My Two Moms. Boy Scouts

Zach Wahls refers to his eagle scout status a lot in the book. He says that being a boy scout taught him everything he needed to know about how to respond to the world's judgments. The boy scout motto is "Be Prepared" and Zach lives by that expression in every way. However, the book was published right before all of the controversy revolving around the Boy Scouts of America's anti-gay policies. The BSA fired a lesbian scout leader because of her sexual orientation which caused an uproar from the other parents of the children in the troop and nationwide. It was strange timing that this would all unfold only a few months after Zach released his book. I can only imagine how devastating it was for Zach to hear how the club that he loved and believed in him would betray his family like that. It take so many hours of community service and complete dedication to become an eagle scout, but he did it. Then the leaders of his club openly discriminate against people like his parents. I'm sorry, I can't think of an blog appropriate word for those "leaders". 

Zach is such an interesting guy- as soon as he heard about the controversy, he started a campaign to get the BSA to revoke their anti-gay policy. Just a year before he had delivered a speech to the Iowa House that received massive media attention, then he releases his best selling book which then lead him to be one of the leading speakers in the battle for equality in the BSA. Seriously? Does he ever stop? I don't understand how he has time for anything else besides being an activist. Well, it was just last week that the gay 18-year-old Ryan Andersen's eagle scout application was approved unanimously by the Mt. Diablo-Silverado Council. However, a few days later 11 councilman of the BSA overturned the acceptance letter. Zach Wahls asked "Why not put out a call and make it a democratic process? Why have a secretive committee make the decision?" in an interview with ABC news. Good questions. I enjoyed doing this background research because I was wondering if Zach would've had something to say about the BSA after praising them so much in his book. I would've been satisfied if he had just made a statement on his blog or something, but no, this is the Zach Wahls we're talking about. He had to not only do interviews with as many newspapers as possible and give as many public speeches humanly possible but he had to collect 275,000 signatures for a petition. He's truly a marvel to me, I have no idea how he has enough energy to fight as hard as he does. Though he doesn't like to admit it in his book, he's really gifted.