Madonna's "Boy Scout Uniform" Actually a Cub Scout Uniform
Categories: LGBT
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| Material boys... |
(Shudder).
It's also unclear why Madonna had to purportedly lie to obtain a Cub Scout uniform. Just like everything else, you can buy this stuff on the Internet or just go to any number of stores. A Cub Scout uniform isn't nasal decongestant; they're not going to ask you what you intend to do with it.
If anyone cares, it appears Madonna has adorned her uniform with a random smattering of Boy Scout and Cub Scout patches in random locations. (At the 1989 Boy Scout National Jamboree, your humble narrator walked several miles in an attempt to trade for a Brooklyn council patch much like the one above Madonna's left breast. I made the trade with a New York kid hawking patches atop a blanket; if memory serves, he talked like Ratso Rizzo and was actually smoking a cigarette. On the way back to our campsite, I walked across a field of sawgrass and cut myself up badly enough to end up in the goddamn infirmary).
Yet while Madonna's sartorial sense was confused, her message was not.
See Also: You're an Eagle Scout whether you like it or not
Cub Scouts are, of course, part of the Boy Scouts of America. And the BSA's ban on overtly homosexual scouts and leaders applies. In fact, this was one of the questions on the BSA's recent survey of its own membership regarding whether to dump that policy:
"Johnny, a first-grade boy, has joined Tiger Cubs with his friends. Johnny's friends and their parents unanimously nominate Johnny's mom, who is known by them to be lesbian, to be the den leader. Johnny's pack is chartered to a church where the doctrine of that faith does not teach that homosexuality is wrong. Is it acceptable or unacceptable for his mother to serve as a den leader for his Cub Scout den?"
There's a very good chance that, at the Scouts' National Council in May, the BSA will adopt a policy allowing individual troops to opt on whether to allow gays or atheists to join.
Let's hope this -- or an even more inclusive policy -- wins the day. It would ameliorate decades of hypocrisy and injustice. And ensure Madonna never wears that uniform again.
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