Straight Flight, A Fable

                                                                    Straight Flight
                                                                               By
                                                                        Patti Liszkay

    It came to pass, though slowly at first, in Year Of Our Lord 2013, soon after the Boy Scouts of America announced that openly gay youngsters  were now openly welcome to participate in scouting, that religious-backed, straight-only scouting-type organizations with names like Life Trail USA, Troops of St. George, and On My Honor began springing up across America as alternatives for parents who did not wish for their children to associate with gays.
    But straight flight from the Boy Scouts did not truly take off until 2016, the year when the Boy Scouts of America, having been summoned the previous year by their president to do so,  welcomed gay leaders as well as youth into their ranks.
    But once the Great Straight Flight, as it came to be known,  began, the following years ushered in an era of fundamental sea change for the Boy Scouts of America.
    Typically, as soon as one openly gay scout or leader joined a troop, the straight  (or not openly gay)
 boys would one-by-one be pulled from the troop and re-located into one of the "no-gays allowed" alternatives.
    And so the anti-gay youth organizations prospered and flourished, and soon banded together into a new organization known as the No Gays of America, or the NGA.
    Meanwhile membership in the Boy Scouts became a "Gay Thing" and the ranks, from Tiger Cub to Life Scout, filled up with boys who were openly gay as well as those who, while they were learning orienteering, could find a safe haven for figuring out their own orientation.
    The scope of the Boys Scouts expanded, and along with camping and other outdoor activities the troops also focused on new kinds of  activities of interest to the scouts, such as art, musical theater, dance, gourmet cooking, and fashion design.
    Neatness in dress and appearance were stressed, as was personal physical fitness.
    Soon teen-aged girl scouts, whose organization has never had any kind of LGBT discrimination policy, began taking an interest in the sharply-dressed, nice-looking teen-aged members of their brother organization, and boy scout troops began graciously inviting girl scout troops to activities that they thought the girls might share an interest in, such as dinner theater and shopping trips.  The invitations became reciprocal and these co-ed scouting activities became known as Just Friends outings and were enjoyed by all.  Enrollment in the Girl Scouts soared.
    Meanwhile the members of NGA troops were starting to cast a jealous eye upon the Boy Scouts, who appeared to be having a much better time than they were.
    But the boys weren't the only ones who were eying the Boy Scouts. 
     Being in an environment where they found acceptance, guidance, and positive adult role-models, the members of the Boy Scouts tended to flourish as persons to the extent that, when it came time for college scholarships, their well-roundedness, in the outdoors, the arts and other worldly matters, not to mention how well-dressed and self-possessed  they presented themselves at  their college interviews, began blowing the straight male college applicants out of the water.
    This situation did not go over the heads of  well educated,affluent parents.
    The subsequent gentrification and re-straightification of the Boy Scouts of America began with a few groups of upper-class New York City Central Park West parents who, with an eye on the Ivy Leagues, started enrolling their sons in Cub Scout dens.
    The trend caught on, and soon parents from 5th Avenue to Beverly Hills and every wealthy neighborhood in between were rushing to get their sons, gay or straight, into the Boy Scouts. 
    At the behest of the parents, a new badge called "Getting into Harvard"  was created and became a requirement for making Eagle Scout, the name of which was changed to Ivy Scout.
    Soon every Boy Scout troop in the country became so crowded with upper-class, upwardly-mobile youngsters that affluent expectant parents, upon learning that they'd be having a boy, would hurry to get their unborn progeny's name on the waiting list for entry into a den of Diaper Cubs, the most recently created entity for the youngest future Boy Scouts.
    It was all very stressful.
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