Boy Scouts' secret "degenerate" files revealed

[LostInTime]

PlanetOut
(Larry Buhl, Gay.com)

In the past 15 years, the organization has kicked out leaders for abuse allegations at a rate of one every other day.

The ruling stemmed from a 2003 suit filed by two former Scouts, brothers Tom and Matt Stewart, now men in their 40s, who say they were sexually molested by a Scoutmaster over many years.

[cindianna_jones]

I had a scoutmaster who had sexual encounters with young boys.  He never made a move on me.  He always treated me with respect and dignity.  To me, he was a role model.  Later, as an adult, I learned of his problem and was astonished.  He was eventually imprisoned for his actions.  I had a very difficult time with the revelation.

When I met some of the others who were part of the troup, they would make fun of him and the fact that he was a pervert.  I always cried inside because I too had a problem that I could not disclose.  That was when I learned true compassion.  I know that people have feelings and desires that they truly can not control.  I do not condone their actions and I believe they should be removed from society. But that doesn't mean that I can't feel love for them or sorrow for their "disability".

My family thought for years that he was the source for my problem once I came out. They could not believe that I felt the way I did from my first thoughts.

Cindi

[Hazumu]

Why does society, or at least the conservative part of society, support and defend the notion that everybody has free will, and can choose to do or not do various things based on some arbitrary, external absolute 'morality'?

I, too, had that special insight you describe, Cindi.  A kid I grew up with turned out to be a molester.  He came from a very strict 'good' Southern Baptist Christian family.  How is it that with all the devoutness his mother and aunt had, and the strictness and authority embodied in both is father and his uncle (both cops,) did he turned out 'spoiled'?  Seems to me like they followed the 'right' recipe, but one out of the three turned into a compulsive pedophile. 

Oh, yeah -- it was his 'choice'...  The only choice he has made is to have a voluntary orchiectomy in an attempt to control the raging monster within him.  But the same people who scream 'choice' the loudest also scream 'once a pedophile, always a pedophile' in the same breath, and they won't give him a chance to prove the monster is tamed.

But his immediate family has seen the change, though they still pretty much have their guard up...

That particular conservative worldview construct is messed up.  You can't catch homosexual or transsexual.  It catches you.  And there ain't no vaccine or prophylaxis that will prevent it from 'catching' those who are built that way.

Karen