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Carly Rae, Train, and Why the Boy Scouts Make Me Sad

[caption id="attachment_60675" align="aligncenter" width="606"]Carly Rae won't be scouting Carly Rae won't be scouting[/caption]

So the Boy Scouts of America are planning a Summer Jamboree, and until recently, it was going to feature performances by Train and Carly Rae Jepsen.

Except now it won't. Because both acts have officially dropped out, due to the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policies.

This is obviously awesome, so good on Train and Carly Rae.

As always, though, news about the BSA's persistent homophobia makes me sad. At its best, scouting can teach children and young adults to develop both valuable skills and meaningful values. It's a shame that an organization with so much history and influence in American culture has recently revealed itself to be startlingly deaf to the sounds of progress. It's like the time one of my favorite high school teachers informed me that gay rights were "special rights." He'd asked the class to write papers about people in the world who were being denied their freedom, and apparently, my examples of gay people in America didn't count. Suddenly, this person I'd believed in---this person who had taught me a lot about the development of the American identity---revealed himself to be so deeply ignorant that I couldn't take him seriously anymore.

Now, if I'd confronted him---or someone else had---and he'd changed, then that would've restored my faith. And maybe that would've happened. But it certainly didn't happen with the Boy Scouts. They've been confronted over and over about the damage caused by their hatefulness, and they've refused to change. And now, almost irrevocably it seems, they've made themselves irrelevant. They might still exist in the present day, but they are yesterday's news.

Meanwhile, people like this are starting fully inclusive troops that let scouts focus on the joys of community, self-sufficiency, civic mindedness, and other things that make us better people. It's great those people exist. If the Boy Scouts don't want to grow, then we can't wait for them. We need to keep helping our young people become good citizens.

I hope this all-inclusive scouting troop has a summer jamboree of its own. Maybe Train and Carly Rae Jepsen will play.

And while we're at it, let's enjoy Train's new single "Mermaid."

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Mark Blankenship wants a badge for cleaning his bathroom. He tweets as @IAmBlankenship.

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