This letter is in response to Robert DeKoven’s April 15 guest column “Anti-bias laws apply to Boy Scouts.” I wonder if DeKoven was a Boy Scout. I don’t know the true answer to this question, but I am willing to put my money on him not being a member of BSA.

So many people have been caught up in the legal “mumbo-jumbo” circling around BSA.

I don’t know where some can associate the word discrimination with Boy Scouts of America. I am astounded at DeKoven’s comment, “The BSA. discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs.”

I have been involved in scouting since the first grade and at the age of 18, I reached the rank of Eagle Scout — the highest honor in scouting. In my 14 years of active scouting, I have never seen any sort of discrimination. Any true scout knows that B.S.A. is about caring and respecting nature and your fellow man. These cases of discrimination that DeKoven mentions are isolated incidents and should be handled within the BSA. Instead they are blown out of proportion by members of the media who think that they have the right to associate these hurtful words with every Boy Scout Troop in the United States.

In this day of age filled with violence, sex and “couch-potatoism,” I feel that every young man should have the opportunity to experience all that scouting has to offer.

This reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw, “America, returning to values Scouting never left.”

I feel such state entities, i.e. Iowa State, cutting the funding for BSA., via the United Way, will hurt the opportunity for young men to learn the morals and values which allow us to become environmentally conscious as well as upstanding citizens in our community.

Matt Henderson

Sophomore

Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management