Yesterday the Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America
change the standards of leadership for adult volunteers: no longer will sexual orientation be a factor
in deciding if an adult may volunteer with the organization.
Scouts is more than just a feel-good, youth-serving organization. It has an underlying purpose of making boys
into men of character. Scouts has a
clearly articulated definition of good character in the Scout Law, and one of
the traits a Scout pledges to cultivate in the Scout oath is being “morally
straight.”
Moral actions are those we can choose. We can choose whether
or not to tell the truth. We can choose
whether or not to steal (wouldn’t it be a benefit to the rest of society if
more people on Wall Street pledged to be trustworthy!). We have the ability to
choose our sexual practices. We are not,
like animals, reduced to acting upon carnal desires. Therefore, engaging in homosexual acts or
living a homosexual lifestyle is a choice.
Skin color is not a choice. Place
of birth is not a choice. Sexual acts
result from choice. To say that they
belong in a special class because people are born with an inclination to them
would deny the elemental characteristic that makes us different from all other
animals, which is acting based on reason, knowledge, and values. Throughout history, this distinctly human
ability has been lauded as the most respected trait in humans. Look at the way we reverence athletes who
endure hours of grueling training each day in order to achieve a goal of
winning. Even in the 21st
century we admire people who exert mind over matter.
We can control our actions, even the most primal urges, but we
will also fail to always act in accordance with personal principles, social
mores, or legal guidelines. That does
not mean as a society, though, that we condone lapses. Communities that see a rise in drunken
driving and deaths resulting from it do not change the law to allow drunk
driving. Those communities still uphold
the principle that an individual’s right to drive drunk does not supersede
another individual’s right to live safely. The problem with homosexuality in 21st
century United States is that the homosexual minority has effectively waged a
media war to persuade Americans that there is no principle that homosexual acts
or lifestyles are wrong. The message
which the culture has adopted and now promotes—and there is no mistaking that
this was an intentional campaign—is that sexual behavior is morally
neutral. In fact, anyone who attaches
moral value to sex acts, labeling some as “right” or some as “wrong” is now vilified
as a bigot and an abrogator of basic civil rights.
The arguments about whether or not homosexual behavior is
morally right or wrong are much more eloquently developed in other places than
I can present here. However, it is clear
that throughout the history of the Christian tradition, homosexual behavior has
consistently been condemned as morally wrong.
Christians who continue in this tradition are being consistent with their
Scripture and their tradition. They are
fully within their rights, under the Second Amendment which prevents the state
from establishing religion, to continue to uphold the principle that homosexual
acts are morally wrong. For the courts to order citizens to fully accept
homosexual behavior or unions as morally equivalent with heterosexual marriages
would be tantamount to the courts trying to order religious belief. Just as the courts would violate the Constitution
if they tried to order acceptance of homosexual behavior or unions, so would
legislatures violate the Constitution if they tried to legislate acceptance of
homosexual behavior or unions.
What has been buried in the public campaign championing all
things homosexual as heroic is the numbers of people involved. In the 2010
Census, no state reported more than 4.01 of households being made up of
same-sex couples. There were 594,000
same-sex households reported on the 2010 Census. Of those, 115,000 reported having children in
the household, which is 20% of those households. That means that 20% of 4.01% of U.S.
households, in the 2010 Census, had responsibility for rearing children in a homosexual lifestyle. Scouting has come under intense legal
pressure for decades to allow gay youth and leaders parity with heterosexual
youth and leaders. The gay community, a
tiny fraction of the population, has framed its position to be the dominant
discussion in the youth-serving organization.
In my experience volunteering with Scouts, gay youth and
leaders is a distraction from the much larger, more serious issue of the number
of boys and young men who are not served by Scouts because of the
disintegration of their families. The bigger
problem that more boys face is the number of them being raised by single
Moms. They need male role models to show
them character in action; they need their dads.
But because families are disintegrating, parents-- especially Dads-- are
not getting involved in Scouts with their sons.
If the decision by BSA to allow gay leaders in, which Census numbers
show to make up no more than 4% of U.S. households, causes faith-based families
to leave, this will create even more of a shortage of Dads to volunteer in
Scouts and serve as leaders.
