Posted on 06/25/2013 2:12:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, one of the largest nonprofit secular groups in America, ran an ad on Sunday in The New York Times asking why the Boy Scouts of America is maintaining its ban on nonreligious members after having changed its policy to now accept gay members. A pro-family group believes FFRF is right in its questioning.
"The bottom line is, Scouting has now removed any logical or legal basis for protecting against the inclusion of openly gay scout masters, so in a sense this group is perfectly correct," Rob Schwarzwalder, senior vice president for the Family Research Council, told The Christian Post on Tuesday.
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor argued that although the secular group is supportive of the Boy Scouts' recent decision to allow openly gay members, the question remains: "Why is it still choosing to exclude and shun nonreligious boys and their families?"
The Boy Scouts oath reads: "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." A BSA membership form also states that "no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing his obligation to God."
The cartoon that accompanies the FFRF ad depicts a Boy Scout looking at the badges on his uniform, saying, "This one's for swimming. This one's for woodcraft. This one's for religious bigotry . . ."
FFRF argued, "The intellectual rejection of claims for which there is no evidence is not only respectable, but vital to progress. What should not be respectable is treating any American, whether young or old, as a second-class citizen."
The Boy Scouts lifted its ban on openly gay youths during a meeting in May, when 61 percent of the 1,400 delegates voted in favor of a resolution to lift the ban and 39 percent voted in opposition. The ban on gay adult leaders remains.
Schwarzwalder sent CP a detailed issue brief that analyzes the Boy Scouts' decision, noting that the organization's membership stance now becomes hard to defend from a logistical basis.
"[I]t is absurd for Scouting to have adopted the new policy and concurrently assert that homosexual men are more of an inherent threat to, or more undesirable roles models for, boys. As anyone familiar with Scouting knows, older boys mentor and lead younger boys in Cub Scout dens and Boy Scout troops. If a self-professed gay teenager is a good role model for boys up to the age of 17 years, 365 days, why does his example suddenly become untenable for boys the day he turns 18?" the brief notes.
The conclusion of the brief, written by Schwarzwalder, states that the new policy now creates mandatory exposure of boys to homosexuality.
FRC predicts: "The entry of 'avowed' homosexual Scout leaders into the organization; a loss of parental control in the way their sons are familiarized with issues of sexual intimacy and controversy; and the decline of Scouting as an institution, given the hundreds of thousands of families that now will leave Scouting."
Does anyone ever do anything but whine these days?
bah! I’m in a terrible, rotten, no-good mood.
The Boy Scouts, by opening themselves to gays, have in effect opened themselves up to every issue advocacy groups out there.
Transgenders will be next of course.
We knew this was coming.
Well, now the truth comes out. The era of the Obama youth is upon us-one lawsuit at a time.
>>”Why is it still choosing to exclude and shun nonreligious boys and their families?”
When I was a boy, I was a Boy Scout, and I was from a very non-religious family, wasn’t baptized until I was 40, and professed no faith whatsoever until I was 40. I said the Boy Scout oath every week, with the God part, and since I was a non-believer, the God in the oath could have been Zeus for all I cared.
No one ever shunned me or excluded me.
But, today’s Anti-theist is no Atheist (as I was), because a non-believer cannot be offended by a deity that he does not believe in.
Let’s force them to let in Satan worshippers. And they can get a merit badge for having sex with dead animals. Might as well turn them on to heroin and crack while we’re at it.
Yep...the ol Pandora’s box is now open for the BSOA. They will be a hodge podge of various anti-American, unholy perverted subcultures until this once great organization ceases to exist.
BS committed suicide. Inch=Mile.
Tell that to the U.S. DoD under Obama!
Sleeping with someone (literally) bestows a certain level of trust, camaraderie, and indebtedness.
They aren't called the lavender mafia for nothing.
>>Tell that to the U.S. DoD under Obama!
I tell everyone I can! After spending most of my life as a non-believer and having a life-changing conversion experience, I love to tell my story.
Jude1:4
For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Funny, or not so funny, how these groups go after organizations for kids on crap like this but leave organizations for adults alone.
Let the Boy Scouts disband, so the little gay scouts can play scouts with themselves, and let the little atheist scouts play with them. How’s that. It’s time to end the Boy Scouts until sanity returns to this nation.
It never stops.
Next they will be demanding they accept Satanists.
They don’t want to be accepted, they want to be celebrated.
They have a point. An atheist is a lot less dangerous to young boys than a homosexual.
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