Penn & Teller: Bullshit!/The Boy Scouts

The Boy Scouts
Season 4, Episode 1
Airdate	April 3, 2006
Production Number	401
Written by	Penn Jillette, Teller, Jon Hotchkiss, Michael Goudeau, Star Price
Directed by	Star Price
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Penn & Teller: Bullshit! — Season Four

The Boy Scouts is the first episode of the fourth season of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, and the fortieth episode overall. Penn & Teller tackle the Boy Scouts of America and the head organization's policies that discriminate against homosexuals and atheists, all the while taking tax-payer funds to support themselves.

Plot Overview

Instead of taking issue with the entire foundation of Scouting (old photos of Penn are shown as a boy scout), Penn & Teller tackle several policies of the governing body, including: active discrimination against homosexuals and atheists. At one point Penn compares the "duty to God before duty to country and self" that the official website mentions to suicide bombers.

The problems that Penn & Teller pose about the Boy Scouts is attributed to the religious right co-opting the organization during the 1980s, according to Tim Curren who was kicked out of scouting after attaining the Eagle rank and becoming an active member in the organization when it was uncovered that he's gay. This is further backed up by an excerpt from the 1972 Scoutmaster's Handbook which tells leaders that they are not to instruct members on matters involving sex or family.

Because of these discriminatory policies, the duo cast a light on the public funding that goes to the Boy Scouts organization that was grandfathered in due to being an "American Patriotic Organization" in their congressional charter. Additionally, a portion of property tax goes to the Boy Scouts because many troops are housed in public buildings like schools. This goes against several policies against discriminatory organizations holding meetings in public buildings.

The defining message of the episode is that the organization at its heart is a positive group, but because of the biases of the overwhelming control from a religious controlling majority, that positive influence has been tainted.

Notes

Interviews

Penn & Teller interviewed the following people:

• Hans Zeiger, Eagle Scout and Author of "Get off My Honor"
• Steven Cosa, Eagle Scout and Activist
• Howard Menser, Eagle Scout and former Scoutmaster
• Tim Curren, A man who sued the BSA for discrimination
• Margaret Downy, Activist against discrimination in the BSA and mother of a child kicked out of the BSA for being atheist.
• Larry Taylor, PhD and Author of "How Your Tax Dollars Support the Boy Scouts of America."
• Fred Berlin, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the John Hopkins Medical School. One of the nation's leading authorities on pedophilia.

Statistics

• 60% BSA troops are sponsored by religious groups.
• Mormons sponsor about 30,000 troops.
• $5 million in taxpayer money is spent on the National BSA Jamboree every 4 years.
• Enrollment in the BSA is down 13% over the past 5 years.

Experiments

The Survey

In order to better understand prejudices of Boy Scout leaders, Penn & Teller e-mailed to over 50 scout leaders with an imaginary mother with an archetypical "good American home" attempting to get her atheist son into scouts. The main question here is if being an atheist will prevent her son from joining.

• "The Boy Scouts maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God."

After getting a rejection letter, they dialed up the parents to a mother involved in the PTA and a father who works for Homeland Security. They get a response from a leader in Washington:

• "We believe that a spiritual component in a person's life is essential to their total growth and development."

This experiment is later revisited with letters from tolerant leaders, showing that the bigotry against homosexuals and atheists does not trickle down to the troop level in many cases. One reply was as follows:

• "I think you'll find that there is no problem with Matt joining our troop. I can't speak officially, but I can give my off the record view; joining the Boy Scouts should not be a problem."

The Camp-Out

Penn & Teller ask Howard Menser to teach typical things learned by scouts to two sets of guys, one gay and the other straight. Both groups are timed to find out which group picks up the various tasks faster. The things that they learn are: folding a flag, tying several knots, and putting up a tent.

In each of the trials, the gay team beat the straight team easily. At the very end, Howard explains that he wishes that the gay team could be a part of scouting, and that he left the organization because he is gay.

Trivia

The Show

• Official: Although they attempted, Penn & Teller couldn't get an official representative from the Boy Scouts of America to comment on their show.

Allusions and References

• Joey: Joey was a short-lived spin-off of the wildly popular NBC sitcom, Friends. The series starred Matt LeBlanc as Joey, a struggling actor who moved to California in order to push along his acting career. Although the series enjoyed moderate success during the first season, ratings sharply fell 82%.

Penn: It's Survivor meets Queer Eye! This should so be a spin-off. It couldn't be worse than Joey.

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