“Scout’s Honor,” the taxpayer-funded PBS film directed by homosexual activist Tom Shepard airing this week on public TV stations across the nation, applies all of the tricks to which conservatives have grown accustomed in liberal, politicized documentaries.
The film features four critics of the Boy Scouts’ homosexual ban but devotes the most attention to its pubescent hero, Steven Cozza, of the pro-homosexual group “Scouting for All.” Cozza, an Eagle Scout who began his pro-homosexual activism at age 12, is portrayed as an idealistic civil-rights crusader who is faithfully living out the Scouts’ moral creed. The Scouts, on the other hand, are hypocritical meanies whose reasons for opposing the homosexual lobby are never fully explained.
Steven’s father Scott Cozza and the film’s three other pro-homosexual protagonists – David Rice, an elderly assistant scoutmaster in Cozza’s troop, and ousted Eagle Scouts Tim Curran and James Dale – give voice to Shepard’s tired thesis that the Scouts’ ban on homosexuality is a capricious relic of irrational bigotry.
Meanwhile, the only significant interview yielding an opposing viewpoint in “Scout’s Honor” is with Cathay Zortman, whose son was in Steven’s Petaluma, Calif., troop and who was among the parents who resisted the Cozzas’ efforts. Predictably, she comes off as a bit defensive. (The apolitical Scouts wisely refused an offer by Shepard to be interviewed for the film; after viewing it, one cannot conceive of Shepard giving them a fair shake.)
When Shepard shoots his heroes, it is usually in friendly, wholesome settings: Steven and his family praying before dinner at the home of his homosexual church camp counselor; Rice, a straight man who gave up a 60-year association with the Scouts (after being moved by a church sermon) to join “Scouting for All,” strolling hand-in-hand with his wife on the beach; Steven’s eyes welling up with tears as his “gay” church friend and role model tells him how proud he is of him; Steven playing basketball with dad; Steven chasing the family dog; etc.
Conversely, Shepard makes no effort to capture the humanity and conviction of Boy Scouts supporters, who serve as reactionary foils in his film. The fix was in for his one-sided documentary when he asked homosexual activist leaders including Kevin Jennings of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network – which is pressuring schools across the nation to punish the Scouts – to serve as advisors for “Scout’s Honor.”
Father’s zealotry hidden?
At one point in the film, Shepard takes pains to refute the charge that Steven’s father put him up to all this “gay” activism. Steven says taking on the Scouts was his idea. Still, clues remain about senior Cozza’s zealotry: Zortman recalls that the first time she heard of Scouting for All was when Scott Cozza called her about getting parents’ permission to take the Scout troop to a homosexual “pride” parade in San Francisco. The stunned parents called a meeting and “basically raked [me] over the coals,” Cozza admits. The “gay” parades are evidently a favorite teaching tool of Scott Cozza, who, according to homosexual news reports, began taking Steven to “gay pride” events when the boy was just 4 years old. For anyone not familiar with life in the “gay” Mecca by the Bay, that means exposure to some heavy-duty perversion for an innocent child.
The indoctrination worked. Throughout the film, Steven Cozza, who identifies as straight, matter-of-factly repeats his mantra that “being gay is normal”?that is, as normal as heterosexuality. But mere repetition of this shibboleth by pro-homosexual activists does not make it true. Toward the end of the film, Cozza and his allies are shown using his Eagle Scout induction ceremony to once again assail the Scouts’ policy protecting young boys from homosexuality. Steven says, “Gay people are normal people. The only thing that’s not normal is the Boy Scouts’ policy which discriminates against gays.”
Shepard’s pro-“gay” subjects spout the homosexual line that there is no real threat of homosexual child molestation in the Scouts. He does not solicit a sensible countering viewpoint, such as that hundreds of boys have already been molested by homosexual pedophile Scout leaders and that boys make up a disproportionate percentage of child molestation cases (compared to girls) relative to the homosexual male population. But Shepard manages to find room in the film for a hackneyed segment in which each of his four pro-“gay” crusaders recite the Scout oath: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
Shepard allows his protagonists to define “morally straight” as consistent with their pro-homosexual campaign, but he relegates the Boy Scouts’ interpretation of those words to a quick TV clip from a courtroom appearance by their attorney. (Interestingly, Shepard avoids Steven Cozza’s advocacy for atheist boys who similarly demand entrance in the Scouts; perhaps he knew that defending that position as consistent with the Scout oath was a stretch even for PBS.)
“Scout’s Honor” accomplishes the director’s mission of evoking sympathy for the cause of forcing the Boy Scouts to endorse homosexuality. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation dutifully lauded the film as “fair, accurate, and inclusive,” but by no journalistic standard could it be called any of those words. It does remind the more discerning viewer that when “gay” activists speak of “tolerance,” they invariably belittle the moral beliefs of people who hold that homosexual behavior is wrong and should not be modeled to youth as “normal.”
Peter LaBarbera is a senior policy analyst at the Culture & Family Institute of Concerned Women for America, publisher of the Culture & Family Report.
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