Last week there was a bunch of deserved Internet noise about a new proposal that would allow queer boys to join the Boy Scouts of America (which is amazing) but would keep in place the ban on gay scout leaders (which is confusing/annoying/infuriating). I can only think of one reason that they wouldn't allow gay scout leaders: They are afraid of molestation.
As is often my initial reaction to this sort of news, I got a touch irate. More specifically, I sent off annoyed instant messages, tweets and Facebook status updates, all full of caps and exclamation points or way too many periods: Gay. Men. Are. NOT. Attracted. To. Boys. We're attracted to other men. MEN!!!!! As in adults! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!?!!!!
It's been a few days, and I am again able to use punctuation like a normal human, but the whole situation still gets under my skin. What the Boy Scouts of America are insinuating perpetuates baseless stereotypes and is just really fucking offensive. What bothers me the most is being forced to reaffirm that we are not pedophiles. Again. It's humiliating.
Interestingly, as I was on my all-caps tirade asking what was wrong with "these people," a new answer sprung out of the recesses of my brain: It dawned on me that there might be something fundamentally different about straight men's sexuality. I'm not talking about the whole being-sexually-attracted-to-women thing. I'm talking about some darker, more shameful secret that no one ever mentions: What if all day, every day, straight men walk around fighting the urge to molest young girls? Stay with me. What if there's some incredibly strong desire that's always at the forefront of their thoughts that they are constantly suppressing, a Herculean battle that every straight man fights throughout his life? If this were the case, it would make complete sense that they assume that the same must be happening with gay men.
If all straight men think about having sex with young girls all the time, then there's nothing offensive about the Boy Scouts' proposal. Instead, they're just an organization trying to do their fellow man a solid by keeping him away from temptation. In this scenario, of course, straight men would say to gay men, "Whoa! We can't just leave you in tents with young boys. No one could behave himself in that situation. We wouldn't do that to you, bro!"
If my assumptions are correct, the gay-men-are-all-pedophiles argument is an innocent misunderstanding. Straight guys simply didn't understand that gay men aren't attracted to boys. And gay men didn't realize that all straight men are attracted to young girls. Now that we've all learned something and hopefully grown, maybe we can agree to let gay men be scout leaders, because there's absolutely no reason that they should not be.
And if some of you straight guys read this and get angry that I'm assuming that you're all great big pedophiles, good. It's infuriating, and it's ridiculous. And, hopefully, you'll realize that it's infuriating and ridiculous when people assume that the same thing is true about gay men.