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Boy Scouts Reaffirm Gay Ban After 2-Year Review, Call 972-580-2000 at BSA HQ in Irving, TX
The Blaze ^ | July 17, 2012 | Jason Howerton

Posted on 02/04/2013 10:26:04 PM PST by Steelers6

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/07/17/boy-scouts-reaffirm-gay-ban-after-2-year-review/

NEW YORK (AP) — After a confidential two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, ruling out any changes despite relentless protest campaigns by some critics.

An 11-member special committee, formed discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, “came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts,” the organization’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, told The Associated Press.

Smith said the committee, comprised of professional scout executives and adult volunteers, was unanimous in its conclusion – preserving a long-standing policy that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 and has remained controversial ever since.

As a result of the committee’s decision, the Scouts’ national executive board will take no further action on a recently submitted resolution asking for reconsideration of the membership policy.

Boy Scouts of America Chief Executive Bob Mazzuca (Source: scouting.org)

The Scouts’ chief executive, Bob Mazzuca, contended that most Scout families support the policy, which applies to both leaders and Scouts.

“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” Mazzuca said. “We fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”

The president of the largest U.S. gay-rights group, Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign, depicted the Scouts’ decision as “a missed opportunity of colossal proportions.”

.

“With the country moving toward inclusion, the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have instead sent a message to young people that only some of them are valued,” he said. “They’ve chosen to teach division and intolerance.”

The Scouts did not identify the members of the special committee that studied the issue, but said in a statement that they represented “a diversity of perspectives and opinions.”

“The review included forthright and candid conversation and extensive research and evaluations – both from within Scouting and from outside of the organization,” the statement said.

The announcement suggests that hurdles may be high for a couple of members of the national executive board – Ernst & Young CEO James Turley and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson – who have recently indicated they would try to work from within to change the policy. Both of their companies have been commended by gay-rights groups for gay-friendly employment policies.

Stephenson is on track to become president of the Scouts’ national board in 2014, and will likely face continued pressure from gay-rights groups to try to end the exclusion policy. Asked for comment on Tuesday about the Scouts’ decision to keep the policy, AT&T did not refer to Stephenson’s situation specifically.

“We don’t agree with every policy of every organization we support, nor would we expect them to agree with us on everything,” the company said. “Our belief is that change at any organization must come from within to be successful and sustainable.”

A statement from the executive committee of the Scouts’ national executive board alluded to the Turley-Stephenson developments.

“Scouting believes that good people can personally disagree on this topic and still work together to achieve the life-changing benefits to youth through Scouting,” the statement said. “While not all board members may personally agree with this policy, and may choose a different direction for their own organizations, BSA leadership agrees this is the best policy for the organization.”

Since 2000, the Boy Scouts have been targeted with numerous protest campaigns and run afoul of some local nondiscrimination laws because of the membership policy.

One ongoing protest campaign involves Jennifer Tyrrell, the Ohio mother of a 7-year-old Cub Scout who was ousted as a Scout den mother because she is lesbian.

Change.org, an online forum supporting activist causes, says more than 300,000 people have signed its petition urging the Scouts to reinstate Tyrrell and abandon the exclusion policy. The petition is to be delivered to the Scouts’ national headquarters in Irving, Texas, on Wednesday.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: bsa; homosexualagenda; homosexuality; honorcode; liberalism; morality; moralstraightness; no; paraphilia; pedagogy; pederast; perversion; review; scouting; scouts; sexualabuse; subversion
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To: Steelers6
This President couldn't be bothered to make the Centennial of the Boy Scouts a few miles from the White House

Also to mention that when a Boy Scout earns the rank of Eagle they do not receive a signed (autopen) congrats letter from the President. I got mine in 1979.
21 posted on 02/05/2013 8:13:03 AM PST by freebird5850 (The only good thing about Barry getting re-elected is now we get to see him fall from a higher place)
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To: Twinkie

To understand the left’s “values”,
take any biblical value and formulate the diametric opposite,

and you got it.


22 posted on 02/05/2013 8:18:25 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Steelers6

I never could understand why this was even an issue. Sexual deviancy, no matter if wanting to sodomize boys or sheep or dog or goats, would be tolerated by an organization that works with children. How in our world can someone be called anything but sexually deviant that does such a thing and still expect to participate with children?


23 posted on 02/05/2013 8:47:29 AM PST by CodeToad (Liberals are bloodsucking ticks. We need to light the matchstick to burn them off.)
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To: Steelers6

Why don’t these pedophiles start their own politically correct and tolerant scout troop? They could name it AAA Anal Army of America!


24 posted on 02/05/2013 9:17:14 AM PST by thirst4truth (www.Believer.com)
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To: 1010RD

The phone number is not being answered or taking messages. Email them, that is what the message on that phone said to do.


25 posted on 02/05/2013 9:20:21 AM PST by thirst4truth (www.Believer.com)
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To: DBeers
it came to me that perhaps it was one or both of these leftists that was behind the released information pertaining to the so called 'BSA perversion files' that were trumpeted all over the leftist media recently as a way to discredit the national BSA leadership.

No.

The Oregon Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling to release that information.

A Scout leader named Timur Dykes abused Scouts at a summer camp. He confessed that to a bishop of his church, but the bishop did not report the abuse to the authorities, the local Scout Council, or the BSA.

Years later, one of the abused Scouts sued the church, the Cascade Pacific Council, and the BSA.

The church settled out of court. The Council and the BSA fought the case, arguing that they had no knowledge. The jury found that they should have known. Although the jury determined that the church was responsible for a certain percentage of the judgment, it had already settled out of court so the BSA and the Cascade Pacific Council had to pay the entire muti-million dollar judgment.

As part of the judgment, the court ruled that the BSA had to turn over its perversion files.

26 posted on 02/05/2013 1:24:46 PM PST by Scoutmaster (I've fixed my problem with procrastination; just wait and see.)
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To: Scoutmaster
That figures. Transplanted liberal Yankees out to screw the BSA hard, for trying to keep kids away from ravening pederasts and degenerates.
27 posted on 02/05/2013 2:02:03 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: thirst4truth
Why don’t these pedophiles start their own politically correct and tolerant scout troop?

Because this is symbolic politics. The BSA, the Roman Catholic Church, the Supreme Court, the Congress, the White House, the League of Women Voters, the American Jewish Congress, the LaLeche League, the American Conservative Union, and EVERY source of moral legitimacy you ever heard of, must take turns at America's Show Trial, to confess past errors -- dare I say political "sins" -- and embrace wholeheartedly with convincing sincerity the goodness, wholesomeness, and even the moral superiority of homosexuals and their favorite paraphilias, over everything YOU have ever learned, revered, or thought authoritative.

That's what's up. If you're not down with it -- there goes your job, there go your savings, and next stop is the destructive-labor camp Bill Ayers is building in his mind.

28 posted on 02/05/2013 2:09:21 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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