Gay Leaders in Boy Scouts

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 21^st 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 21^st 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.