Alan Keyes
A betrayal of the boys
By Alan Keyes
Is the latest BSA proposal regarding homosexuality and Scouting the result of a serious deficiency in thoughtfulness and foresight? Or is it a malicious ploy? To answer this question, we need to do the kind of strategic thinking that was, once upon a time, second nature to people who subscribed to the American creed.
The current BSA proposal would allow youngsters who practice homosexuality into the organization, but prohibit homosexuals from being adult Scout leaders. For anyone remotely familiar with the Scouting ethos, this should raise an immediate question: how to handle the participation of a homosexual Scout's household? Parents often take the first steps toward adult leadership in Scouting as the natural result of their support for their child's participation in the movement. Will self-professed lesbian or homosexual householders be barred from showing their support in the usual way? Will they be prohibited from hosting events, organizing logistical support for Scouting activities and so forth? When their social and organizational skills mark them as effective adult leaders in these activities, will others be forbidden to call on them for help? In grassroots community activities, people often rise to leadership because they are among the "go-to" people others turn to when they are trying to get things done efficiently. Will officially recognized adult Scout leaders be forbidden to turn to lesbian and/or homosexual householders in this very natural way?
It doesn't take much imagination to realize that this will lead to personally hurtful controversies. Adult Scout leaders who ignore the ban on homosexuals in the leadership ranks will face adverse reaction from parents seeking conscientiously to raise up their children according to tenets of their faith. Adult leaders who try to implement the ban will find themselves accused of personal prejudice and discrimination that shames young Scouts by demeaning the households from which they come. This is a problem already faced by educational institutions such as Catholic schools. Once the inevitable controversies arise, the BSA will come under pressure to drop the ban on adult leaders.
We are in the midst of an historically unprecedented campaign to deny and disparage the rights of the God-endowed natural family. Do the top leaders of the BSA naïvely believe that the emotionally charged, personally confrontational situations their proposal will inevitably foment will not be exploited as part of this campaign? Obviously, the policy being proposed will produce situations the powerful elitist forces pushing for the normalization of homosexuality will portray in the worst possible light.
Ignoring the logic of God-acknowledging moral conscience, they will portray these situations as proof of willfully hurtful personal prejudice and unfair discrimination by the BSA. They will seek to prejudice public opinion in a way that lends credence to civil lawsuits and even criminal prosecution (on civil rights grounds) against individual BSA leaders and the BSA itself. In addition to the erosion of trust and support from people who have relied on the BSA's respect for the moral tenets of their faith, the BSA will have to devote financial and personnel resources to defending against these charges. Wrenched between these whirlpools of public reaction, the organization could easily go under.
I frankly think that the forces in the BSA's top leadership who are promoting the latest proposal fully expect these confrontational situations to develop. They will use them to intimidate and discourage the faithful elements of the BSA's grassroots base, until they either withdraw from the movement or surrender to full approval of homosexuality in Scouting, including openly homosexual adult Scout leaders.
The latest proposal from the BSA's top leaders is a feigned retreat, implemented because the frontal assault on the BSA's standard for family life met with such strong opposition from the faithful people who make up a solid majority of the BSA's base. Now, as if on cue, the latest proposal has produced the capitulation of the Mormon Church (foreshadowed during last year's Chick-fil-A media frenzy by the position of the Mormon leadership's political standard bearer, Mitt Romney). Once their strategy is fully implemented, those in the BSA's top leadership who are acting as agents of the campaign against the natural family will preside over an organization that, in respect of its reputation as a trustworthy source of moral training for young men, will be a hollow façade.
The residual moral appeal of that façade will be used to attract and indoctrinate youngsters in an essentially self-serving, hedonistic, and unmanly understanding of human family life, one that destroys the independent moral basis of the family as the primordial, God-ordained institution of human self-government. This will effectively deny the family's institutional claim to possess God-endowed authority and rights which all other institutions of human government are obliged, by the Creator, to respect.
Thus understood in terms of its likely consequences, the latest proposal for ending the BSA's ban on homosexual participation in Scouting is a strategic ploy. What is most disturbing is that it uses the young participants in the Scouting movement as cannon fodder in the battle against the natural family. Some youngsters will be positioned to draw other youngsters into situations where, because they react against sexual advances according to the moral precepts of the faith of their fathers, they will be viciously accused of unrighteous bigotry. Or else their vulnerable adolescent emotions will impel them to betray the tenets of conscience derived from their faith, and slip into a whirlpool of compulsive sensual indulgence, moral guilt, and spiritual confusion.
In the realm of moral contention, this deployment of, and against, children reminds me of the way the strategists of terror exploit kids in their perpetration of deadly acts of physical violence. I earnestly pray to God to open the eyes of the BSA's grassroots leaders and participants. I pray that He will grant them the wisdom to see past false pretenses of compassion and tolerance, in order to recognize a strategy that intentionally and recklessly endangers the moral lives of the youngsters God has entrusted to their care. These young souls deserve better than to be casualties in the battle to force the American people to surrender the unalienable natural rights endowed by their Creator's provision for the wholesome life of the human family.
May 6, 2013
Is the latest BSA proposal regarding homosexuality and Scouting the result of a serious deficiency in thoughtfulness and foresight? Or is it a malicious ploy? To answer this question, we need to do the kind of strategic thinking that was, once upon a time, second nature to people who subscribed to the American creed.
The current BSA proposal would allow youngsters who practice homosexuality into the organization, but prohibit homosexuals from being adult Scout leaders. For anyone remotely familiar with the Scouting ethos, this should raise an immediate question: how to handle the participation of a homosexual Scout's household? Parents often take the first steps toward adult leadership in Scouting as the natural result of their support for their child's participation in the movement. Will self-professed lesbian or homosexual householders be barred from showing their support in the usual way? Will they be prohibited from hosting events, organizing logistical support for Scouting activities and so forth? When their social and organizational skills mark them as effective adult leaders in these activities, will others be forbidden to call on them for help? In grassroots community activities, people often rise to leadership because they are among the "go-to" people others turn to when they are trying to get things done efficiently. Will officially recognized adult Scout leaders be forbidden to turn to lesbian and/or homosexual householders in this very natural way?
It doesn't take much imagination to realize that this will lead to personally hurtful controversies. Adult Scout leaders who ignore the ban on homosexuals in the leadership ranks will face adverse reaction from parents seeking conscientiously to raise up their children according to tenets of their faith. Adult leaders who try to implement the ban will find themselves accused of personal prejudice and discrimination that shames young Scouts by demeaning the households from which they come. This is a problem already faced by educational institutions such as Catholic schools. Once the inevitable controversies arise, the BSA will come under pressure to drop the ban on adult leaders.
We are in the midst of an historically unprecedented campaign to deny and disparage the rights of the God-endowed natural family. Do the top leaders of the BSA naïvely believe that the emotionally charged, personally confrontational situations their proposal will inevitably foment will not be exploited as part of this campaign? Obviously, the policy being proposed will produce situations the powerful elitist forces pushing for the normalization of homosexuality will portray in the worst possible light.
Ignoring the logic of God-acknowledging moral conscience, they will portray these situations as proof of willfully hurtful personal prejudice and unfair discrimination by the BSA. They will seek to prejudice public opinion in a way that lends credence to civil lawsuits and even criminal prosecution (on civil rights grounds) against individual BSA leaders and the BSA itself. In addition to the erosion of trust and support from people who have relied on the BSA's respect for the moral tenets of their faith, the BSA will have to devote financial and personnel resources to defending against these charges. Wrenched between these whirlpools of public reaction, the organization could easily go under.
I frankly think that the forces in the BSA's top leadership who are promoting the latest proposal fully expect these confrontational situations to develop. They will use them to intimidate and discourage the faithful elements of the BSA's grassroots base, until they either withdraw from the movement or surrender to full approval of homosexuality in Scouting, including openly homosexual adult Scout leaders.
The latest proposal from the BSA's top leaders is a feigned retreat, implemented because the frontal assault on the BSA's standard for family life met with such strong opposition from the faithful people who make up a solid majority of the BSA's base. Now, as if on cue, the latest proposal has produced the capitulation of the Mormon Church (foreshadowed during last year's Chick-fil-A media frenzy by the position of the Mormon leadership's political standard bearer, Mitt Romney). Once their strategy is fully implemented, those in the BSA's top leadership who are acting as agents of the campaign against the natural family will preside over an organization that, in respect of its reputation as a trustworthy source of moral training for young men, will be a hollow façade.
The residual moral appeal of that façade will be used to attract and indoctrinate youngsters in an essentially self-serving, hedonistic, and unmanly understanding of human family life, one that destroys the independent moral basis of the family as the primordial, God-ordained institution of human self-government. This will effectively deny the family's institutional claim to possess God-endowed authority and rights which all other institutions of human government are obliged, by the Creator, to respect.
Thus understood in terms of its likely consequences, the latest proposal for ending the BSA's ban on homosexual participation in Scouting is a strategic ploy. What is most disturbing is that it uses the young participants in the Scouting movement as cannon fodder in the battle against the natural family. Some youngsters will be positioned to draw other youngsters into situations where, because they react against sexual advances according to the moral precepts of the faith of their fathers, they will be viciously accused of unrighteous bigotry. Or else their vulnerable adolescent emotions will impel them to betray the tenets of conscience derived from their faith, and slip into a whirlpool of compulsive sensual indulgence, moral guilt, and spiritual confusion.
In the realm of moral contention, this deployment of, and against, children reminds me of the way the strategists of terror exploit kids in their perpetration of deadly acts of physical violence. I earnestly pray to God to open the eyes of the BSA's grassroots leaders and participants. I pray that He will grant them the wisdom to see past false pretenses of compassion and tolerance, in order to recognize a strategy that intentionally and recklessly endangers the moral lives of the youngsters God has entrusted to their care. These young souls deserve better than to be casualties in the battle to force the American people to surrender the unalienable natural rights endowed by their Creator's provision for the wholesome life of the human family.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
