As of July 13, “the executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously approved a resolution that would end the organization’s blanket ban on gay adult leaders,” allowing individual Scout troops to set their own policy.
This is nothing less than moral suicide for the Boy Scouts of America.
Although I have no personal history with the Scouts, as someone on the front lines of today’s culture wars, I was asked to participate in a local TV debate when the Scouts were voting early last year on accepting openly homosexual boys.
I opposed that change for several reasons, including: 1) Why bring sexuality into the Scouts? If a boy in question will not act in any inappropriate ways towards his fellow Scouts or make any of the other kids feel uncomfortable, why must his sexuality be announced? Best to leave that unspoken. 2) There is no way activists will stop with openly gay Scouts; they will insist on openly gay leaders.
As for my second point, rather than rebutting it, the gay journalist I was debating confirmed it. He, too, wanted to see openly homosexual Scout leaders. Anything less than that would be discriminatory in his eyes.
Why, then, do I so strongly oppose openly homosexual Scout leaders? Do I believe that all (or even most) of them will be sexual predators? Do I not recognize that some of them will be devoted, fun and caring leaders?
Actually, my assumption is that many of them would be good Scout leaders, aside from the wrong example they would set by being openly gay, and that the clear majority would not be sexual predators.
But the reality is that homosexual men are attracted to males, often including teens and, in some cases, pre-teens, because of which you don’t have gay men leading Boy Scout troops any more than you have heterosexual men leading Girl Scout troops.
Could you really imagine that?
Would anyone dare argue that there would be no increase in sexual assaults if heterosexual men could lead Girl Scout troops? That the girls would not find themselves more frequently in uncomfortable, not to mention compromising, situations?
It was pointed out to me by a colleague that the same Los Angeles Times webpage featuring a story on the Boy Scouts moving to change their policy on Scout leaders had a “related link” to this story: “Settlement in sex abuse case keeps Scouts’ ‘perversion files’ closed.”
As reported, “A settlement reached Thursday by the Boy Scouts of America with the family of a Santa Barbara County man molested by a Scout leader in 2007 effectively ends the possibility, for now, that recent files maintained by the organization documenting suspected misconduct will be made public.”
Yes, the barely hidden, dirty secret of the Boy Scouts of America is that for decades now, several thousand cases of man-on-boy sexual abuse have been swept under the rug, with private payoffs taking the place of open court cases – and to be perfectly clear, the men involved in these cases were normally Scout leaders.
If such was the case with the ban on openly homosexual leaders in place, what happens when that ban is removed? And how do the Boy Scouts figure out who the bad apples are first? Or are the boys the guinea pigs in this poorly conceived experiment?
The issue is not whether a gay man is offended by being refused a leadership role; the issue is what’s in the best interest of the boys, and having openly homosexual leaders is certainly not in their best interests.
To further support my contention (which is nothing more than common sense), as I write this article, I’m looking at another L.A. Times page titled, “Inside the Boy Scouts ‘Perversion Files.’” (Yes, this is the actual title given by the Times.)
The article, posted Jan. 13, 2015, begins with these shocking words: “Los Angeles Times reporters spent a year delving into confidential files on suspected sexual abusers – files that had been locked away for decades by the Boy Scouts of America. What follows is a series of groundbreaking stories on the files, along with the most comprehensive database of the cases ever published, including 1,900 files and 3,100 case summaries spanning 1947 through 2005.”
There is even an explorable map and database. (Take a moment to click on it; just the graphic itself is sickening.)
The very same webpage referencing the “Perversion Files” is replete with other headlines, including: “Boy Scouts failed to report abuser” (Oct. 29, 2011); “Boy Scout files reveal repeat child abuse by sexual predators” (Aug. 5, 2012); “Top executives did not report suspected Scout abuse cases, files show” (Dec. 30, 2012); “Men tell of sexual abuse by scoutmaster decades ago” (Oct. 20, 2012); “Boy Scouts’ opposition to background checks let pedophiles in” (Dec. 2, 2012); and “Release of Scouts’ files reveals decades of abuse” (Oct. 19, 2012).
So I ask again: Why in the world would you want to swing the door wide open to men whom you know are attracted to males?
We’re not talking about a 2-year-old child whom a pedophile would prey on. We’re talking about Scouts of all ages, including teenage boys, whom homosexual Scout leaders could easily find attractive, just as heterosexual males could easily find teenage Girl Scouts to be attractive (and, in both cases, tragically, there are heterosexuals and homosexuals who are attracted to pre-teens as well).
Boy Scouts President Robert Gates is leading his organization down the path of self-destruction, which is why new alternatives like the rapidly growing Trail Life USA should be explored. (For girls, check out American Heritage Girls.)
If you were looking for a good reason to make the switch, you have that reason now.
And it’s not a matter of hating gays. It’s a matter of loving children.
