The New Sexualized BSA: Where Will They Go from Here?

I'll be honest, I think the BSA's policy change is a train wreck. No doubt they will survive in the short term, but their image as a group with principles is already badly damaged. And churches are already exiting. The new policy which begins January 2014, is touted as no big deal by some. It simply says that those who openly express same-sex attraction, but are not acting on it, will be welcomed in troops. That's like saying BSA welcomes scouts who openly admit attractions to shoplifting or vandalism but abstain from the behavior. Why announce it at all? Because of original sin, we are all "oriented" toward sinful inclinations. The challenge is to choose holiness. What is the point of admitting our sinful inclinations in public? Oh, there's a point all right. The new policy, no matter how you frame it, advances the gay lifestyle by legitimizing the inclination. Sinful inclinations are for the confessional, not the pack meeting. But that's the point. It isn't about just allowing gay scouts to join. It's about sexualizing the troop, the initial stage in transforming scouting into one more institution that feeds the lie that homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable and, therefore, acting on the inclination is morally acceptable.

Boy Scouts Need to Live in the Real World

They didn't just admit young boys who say they are gay. They acknowledge that same sex behavior is legitimate sexual expression. In 2000 when BSA was fighting the court battle against forced admittance of homosexuals as a civil right, they won a victory in the Supreme Court. Author Robert Reilly summed up that decision:

In writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that the “presence [of the avowed homosexual] in the Boy Scouts would, at the very least, force the organization to send a message, both to the youth members and the world, that the Boy Scouts accepts homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior.” Forcing the Scouts to do this would have violated their First Amendment right because, as the Court noted, the Boy Scouts asserts that it “teach[es] that homosexual conduct is not morally straight,” and that it does “not want to promote homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior.” 

This just changed. On May 23, 2013,