By Joel Thurtell
Once a week for a couple years in the 1950s, we Cub Scouts in our blue shirts and yellow neckerchiefs would make a circle around the dining room table of Mrs. Nash, our den mother. We would place the first two fingers of our right hands against our foreheads and recite the Cub Scout Oath:
“I, (Cub Scout’s name), promise to do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to be square, and to obey the law of the pack.”
The same “duty to God” phrase appears in the Boy Scout Oath.
I don’t think we paid much attention to the words, but words are important to the Scouts. Words were what they used until recently to exclude gays from taking part in scouting.
That bit about “duty to God” is still very important to the Boy Scouts. Under pressure from gay and civil rights organizations, the Boys Scouts of America is considering whether to let gays become Boy Scouts and scout leaders. But the ban on atheists and agnostics remains.
Here’s what the scouts have to say about people who don’t believe in God:
The Boy Scouts of America’s official position is that atheists and agnostics cannot participate as Scouts or adult Scout Leaders in its traditional Scouting programs.
“The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, ‘On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.’ The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members.”
The BSA believes that atheists and agnostics are not appropriate role models of the Scout Oath and Law for boys, and thus will not accept such persons as members or adult leaders.
Anyone who doesn’t believe in God belongs to some lower-grade class of citizen. The people who run the Boy Scouts are serious about defining atheists as less-than-worthy citizens. Apparently, some scouts believe this. One person who took those anti-atheist words seriously was Arthur Shelton, a self-professed Eagle Scout convicted of murdering his friend, Larry Hooper, for refusing to say he believed in God.
While it’s true that the scouts also instruct their members that a Boy Scout “respects the beliefs of others,” they make it plain that a good scout should disrespect the non-belief of others. When you declare that nobody “can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God” and that “atheists and agnostics are not appropriate role models…for boys,” you’ve authorized disrespect for anyone who doesn’t believe in God. Tacking on that a good scout “respects the beliefs of others” is a sly reminder that those who don’t believe in God can never be real citizens and, moreover, make bad role models.
Well, okay, but you can’t say the Boy Scouts actually told Arthur Shelton to murder his friend for refusing to believe in God.
Of course not.
All the Boy Scouts did was make it possible for Arthur Shelton to perceive Larry Hooper. the atheist, as a substandard human being.
“I did it because he is evil,” Shelton told police. “He was not a believer.”
With permission of the Detroit Free Press, I’m re-publishing my October 28, 2004 article about how one man interpreted the Boy Scout ban on atheists.
TAYLOR: Death is result of debate about God
October 28, 2004
BY JOEL THURTELL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
A Taylor police dispatcher took the call at precisely 12:44 p.m. on Oct. 18.
A 49-year-old man said he’d just blasted a man with a revolver and a shotgun because the man said he didn’t believe in God.
The dispatcher said the alleged shooter told him he’d just shot “the devil himself” and was still armed and standing over the body of the 62-year-old victim “in case he moved.”
“I want to make sure he’s gone,” the alleged shooter told the dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked the suspect how many times he shot the victim.
“Hopefully enough,” was the suspect’s chilling reply, according to the dispatcher.
When police arrived in the 15600 block of McGuire, they could see the victim seated on a living room couch with major trauma to his head, officers said.
They said they were certain he was dead. He was.
Lying on a hallway floor was a black 12-gauge shotgun. Two spent shotgun shells lay on the floor nearby.
Later, police found a revolver with five spent cartridge casings.
On the way to the police station, the suspect told police “he did not want to deal with anyone that did not believe in God,” according to the report.
The report also indicated that the suspect and the victim knew each other, although their relationship was unclear.
The suspect said he was an Eagle Scout, the report said.
The suspect said the victim had told him there was nothing he could say that would convince the 62-year-old to believe in God.
Following this discussion, the suspect said, he went into another room and removed his shirt. Then he shaved his face.
He tried once more to convince the victim to believe in God, but this time, he had the shotgun.
“How long would it take you to believe in God?” the suspect said he asked the victim.
“Not until I hear Gabriel blow his horn,” the victim allegedly replied, while tipping his hat.
That’s when the suspect shot him.
“I did it because he is evil; he was not a believer,” the suspect told police.
The suspect said the victim “has been locked up most of his life.”
Michigan Department of Corrections records indicate the victim was on probation for a drug conviction.
At the police station, the suspect commented that he believed there is a God.
Then, looking at the floor, he seemed to have second thoughts: “Maybe there’s not,” he said.
