Even Scout camp involved minimal authority, and its relative chaos was salutary. I earned badges for rowing and sailing  skills that have served me to this day. My lifesaving badges and Red Cross certification not only got me jobs at ponds and swimming pools in the Boston area, but enabled me, over the years, to rescue a number of hapless swimmers. The summer beach and the wooded path were as formative in making me a writer as the public library.

Occasionally we scouts operated as a team; but most of the time individual effort was what mattered. My heroes were explorers, mountain climbers and lone sailors (they still are) and my fantasy life revolved around bushwhacking and jungle ordeals (it probably still does).

Then, and later, when an adult mentioned the Scouts with a snobbish snigger, I would think: you have no idea. I also thought: you’re afraid to let go of your children. Liberated by the Scouts, I had the confidence to be independent and was allowed to discover my identity in a way that I never could have through team sports.

The Boy Scouts isn’t perfect, “neither the Hitler Youth of its worst detractors nor the virtuous community of its stalwart defenders,” writes Jay Mechling in “On My Honor,” a clear-sighted analysis of Scouting in American life. Mr. Mechling’s criticism is unsparing, but he also speaks about the autonomy of the average troop, how decentralized the organization is, allowing for more latitude than the bureaucrats in the national office might wish  or outsiders might imagine. That was certainly my experience: we obeyed the rules while remaining ourselves, and it was never about winning.

Sexuality and religion were very far from being the core of my Boy Scout experience. And yet the question of Scouting’s ban on homosexuals and atheists is an important one. The paradox is that the Scouts, with its diverse group of boys, can easily accommodate them. “Scouting is for all boys,” runs the first line in an official Boy Scout publication, from 1967. This enlightened pamphlet (wiser than its title, “Scouting for the Mentally Retarded”) goes on to say, “Scouting is also for each boy and each boy is different.”

The Boy Scouts would be doing a great service if it made a few adjustments (as it did after the era of segregation) and acted on that crisp acknowledgment of inclusiveness. Far from eviscerating its principles, accepting gays and atheists would strengthen them.

Anyway, there are already closeted gay scouts, as well as quietly atheist scouts. Formally excluding gay scouts only makes those 11-year-olds more isolated and miserable, as well as violating their civil rights. Some boys are gay and some don’t pray. Not only are such boys capable of being good scouts, but the recognition of such traits would help to make their fellow scouts more tolerant, especially at that awkward age.