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from Political News
AMA Rebukes Scouts for Moral Standard
The American Medical Association House of Delegates has told youth organizations such as the
Boy Scouts of America that their policy prohibiting homosexual conduct is harmful to gay adolescents.
"Hate, discrimination and exclusion in any form is a health hazard," said
Dr. Thomas Hicks, a family practice physician from Tallahassee, Fla., who
had urged his fellow delegates to support the resultion.
The Boy Scouts have long excluded applicants on the basis of age, sex, and geographical location.
The issue at hand is therefore not whether "exclusion" or "discrimination" per se is acceptable,
but whether or not homosexual conduct is a morally significant basis for an organization's
membership standards -- and especially, for those who serve as role models in a position of youth leadership.
However, in calling for the Scouts to change their definition of the term "morally straight,"
the A.M.A. equated homosexual behavior with a person's core identity (gay was implied to be "who
one is," not what one does). They also implied that it is morally wrong ("exclusionary") to
regard homosexual behavior as of moral significance.
But by an overwhelming voice vote, the policy-making body of the 290,000-member A.M.A.
agreed with Dr. Hicks, who charged that "homophobia is a health hazard."
The AMA said reversing policies which exclude openly gay members could help "lower the
increased risk of suicide in the adolescent homosexual population," and noted that teen suicide
rates are lower in states that have anti-discrimination laws.
Throughout the country, religious, governmental and civic groups are currently reevaluating
their support of the Boy Scouts. A Church of Christ pastor was quoted by
The New York Times as saying he did not think he could, in good conscience, "affiliate with a organization that discriminates."
A member of the pastor's church agreed that the Boy Scouts' policy is, at base, an issue of
"inclusion vs. exclusion."
According to current Scouting policy, members are not asked their sexual orientation. "We
respect everyone's opinions, beliefs and values," responded Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the
Boy Scouts. "We simply ask other people to respect our values and our beliefs and our opinions."
Updated: 8 February 2008
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