The Boy Scouts of America is considering an end to its prohibition against homosexual troop leaders, deferring that decision to local councils. Sexual molestation! cry opponents, and so into the breach rushes the conscientious journalist, whose moral obligation is to remind readers of the evidence that homosexuals are no more prone to molestation than heterosexuals.
I’m not acquainted with research comparing the rates of child molestation between homosexual and straight men, but I’m certain it doesn’t matter; this is about dogma, not data. That is why we shouldn’t expect a journalist to state the obvious, which is that if it defies good sense to send teenaged girls off into the woods with heterosexual men, it likely defies good sense to send teenaged boys off with homosexual men.
This is no aspersion against homosexuals, except insofar as they are men, and we know enough about men to understand that some of them find teenagers sexually attractive, and the older and more mature-looking these teenagers, the easier it becomes for seemingly decent men to violate them while pretending the act is consensual. It’s no slander, except that it disputes ground that is within the grasp of homosexual activists, and hence must be proof of homophobia, and therefore unreason, and should thus be disregarded.
That’s the norm in American modern politics, of course: don’t debate your opponent, paint him as fraud, troglodyte, hypocrite. Which is all well and good; it certainly isn’t fair to expect homosexual activists to show more decency than, say, homeopathy activists. What’s troubling is the cowardice of people who ought to know better in the face of the name-calling. One can only hope that local councils won’t cave to the political and economic pressure likely to follow in the wake of the BSA’s abrogation of duty.
