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ABSTRACT
A group of Eagle Scouts protested the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) anti-gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and queer policies and heteronormative citizenship ideals by forfeiting their badges, divesting their membership, and writing personal, emotionally charged letters addressed to the BSA to critique the institution from within. Engaging the correspondence illuminates the repertoires of critique and dissent they employ in their in-house protests. To these ends, this essay makes four primary contributions: it (re)calls attention to the correspondence archive as a fruitful site to investigate political speech acts and forms of dissent; it provides an understanding of the politics of emotions in protest and social change efforts, thus contributing to resonant dialogues in social movement studies; it codifies the Eagle Scouts’ particular tactics employed in their in-house protests, captured in the terms “symbolic divestment” and “recuperative critique”; and it offers a case study that details the rhetorical mechanisms of intrainstitutional change.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Jiyeon Kang, Angela Ray, Catherine Palczewski, Chuck Morris, Jeff Bennett, Damien Pfister, Ashley Hinck, Kate Zittlow Rogness, Nikki Weickum, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Notes
1 Todd Leopold, “Boy Scouts Change Policy on Gay Leaders,” CNN, June 28, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/27/us/boy-scouts-gay-leaders-feat/
2 “Membership Standards Resolution,” Boy Scouts of America, http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/MembershipStandards/Resolution/Resolution.aspx
3 Dana Liebelson, “Timeline: The Boy Scouts’ Long History of Anti-gay Discrimination,” Mother Jones, February 6, 2013, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/timeline-boy-scouts-gay-ban-policy-history
4 Lorenzo Laing, “Don’t Clap Just Yet for the Boy Scouts,” American Civil Liberties Union, August 10, 2015, https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/dont-clap-just-yet-boy-scouts.
5 Dan Peltier, “Boy Scouts, Transgender Youth, and Delaware’s ‘Bathroom Bill,” Political Research Associates, July 3, 2013, http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/07/03/boy-scouts-transgender-youth-and-delawares-bathroom-bill/#sthash.XW2FepV4.8mQPjSzQ.dpbs
6 Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale. United States Supreme Court. No. 99-699. Argued: April 26, 2000. Decided: June 28, 2000, http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/530/640.html
7 Boy Scouts of America, “Citizenship in the Community,” http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-CITC.aspx; Boy Scouts of America, “Citizenship in the Nation,” http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-CITN.aspx; Boy Scouts of America, “Citizenship in the World,” http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-CITW.aspx
8 For more, see Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public,” in Publics and Counterpublics, ed. Michael Warner (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 65–124.
9 Jay Mechling, On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), xvi–xix.
10 The National Eagle Scout Association, “Eagle Scout Roll of Honor,” Boy Scouts of America, http://www.nesa.org/PDF/58-435.pdf
11 Catherine Traywick, “Eagle Scouts Return Badges in Protest of Gay Ban,” July 25, 2012, http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/25/eagle-scouts-return-badges-in-protest-of-gay-ban/
12 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2004).
13 See Mechling’s discussion of the “Boy Scout purge.” Mechling, On My Honor, 210–11. See also “Boy Scouts Revoke Charter of Seattle Troop with Gay Leader,” Seattle Times, April 21, 2014, http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/boy-scouts-revoke-charter-of-seattle-troop-with-gay-leader/
14 The divestors omit trans individuals from their BSA critiques. Therefore, I write GBQ and GLBQ instead of GBTQ and GLBTQ to mark that omission. I return to this in the conclusion.
15 “Eagle Scouts Returning Our Badges,” http://boingboing.net/2012/07/23/eagle-scouts-%20stand-up-to-the-%20b.html; Stacy Lambe, “16 Eagle Scouts Return their Badges,” http://www.buzzfeed.com/stacylambe/16-eagle-scouts-returning-their-pins; “Scouts Take Action,” GLAAD, http://www.glaad.org/scouts/eaglescouts
16 Gwen Florio, “A Dramatic Protest by Some Eagle Scouts Dismayed that the Boy Scouts Bar Gays as Leaders, Some Members Return their Prized Eagle Badges,” Philly.com, July 18, 2000, http://articles.philly.com/2000-07-18/news/25610240_1_eagle-badges-eagle-scouts-boy-scouts
17 Miranda Leitsinger, “Eagle Scouts Return Badges to Protest Policy Banning Gays,” NBC News, August 2, 2012, http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/02/13074659-eagle-scouts-return-badges-to-protest-policy-banning-gays?lite
18 “Eagle Scouts Returning.”
19 “Gays Stage Kiss-in at Boy Scout Office,” The Dispatch, July 4, 1991, A. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19910704&id=2j0eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tr4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=3026,472949. For a discussion of kiss-ins, see Charles Morris III and John Sloop, “‘What Lips these Lips have Kissed’: Refiguring the Politics of Queer Public Kissing,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 11, no. 2 (2006): 1–26.
20 Jane Meredith Adams, “Unwelcome at the Campfire: Gays, Still Boy Scout Pariahs, Turn Up the Heat for Change,” Boston Globe, November 12, 1991, http://www.bsadiscrimination.org/html/forgotten_scouts.html
21 Jim Merret, “Scout’s Honor: Doing His Best to Do His duty, the Grandson of the Boy Scouts of America Founder Comes Out,” Advocate Magazine, http://www.bsa-discrimination.org/html/boyce.html. For more, see Jeff Bennett, “Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance: Infiltrating the Ritual Space of Blood Donation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 1 (2008): 23–43.
22 Merret, “Scout’s Honor.”
23 Florio, “A Dramatic Protest.”
24 William Pannapacker, “Once an Eagle Scout, Always an Eagle Scout?” The Chronicle for Higher Education, September 5, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/Once-an-Eagle-Always-an/134136/.
25 Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 10.
26 Mechling, On My Honor, 26–27.
27 Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 2.
28 Mechling, On My Honor, xix.
29 James Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 50.
30 Ahmed, Cultural Politics, 175–76.
31 Mark Hartford, “Dewey Canyon III,” Vietnam Veterans Against the War, http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=81
32 “Iraq, Afghan War Vets Throw Back Medals,” Revolution, June 12, 2012, http://revcom.us/a/271/iraq-afghan-war-vets-throw-back-medals-en.html
33 Marissa Bailey, “Veterans Announce Plans to Give Back Badges after NATO Protest,” CBS Chicago, May 17, 2012, http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/05/17/veterans-announce-plans-to-give-back-medals-during-nato-protest/
34 Online Etymology Dictionary, “Recuperation,” http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=recuperation
35 Oxford Dictionaries, “Appropriation,” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/appropriate
36 See Stuart Hall, “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10, no. 2 (1986): 5–27.
37 Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985).
38 Oxford Dictionaries, “Definition of ‘divest,’” http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/divest
39 Miranda Lietsinger, “Eagle Scouts Return Badges to Protest Policy Banning Gays,” NBC News, August 2, 20120, http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/02/13074659-eagle-scouts-return-badges-to-protest-policy-banning-gays?lite
40 Ahmed, Cultural Politics, 8.
41 Jenny Rice, Distant Publics: Development Rhetoric and the Subject of Crisis (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 48–49.
42 Jasper, The Art, 106.
43 Erin Rand, Reclaiming Queer: Activist and Academic Rhetorics of Resistance (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014), 131–32.
44 Kenneth Zagacki and Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald, “Rhetoric and Anger,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 39, no. 4 (2006): 291.
45 Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 143–44.
46 Robert Hariman and John Lucaites, “Dissent and Emotional Management in a Liberal-Democratic Society: The Kent State Iconic Photograph,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2001): 12.
47 Ahmed, Cultural Politics, 176.
48 For an introduction to emotion and protest, see Deborah Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). See also, among many others, Rand, Reclaiming Queer.
49 Ibid., 4.
50 Jasper, The Art, 106.
51 Rice, Distant Publics, 19.
52 Speaking of broader social movements, Tilly defines the term as “the whole set of means [a group] has for making claims of different kinds on different individuals or groups.” Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 2.
53 Charles Morris III, “Sunder the Children: Abraham Lincoln’s Queer Rhetorical Pedagogy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 4 (2013): 405.
54 “Inside the ‘Perversion Files’: Tracking Decades of Allegations in the Boy Scouts,” LA Times, October 18, 2012, http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/boyscouts-cases/
55 Gould, Moving, 248–53.
56 Bennett, “Passing,” 28.
57 Mona Lena Krook and Fiona Mackay, “Introduction,” in Gender, Politics, and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 7.
58 Amy L. Brandziel, Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2016).
59 Danielle Endres and Samantha Senda-Cook, “Location Matters: The Rhetoric of Place in Protest,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 3 (2011): 257–82.
60 Jiyeon Kang, “A Volatile Public: The 2009 Whole Foods Boycott on Facebook,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 56, no. 4 (2012): 564.
61 Emily Waters, Chai Jindasurat, and Cecilia Wolfe, “Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-affected Hate Violence in 2015: 2016 Release Edition,” National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2016, http://avp.org/storage/documents/ncavp_hvreport_2015_final.pdf
62 For a collection of these critiques, see Ryan Conrad, ed., Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014).
63 Cathy J. Cohen, “What Is this Movement Doing to My Politics?,” Social Text 61, vol. 17, no. 4 (1999): 111–118.
64 Michael Calvin McGee, “Social Movement: Phenomenon or Meaning?,” Central States Speech Journal 31 (1980): 233–44.