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Dads.org    FamilyLifeCenter.net

July 2013, Volume 19, Number 5

Boy Scouts of America: Stay or Go?

What should fathers of scouting-aged sons do in light of the decision by the national board of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to cave to homosexual activist demands?

Catholic scout leaders, priests, bishops, and fathers are divided and uncertain about what steps, if any, should be taken. Some believe that Catholics should stay in the BSA seeing no conflict or incompatibility with the new direction taken by the scouts. Others think that the signs are clear that the BSA has radically departed from the historic path of scouting and that it’s time to depart.

Before rendering my advice, I feel it’s important to mention again that my family’s roots in the Boy Scouts of America go back over one hundred years. My grandfather, a Congregational minister, was among the first scout masters in America. He founded the first troop in Iowa in 1911. I inherited his Greek New Testament and his original copy of the Boy Scouts of America Handbook. I treasure both.  My boyhood scouting experiences in Pennsylvania were foundational for the man I am today.  Therefore, my recommended response to the recent BSA decision is not made casually.

It is my firm recommendation that fathers concerned about the eternal and temporal welfare of their sons depart the Boy Scouts of America. Those who recommend staying put envision a peaceful co-existence with gay activists in scouting and are simply blind to the imposing threat of homosexual activism in our culture. As fathers we face the sobering reality of individually answering to God for the welfare of our children regardless of what others recommend. Keep your sons away from the sexual politics that have been welcomed into the bosom of the Boy Scouts.

Leaders and teachers in the Catholic Church in America desperately need to awaken to the moral decay that’s taking place in our midst. A July 2013 Barna national survey of America’s change of mind regarding the moral acceptability of homosexual relations revealed an unparalled crisis in the American Catholic Church. Between 2003 and 2013 the percentage of practicing Catholics who consider same-sex sexual relationships to be morally acceptable nearly doubled (from 19% to 37%). Barna mentions that Catholics have “far outpaced Protestants” in embracing the acceptability of homosexual activity. Evangelical Protestants’ views remain basically unchanged during the same decade.

While many bishops, priests, parochial school teachers, and CCD instructors do an exceptional job teaching moral absolutes and Christian sexual morality, it is clear that many have failed miserably in their God-given task.  Instead of self-congratulatory celebrations and conferences over what a great job we are doing, may I suggest instead weeping, mourning, repentance, and petitions for God-given moral courage?

All that is necessary for the 24/7 non-stop barrage of the media’s and Hollywood’s homosexual activist propaganda to capture the moral reasoning of Catholics, especially the young, is for silence, equivocation, or referral to a committee for further study, on the part of Catholics leaders. St Paul said, “If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8)

A trumpet blast is desperately needed within the Catholic Church in America proclaiming that scouts don’t need to get tangled up in a mess of sexual politics. They need hiking, hunting, fishing, skill-building, and a challenging manly environment to help the boys mature into strong Catholic men. That’s what scouting has always been about and that’s what’s needed today more than ever.

Here are five additional reasons why a new scouting alternative is needed:

1. For the hundred plus years of its existence, there have been boys in the BSA who struggled with same-sex attraction. They have never been kicked out of the scouts for this internal struggle. What’s different for the BSA today is that these boys are being encouraged by activists to wave a flag before everyone that they have this struggle. This is precisely the type of situation that you want to remove your sons from. At best, it is a huge distraction from the mission of scouting. At worst, it is an attraction to a pleasure-seeking form of immorality.

2. It is a colossal mistake to encourage a boy to publically adopt a homosexual label. A University of Minnesota Hospital & Clinics study of 35,000 secondary school students, found that at age twelve, 25.9% of the children were “unsure” of their sexual orientation. This figure declined to 5% by age 17.

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a trustworthy group, commented on the Minnesota survey saying that, “Many teens experience a period of sexual identity ambiguity as a normal stage of adolescent development. If children are encouraged to label themselves ‘gay,’ or adults prematurely reinforce this identity before full psychosocial development has taken place there is a serious risk of erroneously labeling children who were only experiencing temporary sexual confusion. Such premature labeling could lead some adolescents into homosexual behaviors.”

By allowing such open labeling in their midst the BSA has set a seductive net to lure some boys into a homosexual identity and lifestyle who would otherwise mature into heterosexual males.

3. Scout masters, along with their sponsoring parishes and congregations, can count on sexual-orientation discrimination lawsuits when a scout master tries to discipline a self-declared homosexual scout. The proposed solution to this disruptive and expensive legal tangling will be the adoption of #4.

4. In order to monitor and ensure inclusion and diversity in the BSA, the acceptance of homosexual scout leaders will be necessary.

The homosexual activists far from being satisfied with the BSA accepting openly declared homosexual scouts are now energized to push ahead for the full inclusion of homosexual leaders in the scouts. Our adversaries in this cultural war know weakness when they see it and they are seeing lots of it in BSA national leadership.

If you would find homosexual scout masters unacceptable, then remove your sons now from the BSA. It’s just a question of time before homosexual scout masters are a sad reality.

5. Some Catholic leaders seem to think everything will be okay so long as openly-identified homosexua scouts promise to remain morally pure. Yes, I realize that there are many with a homosexual inclination that live a chaste life. I also realize that millions don’t.  Shouldn’t fathers be concerned that those openly declaring a homosexual inclination, which the Catechism calls “objectively disordered,” might increase the probability of deeply disordered acts on overnight camping trips?

NARTH reports that a study of Massachusetts teenagers found that youth who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual were more than four times more likely  (18% vs. 4%) to report sexual intercourse of some type before age 13.

The BSA will not decay overnight, but after adequate time, allowing your son to attend overnight camping trips with those identifying themselves as homosexuals is putting your son in the crosshairs of a near occasion of sin.

It’s hard for me to make a recommendation to leave the BSA. It’s so difficult to acknowledge that things have come to this. Yet I believe that if my grandfather along with the entire original group of scout masters of the Boy Scouts of America were alive today each and every one would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me in this urgent recommendation.

Note: Research Pertinent to the Boy Scouts of America Policy Change Debate: A National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality White Paper by Michelle Cretella, M.D. and David C. Pruden, M.S.  http://narth.com/2013/05/research-pertinent-to-the-boy-scouts-of-america-policy-change-debate/

Where To?

For fathers looking for good alternatives to the BSA, I suggest investigating both the Scouts of St. George and OnMyHonor.net. Both are good groups led by solid Christian men.

The Scouts of St. George is a distinctively Catholic continuing group. They don’t want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to scouting which is wise, since scouting has been so successful for over a hundred years. Yet the Scouts of St. George are making a decisive change in the scouting framework by creating a Catholics-only group, rather than having Catholic scouting troops within a larger inter-faith national organization.

OnMyHonor.net is a new organization spearheaded by John Stemberger with Rob Green serving as interim executive director.  A national convention in Nashville, TN is scheduled for September 6-7. At this convention the national continuing scouting organization will be discussed and formally adopted. Scout leaders interested in any type of continuing scout organization should try to attend.

What I would like to see is the Scouts of St. George create a series of distinctively Catholic merit badges and activities within the continuing structure of a large Christian inter-faith national organization like OnMyHonor.Net. There is strength in numbers and any successful continuing scouting organization is going to need enormous amounts of legal, financial, organizational, and moral strength.

John Stemberger is an experienced warrior in the culture wars. I’ve personally fought pro-life battles in Florida alongside John. John, an Evangelical attorney, assisted me with the incorporation  of the Family Life Center International. I’m not a fan of warm and fuzzy ecumenical stuff, but I’m a firm advocate of Evangelicals and Catholics fighting together in the cultural wars.

Rob Green, the new interim director, has twenty years of experience in scout leadership. He most recently served as the executive director/CEO of the Palmetto (Upstate SC) Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He tenured his resignation when the BSA compromised. Rob was one of the coaches of my son’s basketball team and is the father of a sterling Christian family. Most important for the times we are living in, I sense that Rob has the courage necessary to stand up to the relentless pressure any successful and genuine continuing scouting program will endure. Moral courage is in short supply in our day, but I’d trust my back to Rob.

YouTube Videos on the Scouting Questions

Here are four videos we produced on scouting questions.

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Personal

For my personal comments this month, I’d like to reaffirm my fidelity to the Scout Oath as originally intended:

    On my honor I will do my best

    To do my duty to God and my country

    and to obey the Scout Law;

    To help other people at all times;

    To keep myself physically strong,

    mentally awake, and morally straight.

Yours in His Majesty’s Service,

Steve Wood