Let's Spend the Night Together

I am a man in my mid-forties. I have been happily married more than half my life, have two children, and am a respected high school teacher. I am not a pedophile, and my name does not appear on any sex offender registry. Would you want me spending the night in a campground with your daughter and her girlfriends?

The Boy Scouts of America were expected to vote on Wednesday on their policy of not allowing openly homosexual members and leaders into its ranks. They postponed the vote, but my question remains. Would you want me to spend the night in a campground with your daughter and her girlfriends?

No one is saying that a homosexual leader is by definition a pedophile. But I repeat. Would you want a forty-something heterosexual man camping with your daughters without your presence? Of course not. It is not right, and we all know it. Anyone who says otherwise is being deliberately contrary to stir things up or has lost his/her mind. Period.

But, you say, what about the ban on openly homosexual boys? Surely the Scouts should be open to them. I recast my question. Would you want a heterosexual boy, age 11-17, sharing s tent with your daughter of the same age? I rest my case.

This is not rocket science, and you will notice I have not once mentioned religion. Plain sense, which we used to label as common, should tell anyone what is appropriate here. This has not one thing to do with discrimination. It has to do with what any decent parent should know and being willing to defend with regard to his or her children.

The same goes for the creation of the legal fiction known as gay marriage. Fr. Dwight Longenecker puts it well here with regard to the recent vote by Great Britain's parliament. If you want to have a discussion and vote about hospital visitation rights and legal issues of inheritance relative to singles, married couples, or homosexual partners, go right ahead. You can talk about insurance benefits 'til the cows come and feel free to legislate away. What no legal body can logically do is redefine marriage any more than it can redefine the properties of a triangle.

Neither the marriage issue nor the Boy Scout admissions policy has anything to do with discrimination. The terms of the debate have been hijacked. Nevertheless, that is no reason any person capable of logical thought should accepted the changed terms. Those who wish to skew the debate this way have presented the world with a dilemma. Accept our terms that these issues are about discrimination or leave the table of discussion. Any student of logic knows that one way to deal with the horns of the dilemma is to go right through them. In other words, it is not accept the two options offered, but to argue from a third. With regard at least to the issues of redefining marriage and the Boy Scout admissions policy, going between the horns is the only sensible option.