The Boy Scouts of America on 23 May 2013 voted (by a 60% to
40% margin) to change the organization’s regulations to allow homosexual boys
to participate and be full members. Homosexual adult leaders will still be
banned. Since the Boy Scouts are a
private organization they were not required to make this change but they have
been under increasingly intense public pressure for years to take this
step. A problem is that many of
the sponsors of scout groups are churches. Not all of them are delighted with this development. The only official church responses so
far are from the Mormons, who say the change will not affect their involvement,
and the Catholics, who say that they need time to consider their response.
My thinking on the issue: the Boy Scouts are a private group
and can do as they wish.
Individual parents and individual denominations, congregations,
synagogues, and mosques should decide for themselves if they wish to continue
their involvement. Hopefully, the
Boy Scouts will allow individual local groups to decide whether or not they
will implement the new policy.
That would spare them the decision of whether or not now to withdraw
from the Scouts altogether.
The pressure on the Scouts and on religious groups has been
subtle and not so subtle. An
example can be found in this article from the USA Today newspaper for Friday 24
May 2013 on page 12A (the editorial page). The editorial calls the prior Boy Scout stance a “wrong-headed
ban on gays,” Two paragraphs later, it says this:
“Much of the angst that has riven the Scouts for the past year can be attributed to Scouting's close affiliation with churches, some with strong tenets against homosexuality. Fully 70% of troops are religiously sponsored.”
The logical implication is that the newspaper’s editorial
staff is insulting the churches by calling them “wrong-headed.”
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