The House of Representatives passed H.R. 310 yesterday, a bill that would take a section of the Ouachita National Forest and transfer it over to the Indian Nations Council in Oklahoma. It looks, at first glance, like a victory for those who have been advocating Native American land rights. Sadly, that’s first impression couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Indian Nations Council is not a Native American group. It’s a chapter of the Boy Scouts of America. Almost all of its members are European Americans. The group mocks Native American groups by having its members dress up to play “Indians”. They organize themselves into groups with fake names like the Ta Tsu Hwa Lodge to make themselves sound Native American. They go to a camp at the edge of the Ouachita National Forest to hold membership “ordeal ceremonies” that mock real Native American rites.

Let’s pay attention to that camp, because it’s at the heart of the legislation passed yesterday, called the HALE Scouts Act. The legislation would take public land, which is supposed to be held in trust for all the people of the United States, and hand it over to the Boys Scouts of America Indian Nations Council for its private ownership and use. The Boy Scouts of America said that its ceremonies of imitations of Native Americans had become so popular with European-American families that their facility needed more room to hold all the people who wanted to participate. Yesterday, with the passage of H.R. 310, the lower house of Congress agreed to help them do just that.

U.S. Representative Dan Boren, a Republican from Oklahoma, commented, “Attendance has now exceeded the maximum number of available campsites and program areas, which is causing Camp Hale to begin turning away hundreds of scouts each summer. It is now critical for camp growth that the boundaries be extended.”

Imagine that a predominantly European-American organization set up a club in downtown Chicago in which children were taught to dress up in blackface and imitate African-Americans. Imagine that this group then asked Congress to help expand its facilities by giving it part of what had been public park. The equivalent of that is what happened yesterday, only instead of mocking African-Americans, the Boy Scouts of America are mocking Native Americans.

This kind of bigoted behavior isn’t new to the Boy Scouts of America. People who pay attention know that the Boy Scouts have a long history of discrimination against non-religious Americans and non-heterosexuals. A bit of racism added to the mix blends in very nicely.

The really sad part of this story is that not one member of the House of Representatives had the courage to vote against this bill. Only seven members of the House abstained from voting for H.R. 310, doing so by voting “present” instead of voting “aye”. These U.S. Representatives were: Tammy Baldwin, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, George Miller, Peter Stark, Henry Waxman, and Lynn Woolsey. The rest of Congress wholeheartedly supported the bigotry demonstrated by this scouting, without a single speech of even mild concern.

When our son brought a note home from school asking him to join the Boy Scouts, it was just one more time we saw a government body giving a special boost to the Boy Scouts of America. The Boy Scouts get support from all levels of government, from schools to municipal governments and all the way up to the federal government itself.

It’s a powerful organization, but I won’t have my son join. That’s because the Boy Scouts of America uses its power to exclude people, driving communities apart, instead of bringing people together and serving all Americans. The group promotes discrimination against non-religious Americans and against GLBT Americans as well. The organization goes so far as to ban children from its ranks, just because they don’t share the religious, hetero-pure vision of the BSA. Then, of course, there’s the fundamental gender discrimination of the Boy Scouts, and the Girl Scouts too. From the very act of signing up, these scouting programs teach kids that segregation, prejudice and inequality are good ideas.

The problems with the Boy Scouts continue as the children age, with an approach that bears disturbing similarities to miltary life. The Boy Scouts of America is used, especially as participating children get close to the age of majority, as a tool for military recruiting. It’s no coincidence that a large number of Eagle Scouts sign up to become soldiers.

There is a better alternative. Check out the Earth Scouts. The Earth Scouts don’t exclude children on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, gender, disability. Earth Scouts does not serve as a feeder organization for the U.S. military.

What the Earth Scouts exists to encourage children, their parents and their communities to learn and take action around the Earth Charter, an internationally-created document that describes a set of values to create a more positive future for our planet. The Preamble to the Earth Charter reads:

We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.

There are more than 50 chapters of the Earth Scouts. You can add one more where you live. I’m meeting with other parents this weekend to begin the process of organizing a group for our town. That will require more work on our part than if we were to join the Boy Scouts, or start up our own troop. The Earth Scouts isn’t a top-down organization. It’s grassroots – from the bottom up.

Presidential candidate Bob Barr talks a lot about how he, as a Libertarian, is the candidate who most supports individual liberty. Barr says he’s a consistent advocate for constitutionally-established freedoms. However, in practice, Barr seems to support liberty only for people who do things he personally approves of.

Non-religious Americans, for example, wouldn’t get much protection in Bob Barr’s vision. In lawsuits aimed at ending governmental funding and other support for the Boy Scouts, atheists note that only religious children are allowed to join. Kids are forced to take a solemn oath of duty to God, or they cannot join the government-supported organization.

Bob Barr doesn’t seem to think that’s a problem. He wrote an article in the Washington Times in 2004 complaining that gays and atheists shouldn’t object to the Boys Scouts discrimination against them.

The rest of us note that the government is not supposed to engage in any act supporting the establishment of religion, or interfering with the religious liberty of children. Supporting an organization that compels its child members to accept membership in religious theism clearly violates these aspects of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Bob Barr, like most Libertarians, seems to actually support liberty only when it happens to run in accordance with his personal preferences. For true freedom-loving Americans, Bob Barr is a lousy choice for President.

It’s not just a one-time thing. It’s a pattern. If the fundamentalists are right about God, then God’s will is pretty clear: God loves same-sex marriage. God hates straights.

If we are to believe the likes of fundamentalist Christian leaders John Hagee and Pat Robertson and Stephen Bennett, God sends weather in judgment of peoples and nations, particularly in judgment of their marital and sexual practices.

When the Norwegians legalized same-sex marriage, did Norway suffer any sort of cataclysm? No.

When the Greeks performed their first same-sex marriage, did Greece get blasted by any disastrous weather pattern? No.

When the government of Uruguay legalized same-sex unions, was Uruguay beset by a hurricane, or floods, or twisting tornadoes of judgment? No.

When the state of Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, was Massachusetts blasted by the heavens? No.

When same sex marriages in California were declared legal, did California slide off into the ocean? No.

If you think about it, what states have been beset by floods recently? States like Iowa. Does Iowa permit same-sex marriage? No — and by fundamentalist theory has reaped God’s judgment for it. Who has been killed by weather events? Four boy scouts in Iowa. The Boy Scouts of America make a point of discriminating against people who are gay — and yet again by the fundamentalist theory of weather they have clearly reaped God’s judgment for it. If you take fundamentalist theology seriously, it is clear that God hates straight people.

Now, I imagine some of you are gasping right about now. How could you?, you’re thinking. How could you trivialize these deaths? But hey, man. Don’t harsh on my mellow. This isn’t the way that I think. I don’t think that those Boy Scouts died so God could enforce His Righteous Dogma. I’m just passing on the fundamentalist Christian theory of the universe. If you have a problem with the implications of fundamentalist thinking, take it up with the fundamentalists.