The Boy Scouts were never cool.
Scrawny kids in poorly-fitting khaki uniforms — complete with requisite badges, colorful sashes, and neckerchief — seldom end up captaining football teams, let alone dating prom queens. Women, it took me awhile to figure out, don’t generally appreciate the finer points of orienteering and insect study.
“Hey girl,” no one ever said successfully, “I have tons of cool merit badges demonstrating a working proficiency in everything from astronomy to wilderness survival. You have a date to homecoming yet?”
But that’s okay, and that’s sort of the point. The Boy Scouts were always about belonging and about dedicating to something bigger. It’s why every scout meeting starts the same way. In church basements, VFW halls, and public libraries across the country, boys ages 10 to 18 line up, raise three fingers on their right hand in a half salute, and recite the Scout Oath:
The whole process is a little bit hokey, definitely dorky, and designed to help boys (often the lost boys in particular) become men. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see the Boy Scouts of America break its oath and bar a Down syndrome boy from becoming an Eagle Scout.
The Associated Press reports that the Boy Scouts of America have stripped Logan Blythe of his rank, revoked his merit badges, and prohibited him from completing his Eagle Scout project. The 15-year-old had planned to put together kits with onesies, blankets, and parenting information for babies born with special needs.
The Boy Scouts didn’t immediately return my request for comment. But Chad Blythe told Yahoo News the national office looked into how his boy “had earned his badges and decided that he didn’t really meet the requirements.” This is, of course, ridiculous — even cruel.
To be sure, becoming an Eagle Scout isn’t easy. Only 4 percent of kids who start scouts end up earning the highest rank. It takes a minimum of 21 merit badges and a significant volunteering project, products of a cumulative years-long effort that requires hundreds of hours of work, much of it community service. And they don’t just give the award away to anyone who checks the boxes.
Many boys “age-out” before they can complete their project. My brother built a foot bridge, months before the deadline and his eighteenth birthday. I rebuilt the foundation of what could generously be described as a utility barn.
But before even proposing an Eagle Scout project, a boy has to advance through five different ranks with as many board of reviews (the equivalent of job interviews) where adult leaders quiz applicants on their knowledge. Making it to Eagle is an honor shared by men who walked on the surface of the moon and by men who walked in the Oval Office. It’s something you keep on a resume, the sort of thing people still notice long after beer guts replace high school exploits of those cooler All-American jocks.
For Blythe and his father to have gamed that requirement system would’ve required the confidence of a scam artist and a cabal of willing co-conspirators. Instead it looks like a local troop worked with a special needs boy, occasionally adjusting requirements to his abilities. It looks like they went above and beyond to let a kid different from everybody else try to “do his best” just like everybody else.
The Boy Scouts are a valuable civic organization with a stellar reputation. Teaching scouts to help old ladies cross the road, they teach boys to become men, especially special needs boys struggling to overcome life’s difficulties. They need to do a good turn. They need to honor their oath and let this kid do his best. They need to let Logan Blythe earn his Eagle Scout.
