SEXUAL POLITICS THE PIGHEADED PERVERSION FILES BY SARAH MIRK
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HE BOY SCOUTS of America are now, arguably, America’s largest anti-gay youth organization. Their long-secret “perversion files”— finally released last week after years of court battles—reveal how the organization has long conflated homosexuality with sexual deviance. I first saw the Scouts’ perversion files two years ago, when their 20,000 pages, stacked in cardboard boxes, were crammed into the small office of Portland lawyer Kelly Clark. The files detail 1,247 men the Boy Scouts blacklisted from 1965 to 1985 for moral issues, and they were crucial in Clark’s landmark 2010 court case that successfully argued the organization was responsible for covering up sexual abuse of Oregon Boy Scouts. Despite that, the files were still secret. The Boy Scouts of America fought tooth-and-nail to keep them out of the public’s hands. They lost. I finally read the files while squeezed into a Seattle-to-Portland bus seat last weekend, the printouts of vintage scrawl—describing sex crimes of 25 Oregon men—spilling out onto the neighboring seat under the dim bus lights. Media nationwide have detailed how the files show the Boy Scouts’ devastating moral limbo: The Scouts considered allegations against these men scary enough that they maintained an elaborate database to keep them away from leading Boy Scouts anywhere in the country, but not criminal enough that they should be reported to the police. When a high-school-aged Scout told troop leaders that the chaplain of the Oregon Coast’s Camp Meriwether had repeatedly “made advances” to him, the national Scouts sent the chaplain a letter saying they regretfully had to ban him, but specifically noted that there would be no legal implications. In another case, two boys reported that troop leader Clyde Brock had taken naked photos of Boy Scouts and then displayed them around his home. The national organization reluctantly kicked him out, but wrote that there was “no reason” why he shouldn’t still be recognized at an upcoming anniversary celebration. “It would help to allay questions about his retirement from the troop,” wrote Scout Executive Guy Miller in the 1968 letter. In addition to this horrific nonchalance, the language of the files reveals the homophobic lens of the Boy Scouts’ leadership. Throughout the Oregon cases, pedophilia and homosexual-
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SPARROW VS. SWALLOW
ity are treated as equally terrible. Scout volunteer Gregory Benson was accused of molesting a 12-year-old boy. But the official reason for blacklisting him stated on his 1979 file is “police records allege homosexuality.” In 1971, when William Cronenwett was entered into the files for allegedly assaulting a nine-year-old, the write-up also made sure to note that he “has had homosexual tendencies most of his life.” Conflating gayness with sexual abuse was a mainstream standard for the time—homosexuality wasn’t removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of official mental disorders until 1973. But the Boy Scouts haven’t advanced past that retro thinking. In the past 20 years, the Scouts have made great strides toward reversing their obviously reprehensible approach toward child abuse in their midst: The Boy Scouts now require “youth protection” training for all their volunteers, prohibit adults from being alone with Scouts and mandate that all adults report suspected abuse to the police. But in July of this year, the Scouts shocked the country by reaffirming their ban on LGBT volunteers. After a two-year examination of the organization’s values and mission, the group’s leaders reiterated a bigoted policy that says gay people are amoral and bad role models. The justification for the policy is that the Boy Scouts’ parents would prefer to “address issues of same-sex orientation within their family.” While the Boy Scouts of America have seen the error of past mistakes, they’re still stubbornly covering for new ones.
by Mercury staff
NO, RON FRASHOUR, the cop fired for the fatal shooting of Aaron Campbell in 2010, won’t be back in uniform any time soon. But in a decision announced by Mayor Sam Adams late Friday, October 19, Frashour has been reinstated as a Portland police officer and will receive nearly two years’ worth of back pay. He’ll remain on paid leave, however, while a legal battle over his dismissal works its way through the Oregon Court of Appeals. An arbitrator and the state Employment Relations Board had both ordered the city to reinstate Frashour; the city is challenging that. The Mercury had first reported that Frashour’s return was “legally possible.” DENIS C. THERIAULT A massive Metro study of 6,450 households has good news: People are driving less and walking, biking, and riding transit more—not just in Portland, but also in the ’burbs. From 1994 to 2011, vehicle miles
NEWS
traveled per person in the region dropped 16 percent, while commuters’ transit use nearly doubled (10.9 percent of people now commute by bus or train). In 1994, only one percent of people in the region (including Vancouver) biked to work. Now 4.6 percent do. Also in the survey: Only 28.5 percent of the region’s adults own a bike. SARAH MIRK But now some more bad news! The firstever study of the health troubles posed by the Port of Portland’s long-discussed plan to pave over 300 acres of West Hayden Island has made clear what’s in store for the hundreds of neighbors who live near the project. Toxic air pollution—the kind that could cause cancer—will increase dramatically. At the same time, observers and advocates warn, property values for those neighbors will wind up plummeting. Presumably balancing out the awful ledger? The study points to new hiking trails. Yay. DCT
FINALLY SOMETHING TO HONK ABOUT, IF PORTLANDERS HONKED.
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October 25, 2012 Portland Mercury 19