After vote on gay youth, Scouts face more turmoil from conservative Christian Groups
(+Pastor+Dale+Morgan+)
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
The Boy Scouts of America will get no reprieve from controversy after a contentious vote to accept openly gay boys as Scouts.
Dismayed conservatives are already looking at alternative youth groups as they predict a mass exodus from the BSA. Gay-rights supporters vowed Friday to maintain pressure on the Scouts to end the still-in-place ban on gay adults serving as leaders.
"They're not on our good list yet," said Paul Guequierre of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group. He said the HRC, in its annual rankings of corporate policies on workplace fairness, would deduct points from companies that donate to the Boy Scouts until the ban on gay adults is lifted.
In California, gay-rights leaders said they would continue urging passage of a bill pending in the Legislature that would make the BSA ineligible for nonprofit tax breaks because of the remaining ban.
The Boy Scouts' chief executive, Wayne Brock, pleaded for the Scouting community to reunite after the divisive debate that led to Thursday's vote by the BSA's National Council. The proposal to lift the ban on openly gay youth - while keeping the ban on gay adults - was supported by about 60 percent of the council's 1,400 voting members.
However, Brock's plea failed to sway some conservative religious leaders whose denominations sponsor many Scout units and who consider same-sex relationships immoral.
"Frankly, I can't imagine a Southern Baptist pastor who would continue to allow his church to sponsor a Boy Scout troop under these new rules," Richard Land, a senior Southern Baptist Conference official, told the SBC's news agency, Baptist Press.
Land advised Southern Baptist churches to withdraw their support of Scout troops and consider affiliating instead with the Royal Ambassadors, an existing SBC youth program for boys that combines religious ministry with Scouting-style activities.
Baptist churches sponsor Scout units serving more than 100,000 of the BSA's 2.6 million youth members.
The Assemblies of God, which oversees units serving more than 2,000 Scouts, said it could no longer support such units and suggested its own Royal Rangers youth group as a "positive alternative."
John Stemberger, a conservative activist and former Scout from Florida who led a group opposing the policy change, said he and his allies would convene a meeting next month in Louisville, Ky., to discuss creation of a "new character development organization for boys."
"We grieve today, not because we are faced with leaving Scouting, but because the Boy Scouts of America has left us," Stemberger said. "Its leadership has turned its back on 103 years of abiding by a mission to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices."
There is a template for forming a conservative alternative to a major national youth organization. American Heritage Girls was formed in 1995 as a Christian-oriented option to the Girl Scouts of the USA, and it now claims more than 20,000 members.
From the left, gay-rights supporters - including President Barack Obama - generally welcomed the move to accept openly gay Scouts, but urged the BSA to take the further step of welcoming gay adults as leaders.
White House spokesman Shin Inouye said Obama "continues to believe that leadership positions in the Scouts should be open to all, regardless of sexual orientation."
Rich Ferraro of GLAAD, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said his group would continue a campaign to discourage corporate giving to the Boy Scouts until the ban on gay adults is lifted.
He also predicted that the presence of openly gay boys in Scout ranks would undermine the viability of the adult ban as those youth turn 18 and seek leadership posts.
"The BSA now will have to look gay teens in the eye, boys who've been involved in Scouting for years, and tell them they're not going to be able to grow into adult leaders," Ferraro said. "Those conversations will be difficult and shouldn't be had."
Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, a 21-year-old activist raised by lesbian mothers in Iowa, has been a leader of the campaign to end the BSA's no-gays policy. He said his group, Scouts for Equality, would continue to press for lifting the ban on gay adults, while also monitoring how the BSA implements its new policy for gay youth.
"We'll act as a watchdog," he said. "If any gay youth feel they're experiencing harassment or discrimination, we want to be there for them."
For some parents of Scouts, the entire membership debate has been emotionally draining, and the decision to accept openly gay youth left them disenchanted or confused.
Wes Comer, whose family attends an Apostolic Pentecostal church near Knoxville, Tenn., that considers homosexuality sinful, had been wrestling with whether to pull his eldest son out of the Scouts if the no-gays policy was abandoned.
"To be honest, I'm torn at this point," Comer said Friday in an email. "I'm not sure exactly what our decision will be."
"If I place this situation in the context of my religious beliefs, I'm forced to ask myself, `Would I turn a homosexual child away from Sunday school? From a church function? Would I forbid my children to be friends with a gay child?' I can't imagine a situation where I would answer `yes' to any of those questions. So how can I in this one?" he wrote.
Yet he said was "extremely disappointed" in the entire debate, and suggested that the BSA "has dealt itself a mortal blow."
Another Scouting father, Don Mack, of Waconia, Minn., said he and his 10-year-old son will be leaving Cub Scouts after the current year is done and his son gets his Arrow of Light Award.
Mack, a Scout himself as a boy and a self-described conservative Christian, has been a Cub Scout leader for about five years. Now, because of the vote to admit gay youth, he and his son both want out. And they'll be looking for an alternative program that offers similar character-building benefits as the Scouts.
"We home-school, and my wife and I teach our son you need to stand up for what's right, even if that means sacrifice or getting hurt in the process," Mack said. "It was not an easy choice for us to make because our family believed in the mission Scouting has to offer. I kind of feel like my best friend died."
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Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
MORE:
Boy Scouts Of America Vote To Go Gay
May 24th
Scouting for boys
Memo to BSA: All forms of homosexuality is a sin against God…looks like it’s time to re-write the century-old oath.
Boy Scout Oath
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.
“And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.” Romans 1:27
From AP: GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks Thursday to gay Scouts but not gay Scout leaders – a fiercely contested compromise that some warned could fracture the organization and lead to mass defections of members and donors.
Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA’s National Council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.
“This has been a challenging chapter in our history,” the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. “While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they’re in Scouting.”
However, the outcome will not end the bitter debate over the Scouts’ membership policy.
Liberal Scout leaders – while supporting the proposal to accept gay youth – have made clear they want the ban on gay adults lifted as well.
In contrast, conservatives with the Scouts – including some churches that sponsor Scout units – wanted to continue excluding gay youths, in some cases threatening to defect if the ban were lifted.
“We are deeply saddened,” said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee after learning of the result. “Homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout oath and Scout law.”
The Assemblies of God, another conservative denomination, said the policy change “will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program.” It also warned that the change would make the BSA vulnerable to lawsuits seeking to end the ban on gay adults.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also expressed dismay.
“While I will always cherish my time as a Scout and the life lessons I learned, I am greatly disappointed with this decision,” he said.
The result was welcomed by many liberal members of the Scouting community and by gay-rights activists, though most of the praise was coupled with calls for ending the ban on gay adults.
“I’m so proud of how far we’ve come, but until there’s a place for everyone in Scouting, my work will continue,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, whose ouster as a Cub Scout den leader in Ohio because she is lesbian launched a national protest movement.
Pascal Tessier, a 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland, was elated by the outcome.
Tessier, who is openly gay, is on track to earn his Eagle Scout award and was concerned that his goal would be thwarted if the proposed change had been rejected.
“I was thinking that today could be my last day as a Boy Scout,” Tessier said. “Obviously, for gay Scouts like me, this vote is life-changing.”
The vote followed what the BSA described as “the most comprehensive listening exercise in Scouting’s history” to gauge opinions.
Back in January, the BSA executive committee had suggested a plan to give sponsors of local Scout units the option of admitting gays as both youth members and adult leaders or continuing to exclude them. However, the plan won little praise, and the BSA changed course after assessing responses to surveys sent out starting in February to members of the Scouting community.
Of the more than 200,000 leaders, parents and youth members who responded, 61 percent supported the current policy of excluding gays, while 34 percent opposed it. Most parents of young Scouts, as well as youth members themselves, opposed the ban.
The proposal approved Thursday was seen as a compromise, and the Scouts stressed that they would not condone sexual conduct by any Scout – gay or straight.
“The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive and unresolved societal issue,” the BSA said in a statement.
Since the executive committee just completed a lengthy review process, there were “no plans for further review on this matter,” the group added, indicating it would not be revisiting the ban on gay adults anytime soon.
Among those voting for the proposal to accept openly gay youth was Thomas Roberts, of Dawsonville, Ga., who serves on the board of a Scout council in northeast Georgia.
“It was a very hard decision for this organization,” he said. “I think ultimately it will be viewed as the right thing.”
The BSA’s overall “traditional youth membership” – Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Venturers – is now about 2.6 million, compared with more than 4 million in peak years of the past. It also has about 1 million adult leaders and volunteers.
Of the more than 100,000 Scouting units in the U.S., 70 percent are chartered by religious institutions.
Those include liberal churches opposed to any ban on gays, but some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative denominations that have previously supported the broad ban – notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.
While the Southern Baptists were clearly upset by the vote to accept openly gay youth, the Mormon church reacted positively.
“We trust that BSA will implement and administer the approved policy in an appropriate and effective manner,” an official LDS statement said.
The National Catholic Committee on Scouting responded cautiously, saying it would assess the possible impact of the change on Catholic-sponsored Scout units. The BSA, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2010, has long excluded both gays and atheists.
Protests over the no-gays policy gained momentum in 2000, when
the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the BSA’s right to exclude gays.
Scout units lost sponsorships by public schools and other entities
that adhered to nondiscrimination policies, and several local
Scout councils made public their displeasure with the policy. source – AP