boy Scouts of America’s national membership policy banning gay and lesbian scout leaders from the organization. The council tabled what would have otherwise been a quick approval and invited the Scouts to return two weeks later to discuss the application.
The Scouts declined that invitation — and pulled their application to be a vendor at the parade. Now the group of Scouts, which included two troops and one co-ed “venturing crew,” have decided against volunteering for the clean-up crew after the parade, too. The Scouts have been involved for the last three years, but after the city council kerfuffle, “we’re going to steer clear of Montpelier for awhile,” said Leslie Sanborn, a Barre resident and longtime volunteer with all three scouting groups. “It’s left a very bad taste in our mouths.”
The Scouts aren’t the only one who feel that way. Yesterday, Associated General Contractors of Vermont pulled its longstanding donation of safety vests and cones from the event, citing dissatisfaction with the city council’s treatment of the Boy Scouts. Casella Waste Systems and the local sheriff stepped in with safety equipment to fill that gap. City councilors and other community volunteers are stepping up to fill the shoes left behind by the Scouts, said Ashley Witzenberger, the executive director of the event’s organizer, Montpelier Alive.
“We’re just trying to put on a really great day for the whole community,” said Witzenberger, who expressed appreciation for the Scouts’ hard work in the past and disappointment at the fall-out from the debate. The July 3 parade is the organization’s largest event, and pulls more than 20,000 people to downtown Montpelier.
Meanwhile, the back-and-forth has touched off angry phone calls to Montpelier Alive, comments of support to the city council member who raised objections to the Scouts’ policy — and a flurry of letters to the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. At the heart of the debate is this question: Just how much does a national policy barring openly gay Scout leaders matter on the ground in Vermont?
“I thought, ‘Let’s send a message to the Boy Scouts headquarters,'” said Thierry Guerlain, the City Council member — and former boyhood Scout — who first raised objections to what otherwise seemed like a straightforward item on the consent agenda at the council’s June 11 meeting.
Guerlain said he didn’t realize at the time that the Scouts volunteered for clean-up duty at the event. He simply had concerns about what it meant for the city to be endorsing an organization with a policy he called “abhorrent and outdated.”
As for the Scouts’ decision not to participate in the event?
“They went from teaching the boys discrimination to also teaching them spite,” said Guerlain, who called the decision not to volunteer at the event a “spiteful move” on the part of local Boy Scout leaders. “I’m surprised that we’re even discussing the fact that it’s more important to get the trash picked up conveniently by the Boy Scouts than to respect the civil rights of lesbian and gay parents who are disinvited from the Boy Scouts.”
The City Council didn’t outright reject the Boy Scouts’ application on June 11; the council asked the Scouts, or parent or volunteer representatives from the troop, to return on June 25 to discuss the national membership policy.
Ed McCollin, who heads up the Vermont chapter of the Boy Scouts, said parents didn’t want to put their kids in the middle of a debate about national scouting policy. That policy changed partly last year, when the Boy Scouts of America agreed to allow openly gay youth participate as Scouts.
“At the end of the day, there wasn’t much for us to say,” said McCollin. “The policy on the membership standard is a national policy. It is something that has been controversial and divisive among the Boy Scouts as a nation.”
But as long as the national membership policy stands, McCollin added, he’s bound to uphold it. That plays out to a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” practice in Vermont. McCollin said that, in surveys conducted among Vermont Boy Scouts, leaders and volunteers in 2013, roughly 75 percent of Vermont members wanted to see that “divisive” policy struck from the books altogether. The national policy has hurt Vermont Boy Scouts when it comes to fundraising, McCollin said. “‘We love the Boy Scouts, but…’ I get that a lot,” said McCollin.
Sanborn, who volunteers with the local troops in Montpelier, said the troops decided to withdraw their permit to sell bottled water after “it became apparent that there was a hidden agenda here” and that the city council was an “obviously biased group.” As for the decision not to volunteer this year on clean-up? Sanborn said that there was a feeling of, “OK, we’re good enough to pick up their trash, but we’re not good enough to sell them a bottle of water?”
“We felt rejected,” she said. “We will not go where we’re not wanted.”
Meanwhile, city clerk John Odum called the situation “frustrating” in the way it played out. He pointed out that the city council merely tabled the Scouts’ request, and didn’t outright reject it.
“The local scouting organization simply walked away and slammed the door on their way out,” wrote Odum in an email to Seven Days. “Just think of the messages they are sending to the kids themselves by just walking away at the first hint of a difference of opinion: that its OK to angrily dismiss others’ deeply held beliefs, OK to walk away from commitments, and that its fine to stand by while homophobic comments are being spread, supposedly on their behalf.”
In a statement released Friday, Pride Center of Vermont — formerly RU12? Community Center — commended Montpelier’s mayor and city councilors for their “principled decision.”
“We applaud those city leaders who were brave enough to step forward and refuse to put the Montpelier community’s seal of approval on discrimination,” said Pride Center director Kim Fountain, noting that the center planned to alert its membership that volunteers were needed to take the spot of the 20 to 30 Boy Scouts who typically volunteer at the Montpelier Alive celebration.
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Given the remarks of the council, it would never have been a “discussion”. Good for those BSA leaders who politely declined and shame on those who were trying to use motivated youth committed to service as pawns. I guess BSA should fade into the sunset and let youth everywhere become gang bangers.
What seems to be getting forgotten is that there is a valid question as it pertains to local BSA Green Mountain Council policy regarding discriminatory policies maintained by the national organization and, thus, possibly locally.
Referring to a policy, as has been reported, by local leadership as “don’t ask, don’t tell” is deeply offensive and quite discriminatory. The mayor and city council have a reasonable concern as elected representatives of all the community, and in the capitol of Vermont, to make certain that official sanction is not given to groups that discriminate. Might that issue have been raised in a better fashion? It’s too late to ask because one side isn’t speaking. If I’d been to the meeting my sole question would likely have been does the BSA GMC, in the event that an Eagle does “tell,” intend to follow national policy and expel that Scout at his eighteenth birthday and why, if so, would that be the right thing to do?
Good grief people they are just kids trying to sell water……they have no say over national BSA politics or Montpelier politics…….so would it be the same results if said scouts came together not as the scout troop but just as a bunch of young kids having fun……would there request to sell water be tabled????? Seems to me that everyone lost out on this one!!
Lisa Grover wrote “What was the council going to do at this meeting anyway?”
The answer, sadly, is that we’ll never know.
Democracy doesn’t work if everyone just leaves in a huff at the first hint of somebody saying something they don’t like. Never has, never will.
I happen to be the mom of a Cub Scout, and wife of a Cub Scout Leader/Assistant Cub Master. I can understand the position of the Pack Leaders not wanting to drag their children through this kind of debate, who would? It saddens me that this has even become an issue with local scouts. What was the council going to do at this meeting anyway? Demand to know how the individual members of this Pack felt about the policy, or how they feel about the LBGT community in general? Do they do this with everyone that asks to participate in civic events? “Excuse me Mr. Mohommed, you’re a Muslim and they don’t like Christians, so we have a few questions to ask before you can sell hot dogs at our event.” It’s not as if the scouts would be spouting anti-gay slurs at the patrons, or refusing to sell to someone who looked “gay”. It’s a policy set by a bunch of people who are out of touch. Are the Scouts working to change it, of course! Look at Fred Sargeant’s post. I feel what the council did was brand every member of scouting as anti-gay, and that is discriminatory.
I’m a Boy Scout leader in Vermont. I don’t think those outside Scouting can really get a sense of how difficult this has been. It’s a struggle. A lot of very good people have questioned their involvement in Scouting because of the BSA’s policy. I’ve had a friend ask me when I became homophobic, because of my continued involvement as a leader in Scouting.
I’ve seen first-hand how divisive this can be. Most Vermont leaders (as mentioned in the article) would support an Open and Affirming BSA. But we’ve lost adults and youth over the new policy.
The BSA presented the volunteers with a choice, allow openly Gay youth into the program or not. The membership voted yes. But that was clearly half-a-loaf. We now have an organization that is willing to recognize a youth with the rank of Eagle, based on their leadership and integrity, and then tell them on their 18th birthday that they are unwelcome. Clearly that makes no sense, and just as clearly it will change. We just don’t know when. The current president of the BSA, Robert Gates, oversaw the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military, and personally disagrees with the exclusionary policy. He said: “I would have supported having gay Scoutmasters, but at the same time, I fully accept the decision that was democratically arrived at by 1,500 volunteers from across the entire country.” To me, that’s somewhat disingenuous. The question of gay Scoutmasters was not asked. Here is the relevant line from the resolution: “No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”
One of the leaders who I very much respect asks us to go back to one question, “What is the best thing for the boys?” Can we continue to teach life skills and leadership skills to youth, and maintain our integrity in what we believe? We each end up answering that for ourselves. In my experience, almost every leader has said “yes, I’ll keep working with the youth and seeing them grow into Eagle Scouts.”
Which is better, to learn that the group you’re in has some shameful practices now, or to invest much of your youth into what tastes like a lie you repeated for years? According to the BSA, “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” – and by gum it’s true! However, it doesn’t mean the group hiding behind those scouts is. Montpelier tabled a discussion and asked for a conversation, but the only message sent was from the local leaders to Montpelier was that no conversation would be taking place. Is that the kind of leadership the BSA is teaching youth today?
Instead of rubber-stamping a request, the Montpelier City Council asked to talk. The troop leaders said no and withdrew the request, denying their troop the chance to participate in a civic conversation and possibly come away with exactly what they’d requested. What a shame the troop leaders saw an invitation to talk as an insult instead of an opportunity to step up and come to an understanding.
This past weekend it was my honor to lead the 44th annual Pride March in NYC. I had been one of the four original proponents and organizers of that first Pride march in 1970.
Just as I was leaving for New York last week, I learned of the conflict that had arisen in Montpelier. I have to admit some confusion since my position in the march was to directly precede the NY area BSA Council’s Scouts for Equality color guard and contingent. The NY area scouts were participating in defiance of the national BSA policy pertaining to scouts appearing at Pride events in uniform.
One of my strongest memories from this year’s NYC Pride march will have been hearing the thunderous cheers that echoed off the canyon walls of Fifth Avenue, 8th Street and, finally, on Christopher Street as the scout color guard passed.
So, I find myself disappointed with the VT scouts position and the resulting conflict. I don’t know whose idea it was to refer to the VT scouts position as like “don’t ask, don’t tell” but if that is true, it is a sad misunderstanding of how offensive that phrase is to the LGBTQ community. A second-class, separate but not equal status is not what the scouts in NY marched for on Sunday and I would hope for better in its relationship with the national BSA organization’s discriminatory policy from VT’s own scout council. I would also hope for more effort to reach out to the VT scouts on the part Montpelier’s city government to reconcile this matter.
Perhaps it’s time for the BSA to fold up their tents and fade into the mists of history. Good bye and good luck.