Dear Cynthia–
I think we agree on this much regarding the Elián González affair: The Miami relatives are manipulative media hounds, and Elián is far better off now that he has been reunited with his father. It’s appalling, though, that most commentators who agree with those propositions seem to think that they must therefore support Janet Reno’s high-risk commando raid. Typical is Eric Alterman, who wrote on MSNBC.com that “there was no pretty or entirely peaceful way to enforce the law in a situation like this one. Sorry if the pictures didn’t turn out perfectly; the operation sure did.” But make no mistake: Reno was very, very lucky at the way it all turned out. The reason Marisleysis Gonzalez was able to shed another bucket of tears at her ridiculous news conference was that neither she, Elián, nor anyone else had been accidentally killed or wounded by Reno’s raiders–an absolutely plausible scenario that fortunately did not occur.
Thank you for directing my attention to the Wall Street Journal. The editorial and Peggy Noonan’s commentary are not the only bits of loopiness on today’s opinion pages. There is also a contribution from Melanie Kirkpatrick defending the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay scouts and adult leaders, which will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. I was drawn to Kirkpatrick’s screed for reasons both personal (I was an Eagle scout and am now the assistant leader of my 9-year-old son’s Cub Scout den) and rhetorical (Kirkpatrick commits an error of logic in her second paragraph from which she never recovers).
I’ve written previously about my ambivalence toward scouting, both because of its stand against homosexuality and its requirement that scouts be religious believers. What really gets me about Kirkpatrick’s screed, though, is her statement that the Supreme Court case “is about every American’s First Amendment freedom of association.” Now, I consider myself to be a 99 44/100 percent pure civil-libertarian. I even supported the right of a veterans group in South Boston several years ago to exclude a gay-and-lesbian organization from its St. Patrick’s Day parade. But in order to assert a freedom-of-association argument on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America, you first have to show that there is agreement among its members. The BSA can’t do that, because no one has ever been asked. I’ll bet if parents were surveyed, a majority would support the inclusion of gay scouts. The matter of gay adult leaders is a bit trickier, but I doubt there would be overwhelming opposition. But regardless of how such a survey might come out, my point is that the BSA’s anti-gay policy is something simply handed down from headquarters in Irving, Texas.
Families get their kids involved in scouting because it’s fun and because they hope it will teach them values such as self-reliance and teamwork–not homophobia. Kirkpatrick notes that 65 percent of Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs are sponsored by religious organizations. She fails to mention that among these organizations are Unitarian Universalist churches, which have so vehemently opposed scouting’s anti-gay policy that the BSA has suspended the Unitarian Universalist religious award to Boy Scouts.
On a brighter note, James Cramer is in total meltdown, isn’t he? The psychotic market not only has him raving even more incoherently than usual on TheStreet.com, but the current New York magazine and the New Republicboth feature end-of-the-world Cramer diatribes. Maybe Janet Reno had better send in commandos to rescue Cramer’s co-workers. There could be children involved, you know.
Until tomorrow,
Dan
