An Oak Park resident has returned his Eagle Scout badge to the Boy Scouts of America in response to the national organization's decision to uphold its long-standing policy that excludes the involvement of gay scouts, leaders and parents.
Rob Breymaier, who works as the executive director for the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, said he has always opposed to the policy. As an adult leader for nearly 12 years in his native Toledo, he knew of gay Scouts and leaders, yet he kept quiet about it. Ultimately, it played a huge factor in his choice to leave Boy Scouts in 2000.
Breymaier even considered sending back his Eagle Scout badge as early as 2002, but he held onto it in hopes that the policy would change. He even enrolled his 8-year-old son in Cub Scouts last year.
So in the wake of the July 17 vote to affirm the discriminatory policy, Breymaier decided to pull his son out of Cub Scouts, turn in his badge, write a letter of complaint and cut all ties with the 102-year-old organization that gave him what he describes as "the most important thing I did as a teenager to grow into an adult."
"I felt like I'd be a hypocrite if I continued," he told Windy City Times. "That vote was maddening. I was upset about it; I felt embarrassed about it."
Breymaier is just one of many Eagle Scouts in a movement that has grown rapidly in reaction to the decision, which came after a quiet two-year internal investigation into the policy.
"We are definitely the folks that have reached the pinnacle of Scouting and have lived our lives according to Scout values," Breymaier said, "and the fact that we're in disagreement with this policy is a good indication that maybe Scouting is heading in the wrong direction."
Burke Stansbury, a former Eagle Scout from resident of Seattle, Wash., started to collect letters and images of returned medals about a week after the decision on eaglebadges.tumblr.com . In the last few days alone, the site has gone from 15 letters to nearly 60.
Like Breymaier, Stansbury had also heard of others sending back their Eagle Scout badge 10 years ago but "never got around to it."
According to the official Boy Scouts site, making Eagle requires 21 additional merit badges, six months in a leadership position, organizing a service project and passing a board of review, so it's reasonable to believe that it would be hard to give it up.
"For me, I think it would be a lot harder and a lot more painful to hold onto it at this point," Stansbury said.
Yet while more Eagle Scouts are sending back pins, they're not all in agreement about whether Boy Scouts will ever abolish its 21-year-old policy.
"My position is that it's not going to change," Stansbury said. "It's time to cut our ties and no longer participate or have anything to do with a bigoted organization."
Breymaier, meanwhile, has begun to develop an inclusive, informal group with friends and neighbors as an alternative to Boy Scouts. He says depriving Scouts of membership and volunteer numbers will place a strain on the organization and get executives to listen.
"We have an optimistic view that change will come and that we won't have to do this for long," Breymaier said.
Scouts for Equality is one organization that has been attempting to create change within Boy Scouts for a number of years, but both Breymaier and Stansbury agree that at this point more external measures need to be taken.
