Threatened Scouts
WashintonTimes.com
The leadership of the Boy Scouts of America is standing the common sense of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” on its pointy head. The Scouts’ executive committee recommended Friday that openly homosexual Scouts be invited into the troop, despite the harm it might do to straight Scouts.
It’s a cave-in to pressure from lavender lobby bullies who have used their media megaphones to coerce corporations such as the United Parcel Service, Merck and Intel into the blackmail trade. These companies vow to punish Scouts by pulling funding if the Scouts continue to stand up for their traditional values.
The unprincipled nature of the executive committee’s proposal is obvious from the attempt to create a split-the-baby compromise sure to please neither side of the debate. Chad Griffin, president of the radical homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign, says the “resolution must go further” by including homosexual Scout leaders. Such groups will continue agitating until they get everything they want. A partial surrender won’t silence the vocal minority; it only encourages more activism.
On the other side, OnMyHonor.net, a group of Scouts, parents, leaders and alumni who want to keep the ban in place, laments the caving to “outside pressure.” The proposal is “an incremental step for full-blown, open homosexuality in all Scouting in the future,” says John Stemberger, an Eagle Scout. “Parents should still have the final say on the issues of sexuality and politics. Allowing open homosexuality in the Boy Scouts of America injects both those topics right into the program.”
The danger of homosexuality in its ranks is not theoretical. The risk is exposed in a number of lawsuits stemming from the release of the Scouts’ so-called “perversion files.” The most recent of these suits was filed earlier this month in King County, Wash., and the cases reveal that the Scouts for years kept detailed records on suspected child molesters in its ranks. The files were intended to eliminate molesters in the ranks and to make sure they stayed out of Scouting. Such efforts sometimes failed.
In one survey, most of the 20,000 adult members of the Scouting organization polled — Scoutmasters, den mothers and parents of Scouts — say they “support the current policy of excluding open and avowed homosexuals.” Research into the churches and synagogues that charter about 70 percent of all Scout troops project that lifting the ban would incur a net membership loss ranging from 80,000 to 330,000 members.
The Boy Scouts of America’s full 1,400-member National Council should take these considerations into account when it makes the final decision during the week of May 20 in Grapevine, Texas. Supporters of the Scouts and of traditional values must speak up now to make certain that members of the National Council will have “heard it through the grapevine” that they want their values upheld.