All told, I guess I was an adult and youth member of the Boy Scouts for 25 to 30 years. When I was a kid, we went on hikes or camping - with or without leaders - and we almost always had a great time. I never did buy into snow camping, though. I got to the rank of Life Scout, two merit badges short of Eagle. I was once told that "Live Scout" meant regretting for the rest of your life that you didn't quite make Eagle.

As an adult, I had occasional stints as an Assistant Scoutmaster, and ten years as Cubmaster, Day Camp staff member, and district song leader. Most of the time, it was just a lot of fun - but there were a number of people with "agendas" who would occasionally get in my way of having fun as an adult leader. For most Boy Scout leaders, patriotism and the Republican Party seemed to be synonymous, so many Scout patriotic activities made me nervous.

In the western U.S., there were times when the reqired religious belief often seemed to be equivalent to being Mormon, although the rest of us were tolerated as long as we kept our mouths shut. Usually, religion wasn't an issue in Scouts, and I wish the national headquarters wouldn't make it an issue. I knew many "functional atheists" who made wonderful contributions to Scouting - but they couldn't say publicly that they didn't believe in God.

The homosexual thing was in many ways a non-issue for Scouts. Youth membership ends at age 18, and most boys aren't completely sure of their sexual orientation until sometime after that. But there were occasions when the national office would refuse to grant Eagle Scout rank to a kid who claimed to be homosexual, and that was a shame.

As time went on, the national headquarters seemed to be digging its feet in on the religion and homosexual issues, and on its identification with the Mormons and the Republicans. Eventually, I got tired of that, and it's one of the reasons I drifted away from Scouts.

But all in all, I had a wonderful experience in Scouting, and all those issues were mostly far away in the National Office in Irving, Texas (to my mint, the first mistake was moving the National Office from New Jersey to Texas).

The Girl Scouts always seemed to be a far more tolerant organization. I wonder how the Boy Scouts went astray.

-Joe Offer-