“[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.” –George Washington (1790)
“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.” (Oath, Boy Scouts of America)
Six months ago, in a letter to an Eagle Scout, my son, I responded to his dismay over a proposal by the Boy Scouts of America National Board to remove the membership restriction regarding sexual orientation. As a long-time BSA Council member, Troop leader and father of another young man about to attain his Eagle rank, I shared my older son’s dismay — to put it mildly.
Two weeks ago, the Left’s relentless campaign of cultural degradation and devolution, specifically their crusade to undermine the “third pillar of Liberty,” faith and family, succeeded in a decade-long strategy to do to the uniformed ranks of the BSA what Barack Hussein Obama has done to the uniformed ranks of the U.S. military (and the rest of the nation).
As you might recall, one of Obama’s earliest campaign promises was to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” proscription against open homosexuality in the military ranks. On December 22, 2010, Obama signed that repeal after it had been passed by his outgoing NeoCom House majority. This occurred just weeks before Tea Party Republicans, who decimated the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, took over the House.
Earlier this year, consistent with his assault on the moral fiber of our military, Obama quickly gave this verbatim endorsement of homosexuals scouts and leaders in the BSA: “I think that, uh, you know, my attitude is, is that gays and lesbians should have, uh, access, and, and, opportunity, uh, the same way everybody else does, uh, in every institution and walk of life, and, um, you know, the, the Scouts are a great institution, uh, that, are, uh, promoting, uh, young people and exposing them to, uh, you know, opportunities, and, and…” ad nauseam.
As dictated by the laws of gravity, the political effluent from Obama’s pathological narcissism, and the most faith-intolerant administration in the history of our Republic, flows downhill. On May 23, it swamped the BSA with its fetid waste.
At the 2013 annual meeting, the BSA’s National Board, under the “leadership” of wealthy corporate-types completely out of touch with grassroots Scouting values, promoted and implemented a national policy to invite open homosexuals into Scout troops. In doing so, they intentionally opened the door for a much broader “gay agenda.” Many of those elitist BSA board members have already implemented that agenda within their own corporations, so they fully understand and eagerly anticipate the consequences of this BSA policy change.
For two decades, the BSA has been stacking its national board with elitist execs, because they hobnob around in wealthy circles and can collect money for national BSA projects. While most BSA regional Councils like the one I serve are self-supporting, and in fact send a small percentage of locally raised funds to support the BSA corporate office, the national BSA board has obligated itself to major real estate developments that are seriously underfunded — thus, the pursuit of affluent board members as the solution.
But the BSA is, first and foremost, a faith-based organization, and the idolatry of wealth inevitably repels faith as oil does water. Consequently, stacking the national board with corporate elitists has resulted in the same decay in the BSA that it has in other once-great institutions across the nation. Indeed, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” And that evil is greatly amplified when such men are in positions of power, because, in the words of Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
In a national survey conducted earlier this year, tens of thousands of BSA leaders registered their objection to a BSA policy change on homosexuals, by a 61 percent majority. While I would rather the majority have been larger, in political terms, that’s known as a landslide. Now, my moral compass is not determined by popular opinion, but this national polling did reflect the grassroots moral compass of the BSA. It’s interesting to note that the more experienced the Scout leaders were (e.g., Boy Scout leaders compared to Cub Scout leaders), the greater was the opposition to the BSA board’s proposed change.
But at the national meeting in May, a much smaller group of 1,200 delegates voted to approve the policy change. That change would have been resoundingly defeated but for one person: Wayne Perry, the National Board President. Perry, a Mormon, convinced many of his fellow LDS Church members — one of the larger voting blocks of Scout Troop chartering organizations — to support the policy change, suggesting that it would be better to bring young homosexuals into the tent to surround them with sound moral and ethical teaching than to exclude them.
That sounds marginally logical on its face, but two decades ago, I fought a losing battle against a detached elite at the helm of the Episcopal Church USA, which promoted the acceptance of homosexuals under a similar doctrine, “love the sinner.” However, no sooner had the first homosexual bishop, Vicky Imogene Robinson, been seated than the old doctrine was converted to “love the sin,” which has undermined the moral foundation of the Church. The result has been the World Anglican Communion’s condemnation as apostate what’s left of ECUSA. The USA church is wealthy, however, and it can sustain itself materially if not spiritually.
For the record, the same foundational principals provoke my objection to the “gay agenda” infiltration of the BSA as that agenda in the Episcopal Church. I do not stand in judgment of what consenting adults want to do with each other behind closed doors, but I do object to the institutionalization of sexual behavior, which violates the most basic tenets of nature, and nature’s God. The tragic irony is that many of the loudest voices promoting the “normalization” of sexual deviation, including homosexual adults in “leadership roles” with young boys, are the voices of those who were subjected to sexual predation when they were young.
For the BSA, the misguided Mormon vote, combined with large representative voting blocs from the left coast and New England states, provided majority support for the homosexual policy change and the overturning of the “morally straight” clause of the Scout Oath. Many of those regional Scout Councils are, like the Episcopal Church USA, wealthy enough to be self-sustaining, but when this policy takes effect on January 1, 2014, the net effect will likely be similar to Canada Scouting. In that country, membership dropped more than 50 percent in the decade after a similar policy was adopted.
This week, the Southern Baptist Convention, a major BSA faith-based chartering group, announced that it plans to cut ties to the BSA. In addition, one of the nation’s largest churches, Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, announced that it will not renew its Troop charter. Additionally, the first Scout Council Executive, Rob Green, submitted his letter of resignation, with others to follow.
And if you have any doubt that the “gay agenda” has far greater aspirations for infiltrating the Boy Scouts, look no further than the California State Senate, which this week passed a bill to revoke the tax-exempt status of the state’s BSA councils, accusing them of discrimination against homosexual adults — “gay” Scout leaders.
Obama once again proclaimed the month of June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month,” as he has done in each of the last four years of his abominable administration.
Obama declared, “For more than two centuries, our Nation has struggled to transform the ideals of liberty and equality from founding promise into lasting reality. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans and their allies have been hard at work on the next great chapter of that history — from the patrons of The Stonewall Inn who sparked a movement to service members who can finally be honest about who they love to brave young people who come out and speak out every day. … We have a long way to go, but if we continue on this path together, I am confident that one day soon, from coast to coast, all of our young people will look to the future with the same sense of promise and possibility. I am confident because I have seen the talent, passion, and commitment of LGBT advocates and their allies, and I know that when voices are joined in common purpose, they cannot be stopped.”
Apparently, according to Obama’s American history text, our Founders’ fight for Liberty, and that of generations since, was all about “gay rights.”
Obama’s civilian controllers at the Department of Defense also dutifully recognized June as LGBT Pride Month, and they released a statement noting “the LGBT community has written a proud chapter in this fundamentally American story by reminding us that integrity and respect remain corner stones of our military and civilian culture.”
“Gay Pride” is an oxymoron.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is debating whether to overturn provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act and whether to overturn California’s Proposition 8, the voter-approved measure outlawing so-called “gay marriage.”
Perhaps a majority of the justices will recall these words from the Father of our Country, George Washington: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
Mark Alexander · June 6, 2013
Adam Kokesh
