ABOUT THE BOY SCOUTS

The Boy Scouts’ decision to admit openly gay members while continuing to exclude gay leadership is rocking the nation and should be discussed in a calm and rational atmosphere.  First let’s talk about what the Scouts have done and what they have not.  Then perhaps we can have a word about what it means without igniting world war.  We might even find room for a discussion of truth versus myth in the controversy.
 

            What the Scouts have done is to vote – by a large majority – to welcome openly gay members to Scouting.  They will continue to ban homosexual leadership – where they are open or where they are discovered.  They will not permit troops a local option; the new/old standards are national for both leaders and membership.  They will maintain all of their moral standards of conduct. That means both members and leaders are expected to remain monogamous if married and abstinent if unmarried – in the traditional sense.  This latter factor explains the Mormon Church’s acceptance of the new regime and the reason gay rights activists continue to blast away at the Boy Scouts – by the activists’ own admission.

 

            What the Scouts have not done is satisfy any of the parties to the debate.  They are a quasi faith-based organization and the faith on which they are based is the Christian one.  Christians as well as traditionalists of all kinds have a legitimate stake in these decisions – albeit no right to a controlling interest – and we are not going to be satisfied with what appears to be waffling and weaseling on a position the Scouts have held for a century and which the US Supreme Court has affirmed as their entitlement.  In the meantime, the gay rights activists have already proclaimed they will not rest until the Scouts fully capitulate to the pressure brought to bear for more than a decade.  Full integration into leadership is the only acceptable outcome for them, along with the right to shape the Scouts into a fully gay-promoting organization.  Which brings us to the other thing the Scouts have not done, which is to buy any respite or protection from future lawsuits or harassments until they submit.  In fact, the likelihood of a future court decision going against them – on the grounds that gay members could grow into gay leaders were it not for unreasonable discrimination against gay Scouts over eighteen is a much larger possibility now.

 

            By the way, I have not heard anyone make the argument that if gays and their supporters want to operate a national youth organization that conforms to their ideas of tolerance they are perfectly free to start one without demanding that a century-old outfit change to suit them.

 

            What about the gap between myth and truth in the matter?  One myth is that there are no sexual predators among those gay adults who aspire to the post of scoutmaster.  While such monsters are the exception rather than the rule in gay circles I speak from first-hand experience; my scoutmaster and his two assistants were setting up the boys in my troop when they were unmasked and expelled during my teenaged scouting experience.  And those who mean no physical harm to the boys would by their presence undermine the very values in which Scouting is grounded.  They openly state that intention once they gain the access they seek.  (Interested readers can learn as much by googling their web sites, as I have done.)  And the other myth is that all the gays really want is a place of acceptance at the cultural and social table.  Those same web sites are most enlightening regarding the open contempt displayed for the institutions of marriage and family as most of us have always received them.

 

            Why would a faith-based leader like myself comment on what I acknowledge to be the Scouts’ own business to set their own standards?  As I said above, they are a quasi faith-based organization.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition the very heart of the parental responsibility is to teach and prepare young people for relationship with the God who sent His Son to live and die for each of them.  This responsibility is shared by those adults who share the parenting of boys and girls.   

 

God loves gays as much as He loves straights – Jesus sacrificed Himself for each and all.  But one thing He would do if permitted is to set them free from what is clearly an addiction to a lifestyle that wounds and kills those caught in it – as the stats on disproportionate gay rates of disease, addiction, mental illness and suicide testify.  If He is not permitted to heal – and we can always refuse His healing if we choose – then He expects that others not be enticed into the damage the lifestyle brings.  Peter writes – in the second chapter of his second epistle – “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity – for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.”  The Boy Scouts exist to partner in preparing young men for Kingdom-of-God living.  I support that effort and oppose its compromise.

 

            Do I imagine that heterosexuals – and other Christians – are somehow less sinful than the gays?  I am not that stupid, or that hypocritical.  But the Scouts – although they have not created the degree of disaster that some suppose – make a grave mistake in their effort to compromise.  It will bite them eventually.  Equating the sins of my community with the sin that claims to be virtue does not make an equivalency.  God asks all of us continue to struggle to draw closer to Him, not further away.  All He requires is that we stay in that game.  It is not too much to ask of Boy Scouts, or of you and me.

 

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net