A couple of times each year, Sonny and I work at Tavaputs Ranch. We drive to hell and gone, up on a plateau overlooking Desolation Canyon where we work for food and cannon-range privileges.
Mostly we fix stuff, but we also herd cows, cook, chase bears, dig ditches, haul trash and keep a mule named Abe out of the garden by shooting him with gum balls.
A few years ago, word started going around the ranch that Sonny and I were gay. The woman who started the idea was also an occasional ranch worker. I'll call her Gail from Tennessee because, well, she's from Tennessee. And her name is Gail. And she's a little nuts.
Gail from Tennessee didn't intend her conclusion as belittling. She only wanted to avoid a possible social faux pas in the close setting of a ranch house. Toward that end she took her cues from what she noticed about the two of us.
For starters, Sonny and I never showed up at the ranch with women. While at the ranch, we spent a lot of time huddled together discussing who knew what. We also slept in the same cabin, bathed regularly and made our own beds.
But perhaps most telling of all was that we always tried to help the womenfolk with the dishes.
Fortunately for Gail, Sonny and I didn't hear about her take on our partnership until long after she learned the truth — that we're just close and fiercely heterosexual friends.
But things would have been different had we known what Gail was thinking. Sonny and I share a common interest in messing with someone's head.
We would have started holding hands when Gail was around. We would have sat closer together at dinner. We might have discussed interior design. Anything to keep her confusion going about a question she was afraid to ask us directly.
We laugh about it today. Gail insists that it wouldn't have mattered to her if we were gay, and that it certainly wouldn't have made any difference as to our work. We would still be the fix-it guys, and a couple of idiots who once shot a bowling ball at a bear.
All of that was several years ago. I wouldn't have bothered bringing it up now if a recent poll hadn't revealed that 63 percent of faithful Mormons want the LDS Church to cut ties with the Boy Scouts of America.
It's a safe bet that many if not most of that 63 percent want to see the separation because of the BSA's new acceptance of openly gay men as scout leaders. After all, who knows what might happen when gay men are put in charge of taking young Scouts into the woods?
I'm betting nothing but scouting.
I say this because it honestly never occurred to me as a kid what my scoutmaster's sexual orientation was. It's possible that he was gay and we didn't know it. Ray was married and had kids, but that's not always definitive proof of heterosexuality.
The point is that it probably wouldn't have mattered. Ray was a good scoutmaster. Depending on what we had done, we either loved or feared him. He almost never whacked us.
He taught us woodcraft, hygiene, manners, how to clean fish, knife sharpening and as much as anyone possibly could've about having respect for other people's property.
Whatever else Ray might have been, he must have been a great scoutmaster, because only the Leavitt twins ended up going to prison later.
There are probably a lot of different reasons why Mormons might want the church to cut ties with the Boy Scouts of America. The possibility of having a gay scoutmaster shouldn't be one of them.
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