The National Director of Programs for the Boy Scouts of America has been charged with distributing and receiving images of child pornography involving young boys.
A little bit of searching uncovered a letter that Douglas Smith Jr. wrote to the Corporate Legal Times (link removed—cached here) in response to a disfavorable article that Eagle Scout Bruce D. Collins wrote regarding James Dale and the legal actions surrounding the Boy Scouts policy on homosexuality.
Collins is also a the corporate vice president and general counsel of C-SPAN. He wrote in the Corporate Legal Times:
“As contentious and even as violent as the 1960s were, I had always seen my Boy Scout life as a refuge from the political and culture wars. My well-thumbed Boy Scout Handbook (which I still have) was chock full of good stuff about both camping and life skills. It counseled morality, clean living and obedience. Its themes were tolerance and inclusiveness.
Ours was a troop of boys from all economic classes that served as a haven from the often brutal social divisions we all experienced in junior and high school. Nerds and poor kids could be leaders in Boy Scouts.
But now, after reading the cases and Scouting’s vigorous defense of itself, it seems there has been a fundamental change. The Boy Scouts have been dragged into-or have placed themselves amid-the broad division that has infected the rest of our society.
Just as national politics have been dichotomized into blue and red states, so, too, has Scouting been set apart. As a former Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout to this day and a citizen, I am not happy about it. I can see no a good outcome on the horizon.”
Douglas Smith, Jr., the accused child pornographer, wrote a letter to the editor in defense of the Boy Scout’s right to homophobic practices:
“Some intolerant elements in our society want to force scouting to abandon its values and to become fundamentally different. They want scouting to forego its constitutional rights, affirmed in 2000 by the Supreme Court in BSA v. Dale, and adopt fundamentally different values from the ones that helped shape the character of Mr. Collins and 106 million other young men over the past 94 years.
It bothers Mr. Collins that scouting is defending itself, even though he acknowledged that it has been “dragged into” the “culture war.” He says the tone of our legal-issues web site, bsalegal.org, is defensive. The site does seek to defend our values and to inform the public about the three-decade-long legal assault on scouting. That we need a legal-issues web site is testament to the fact that our constitutional rights are under attack.
Clearly, Mr. Collins longs for a time when the Boy Scout organization could give its undivided attention to the “good stuff” of Scouting: “camping and life skills …” So do we. Mr. Collins would do well to communicate his displeasure to those directing their discriminatory assault against his beloved Boy Scouts — the ACLU.”
So the homophobic hypocrite defending the Boy Scouts’ policies against gay men is now expected to plead guilty for the distribution of child pornography involving young boys. Disgusting.
Related
Boy Scout leader charged with child porn was defender of anti-gay policy, ‘Youth Protector’ [rawstoryq]
