Back in the 1950s, my mother, may she rest in peace, refused to let me and my brothers join the Boy Scouts because boys in uniforms reminded her of the Hitler Youth. While I don’t think I suffered permanent damage as a result, I do remain challenged when it comes to tying knots.

It remains to be seen if the Boy Scouts are tying themselves up in knots by their proposed new policy removing the national ban on (openly) gay members. The idea is to let local affiliates make their own decisions on how to proceed.

That presumably means that the Mormons, who sponsor one-third of all troops, and the Catholics, who sponsor 10 percent of them, can continue to exclude gay scouts and scoutmasters. But I can’t, for the life of me, see why they should.  Gays are not excluded from membership in either church. Is there something more holy about the Boy Scouts?

If they could just get rid of the uniforms.