Will the GSUSA permit two men to take a bunch of girls on a camping trip?

We cannot tell what INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE are going to do what. We can make reasonable assumptions about groups - specifically, we can acknowledge that people who are sexually attracted to people of their own gender are more likely to have sex with people of that gender (including teenagers) than people who aren’t attracted to their own gender.

All it does is illustrate your willful ignorance regarding the motives and methodologies of child molesters and reinforces the same old tired stereotypes about how gay men secretly want to despoil young boys.

17 year olds are not children. People who have sex with 17 year olds are not child molesters.

I’m not sure on men taking girls camping alone, but I do know that all troops or GS outings are required to be chaperoned by two unrelated adults. This means no husband/wife, mother/daughter, cousin, or sibling combinations. I believe the thinking is there are reduced loyalties between friends, so improper behaviors get noticed and reported quicker.

Absurd, in that it puts the locus of blame for a problem on the people trying in good faith to fix it; evil, in that it erases and disappears the actual individual human beings who are committing wrong acts, and glosses their evil in the name of a political agenda.

This in and of itself is absurd. Evans was hardly acting in good faith by pushing the anti-gay agenda of the BSA was he? He was using it to obscure his own misdeeds. As for evil, I’d say claiming that the across-the-board ban on homosexuals in scouting is justified is pretty damn evil. It fixes nothing. It’s a sop, a panacea that makes the people who think homosexuality is the problem feel better about trusting the BSA to protect their kids. It keeps the focus away from the actual predators, who convincingly portray themselves as the “safe” ideal of the straight christian guy, effectively doing the same thing you’re railing against, “disappearing the actual individual human beings who are committing the wrong acts and glosses their evil in the name of a political agenda”. You yourself are doing the same thing. You’re more interested in saying “This guy was GAY I tell ya, GAY!” than the fact that he was apparently using the anti-gay policy of the BSA to cloak himself from scrutiny.

I explicitly state in the post, the very problem we face in protecting children from molestation is that we can’t tell in advance who is going to do what.

And yet in your post you say also that the ban on homosexuals in scouting makes sense and that it’s “the best we can do”. If we can’t tell who’s going to do what, how does the ban make sense since it obviously assumes who’s going to do what? It essentially claims that it can weed out sexual predators based on one characteristic which keeps turning out to be false, over and over again. How is that not absurd and evil? Giving parents and kids a false sense of security by banning a large group of people from participation while allowing people like Evans to slip through if they pretend to be “normal” convincingly enough seems the very definition of absurd and evil.

Child molestation is a confidence game. Sexual predators of this nature seek to do two things: win the confidence and trust of both adults AND children. Show them an image that they have to project that virtually guarantees they’ll be above suspicion and they will project it. The ban on homosexuals clearly implies that homosexuals will molest kids and “straight” people will not. It sets people up with false expectations that child molesters will use to their own advantage. Just like Evans did.

The only “garbage” I see in this entire discussion is the notion that people who are attracted to full-grown human beings are somehow “pedophiles” - a ridiculous identification that is being used by activists to mislabel a problem, to avoid an embarassing reality that makes life difficult for their side.

I think you’re confusing physical maturity with emotional and mental maturity, especially in light of the fact that Evans’ youngest victim was 13. A 13 or 17 year old may physically appear to be an adult but the vast majority of them are not adult at all in their emotional or mental development how ever much they may pretend to be. Seriously, do you really consider a 13-year-old to be an adult, capable of making adult decisions, capable of seeing their way through the confidence-engendering tricks of a sexual predator? That vulnerability, that lack of experience and maturity is half of what child molesters look for. Someone they can manipulate and confuse, someone without any troublesome defenses, someone easily intimidated. That you’d believe a 17-year-old doesn’t or can’t fall into those categories is monstrous. You might as well be blaming the kid for what happened to him. All it does is illustrate your willful ignorance regarding the motives and methodologies of child molesters and reinforces the same old tired stereotypes about how gay men secretly want to despoil young boys. The physical appearance of the victim is not the entirety of the motivation; just as important is the victim’s relative mental and emotional immaturity and vulnerability, without which they become far less attractive to a pedophile.

This is the inherent problem with your analysis. It ignores the time-worn tactics that molesters have used since before human society began to openly recognize them. They seek positions of authority over young people. They seek the trust of other adults and the trust of their victims. They project behavior that they know will afford them trustworthy status and deflect any accusations leveled against them. They avoid behaviors that will lead to scrutiny. When possible they will alter the safeguards of power structures (like BSA leadership) to their own advantage, both to steer suspicion away from themselves and onto others as well as to give them greater access to potential victims. They will also take full advantage of institutions that follow the “cover your own ass first” policy, such as they’ve done with the Catholic Church for decades as it shuffled predators from congregation to congregation to hide the problem instead of confronting and eliminating it.

The broad ban on homosexuals is a quick fix, a feel-good solution to a serious problem, meant mainly to appease idiots who believe surface affectations of “normalcy” are more important than the content of one’s character. It is absurd and it is evil and it only serves a political agenda that cares less for the safety of children than it does for reinforcing false stereotypes.

So, please take the “you just hate the gays so much you’re blind” nonsense and find someone for whom it is an appropriate criticism - or at least someone for whom you can point to something other than direct contradictions of the thesis as evidence.

On to the remainder of your response. You accuse me of “lapping up garbage” - but I am not lapping up anything. I am making my own points and advancing my own argument, not facilitating someone else’s agenda. The only “garbage” I see in this entire discussion is the notion that people who are attracted to full-grown human beings are somehow “pedophiles” - a ridiculous identification that is being used by activists to mislabel a problem, to avoid an embarassing reality that makes life difficult for their side. The No True Scotsman fallacy is hardly restricted to ethnic identification.

I do NOT easily trust the “average straight guy”. Indeed, as (once again) I explicitly state in the post, the very problem we face in protecting children from molestation is that we can’t tell in advance who is going to do what. All we can do is play the numbers and exclude broad categories of people that we think more likely to have problematic behavior.

I agree as a matter of conceptual logic that any screening process can be used by the “real criminals” as a shield/smokescreen. That does not logically lead us to the conclusion that the screening process is valueless; it leads us to the conclusion - found in pretty much every area of social policy - that we need to keep our eye on the actual goal or problem, and not get obsessive about the strategy or tactic of the moment. The actual goal is protecting children from sexual predation.

The idea that the screening process, however, is what is responsible for “costing the kids in scouting so dearly” is both absurd and evil. Absurd, in that it puts the locus of blame for a problem on the people trying in good faith to fix it; evil, in that it erases and disappears the actual individual human beings who are committing wrong acts, and glosses their evil in the name of a political agenda.

How many more kids’ lives will have to be ruined before the people supposedly interested in protecting them will figure out where the real threat is hiding? While you’re splitting hairs about age of consent and the appearance of maturity, people like Eugene Evans are playing you and people like you for suckers with their misdirection.

It makes me sick that anyone would fall for it, but you seem to want confirmation that homosexuals are all inherently wicked so badly that you just keep lapping this garbage up, so badly that you’ll stand glaring angrily between an out homosexual man and a young boy while easily trusting the “average straight guy” who only fits that mold because it makes it easier for him to hunt for victims without falling under suspicion.

The BSA’s policy against openly gay Scouts and Scoutmasters isn’t protecting anyone but the victimizers using it for a smokescreen. It gives them convenient camouflage, a rigged vetting process that allows them an appearance of being trustworthy simply because they can pretend to be the shallow “ideal” the BSA is looking for.

I think perhaps you should worry less about Red Queen’s hearing and more about your vision. Maybe then you’d notice the sick illusionist game that keeps costing the kids in scouting so dearly.

Besides, you “heard” about a man who has sex with 17-year olds, and you don’t think he’s gay. Your hearing doesn’t seem to be so good.

And the only people who I have ever heard say they were afraid of the gays molesting their boys were- homophobes who think there is some grand conspiracy to turn people gay, or child molesters. I have yet to hear a story about an out gay man who likes little boys.