Powerful letter with many more details than I have seen elsewhere, including OnMyHonor.net, on the voting “process” and the actions of the Key-3 national leadership. Makes me sick....
6/06/2013 An Eagle scout posted his comments about the 5/23/2013 vote. In his post he included the excerpt below
Why Not Try and Change the Existing BSA?
June 6, 2013
8:53 pm
By NRAdudeMember
here is the words of a National Board member who I know personally. As he states, our cause is not lost and we do have a chance. I'm not going to name him for obvious reasons.
"Chris, I have a few minutes this morning so I will try and address a few of the issues you raise.
1) I agree that I was surprised the resolution to change the membership standards as they pertain to youth members actually passed. However, you have to look a little deeper to understand the survey results that led to that resolution being the one proposed. The surveys you mention had a series of questions. The members of the Scouting family that responded - ten of thousands of them - were not in favor of changing membership standards related to adult leadership, but the numbers varied by geographic region of the country. Actually, in the North East, parts of Western and parts of Central there was support to change the policy regarding both youth and adults. However, nationally it was still a majority that did not want change for adult leaders.
2) there was majority support to change the policy for youth. This was based on one question which asked if a boy joined scouts as a tiger cub and went all the way thru scouting and at his eagle board of review declared he was homosexual, should he receive his Eagle. Well, it was a very biased question but the majority supported him getting his Eagle. So that is what the resolution was based on.
3) The National Board (62 people of which I am one) was NOT the only people that voted on this. It was voted on by the 1400 volunteers (professionals could not vote) that were called national voting members. They consist of the following people:
a) The council President and council Commissioner of every scout council in America - 288 councils. All volunteers
b) one national voting member for each 5000 traditional scouts in a council, so in the case of longhorn council we had an additional 4 or 5 that were proposed and voted on by the volunteer membership of the council that attended the annual business meeting of the council back in April
c) national board members, national committee chairs, regional board members ect.
The vast majority of the voting members - probably 8 or 900 were the local volunteers from councils. So it was not a small group of people but our peers that voted on this.
4) the vote was not even close. It was 61% in favor and 39% opposed. Of the 1400 voting members, I believe 1188 (~ 85% turnout) or so showed up to vote. Even if everyone of the voting members who did not show up to vote had voted in opposition to the proposal, it would have still passed.
5) So, it is what it is. The real question is what happens in a couple of years when we start tossing out 18 year old Eagle scouts that cannot remain involved in Scouting as adults because they have come out as homosexual? Then will there be another motion to admit homosexual adults as leaders? We shall see.
6) A lot of us see this as an opportunity to provide positive adult male role models to teenagers that may be confused about who they are. We shall see how that works, since sex education and sexuality issues are not part of Scouting and never have been.
7) Will there be resolutions in the future to reverse this policy? I think that is a distinct possibility. We shall see if they can be passed.
I am staying involved at this point because I want to continue to make a difference in the lives of the youth of the country. We shall see if Scouting eventually leaves me with additional changes."
Guys, if all of us leave the BSA then it will be inevitable that they allow homosexual leaders in because only the left-wing scouts and scout leaders will remain to vote and elect board members. We cannot let that happen.