19.2003
nTT!77TT7R?nnetvsbrie/s
O N V1\ H O N O R I W i l l
S cout ’ s D ishonor
n o M Y M v M
A nay father filed a formal com-
^ plaint Sept. 17 with Portland
Public Schtxils alleging that the dis
trict creates a hostile learning envi
ronment for his children hy support
ing the Roy Scouts of America.
Steve Wagenhoffer and his
partner, Mitchell Zahn, have two
sons, 9-year-old Alex and 8-year-
old Scott, who attend Jim Rridger
Elementary School in Southeast
Portland. On Sept. 5 both stu
dents were handed Boy Scouts
recruitment literature to bring
home with them.
The full-color, 11 -page brochure
included the Scout oath, in which
hoys promise to “do my best to do
my duty to G lx I and my country
and... to keep myself. ..morally
*
’
-
straight.” The Irving, Texas-based
nonprofit organization bans gay
Scouts and gay Scout leaders.
“Its just taken a heavy toll
emotionally,” Wagenhoffer told i
Just Out. “It’s caused a lot of con
flict with my kids.”
When a student harassed Alex |
about his famiiys opposition to the Steve Wagenhoffer says the school district is creating a hostile
Roy Scouts, Wagenhoffer said he anj Alex, by sending them home with literature from the Boy
came home from school Sept. 11
angry, confused and upset. “He then had an
groups and their roles in society” and to treat
emotional meltdown and curled up in a fetal
them “with fairness in all activities, programs
position and sobbed hysterically.”
and operations, without regard to...sexual
In the complaint Wagenhoffer cites poli
o rien ta tio n .” He wants Portland Public
cies requiring the district to recognize “the
Schools to comply with their own policies
diversity and worth of all individuals and
and to put their words into action.
*
BEFORE YOU CELEBRATE PLEASE DESIGNATE
C-2003 ZlMA BEVERAGE COMPANY MEMPHIS. TN 38118* MALT BEVERAGE WITH NATURAL FLAVORS [BEER in TXJ • CNW0003?)0
learning environment for his sons, Scott (left)
Scouts of America (inset)
“It is inconceivable that the district chooses
to marginalize and discriminate against my chil
dren, my family and others like it by allowing
exceptions to a prejudiced organization such as
the BSA," he wrote in the complaint. “It is
intolerable and unacceptable that my children
lu iiu v n
he subjected to the efforts of the BSA at
school.... It is the mission of PPS to provide my
children with a safe, respectful, comfortable and
inclusive environment in which to learn— free
of the bigotry, homophobia and exclusion the
BSA have adeptly come to represent.”
District spokesman Lew Frederick said that
the Scouts literature should not have been sent
home with students but that the group is
allowed to place materials on campus. He
blamed the incident on a clerical error.
“Sometimes we have new people in new posi-
tioas who don’t know about those policies and
haven’t read everything," Frederick said. “Some
people do make mistakes, and that was a mistake."
Continued on Page 8