Ellen DeGeneres doesn't typically use her daytime talk show as a bully pulpit, but on Friday's show she spoke out about something something near and dear to her heart, and something that was kicked down the road to a later date.
In this case, DeGeneres was not speaking about Congress kicking the can down the road, meaning the sequester or the fiscal cliff. Instead, she took took on the recent controversy over the Boy Scouts’ near-decision to lift their long-standing ban on gay scouts and leaders.
As you might expect from the self-effacing host, she began her monologue with a joke, saying,
If the Boy Scouts start treating gays equally, they’re going to become the first group to do it -— after the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, all of the United Kingdom and Cher.
The comments regarding Cher and the Armed Services should be obvious. It was only this week that the British House of Commons -- on Tuesday -- voted 400 to 175 to approve a draft law allowing gay marriage.
More humor came, when Ellen stated that "obviously," as a gay woman herself (and married to actress Portia de Rossi) she believe that the Boy Scouts should allow gay members and leaders, and the fact that they don’t is “insane.” She added,
They won’t let their members be gay, or openly gay, anyway, but they’re letting them wear neckerchiefs and green short shorts.
She then spoke of her brother Vance’s positive experiences in the Boy Scouts, including how to tie such "good knots" that she was tied to a water pipe for three weeks.
Ellen also showed a childhood photo of herself in a Girl Scout uniform. The Girl Scouts do not have a membership policies on sexual preference. Their cookies don't discriminate either, Ellen noted, added 10 pounds to everyone, gay or straight.
The Boy Scout leadership message, she said, is important and should be open to all.
The more that we teach people how to accept people for who they are, the more self-confident they’ll be and the better leaders they’ll become.
Ellen concluded her speech by listing all the things that should be more worrisome to the Boy Scouts than someone’s sexual orientation:
- bears,
- poison ivy,
- poison oak,
- black widows,
- ticks,
- lyme disease
She concluded:
Gay or straight, that [experience] sounds miserable to me.
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