Albert Mohler: A Requiem for the Boy Scouts

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Except:
Back in 2013, those who demanded the full inclusion of gay scouts and leaders registered their dissatisfaction with the new policy. The editorial board of The New York Times called the new policy “an unprincipled position” — and they were right. As the editors pushed onward, they warned that the move “should hardly satisfy” the demand for full inclusion. Once again, they were clearly right. Both sides could see the the compromise of 2013 was unprincipled and unsustainable.

Now, Secretary Gates proposes that the compromise be abandoned, accepting the inclusion of openly-gay leaders. His argument is entirely based on the self-preservation of the B.S.A. as a national organization. He made no moral argument at all. He did not celebrate the new policy he proposed on moral grounds, not did he lament the loss of the older policy on moral grounds. There were no moral elements in his argument.

Tellingly, Gates referred to internal pressures from scouting organizations in several states that were openly defying the national ban on gay adult leaders, and he also made reference to the threat of lawsuits that, in his words, would threaten to “forbid any kind of membership standard, including our foundational belief in duty to God and our focus on serving the specific needs of boys.”
What Gates did not mention was the fact that the inclusion of openly gay leaders and scouts, along with the challenge that already comes from the feminism and and transgender advocates, makes the very existence of the Boy Scouts ever more vulnerable.

The inescapable fact is that America is becoming a society in which the very idea of the Boy Scouts is increasingly implausible. The current leadership of the B.S.A. would supposedly save the Boy Scouts as an organization, but leave scouting in yet another unsustainable compromise. the rest image

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