The Boy Scouts of America got front-page ink, as we say in the newspaper trade, for their currently postponed meditations on the topic of admitting avowed gays to membership. Posted on 02/12/2013 2:16:52 PM PST by Kaslin
The Boy Scouts of America got front-page ink, as we say in the newspaper trade, for their currently postponed meditations on the topic of admitting avowed gays to membership.
Word had leaked out that the Scouts were considering a local option solution to the vexed question of their supposed right to determine who can become a member and who can't. At a top-drawer meeting in Irving, Tex., the topic proved too vast and complex for immediate resolution. Consultation and deliberation will take place prior to May meeting of Scouts' national council.
I spoke of the Scouts' "supposed" right to oversee their membership rolls. A decade ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that right in the Scouts' case, in response to court challenges seeking the overthrow of policies that "discriminate" against gays. That might have settled matters, but for restlessness and motion in the larger society whose present values sometimes cause the Scouts, with their old-fashioned devotion to God and country, to look more and more like outliers.
What courts can't accomplish, social pressures sometimes bring about. The up-tilted eyebrow, the sneer, the lordly putdown in elite journalistic commentary -- such events and occasions collectively have the power to overwhelm.
The oddness of the Scouts' situation has to do with the oddness -- the bizarreness, really -- of efforts to overwhelm an organization whose core principles, you might think, were beyond impeachment.
"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." So goes the Scout oath -- the pledge that millions of boys have conned and recited. What is wrong with it? A Scout promises to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. There is something the matter here? We'd prefer disloyal, boorish, mean, disobedient, and cowardly and so forth?
It could be so. The war against the Scouts has about it a littleness of spirit, an un-generosity that should be unthinkable. That it no longer seems unthinkable is among our modern blights. That the Boy Scouts of America are bidden by the intellectual-political community to roll over, bark cheerily, and change their practices and thought patterns along lines improvised by the enlightened is further, scarier testimony to the cultural mess we're in.
If an ex-Scout of mediocre attainments may speak -- on his honor, naturally -- I wish to observe that society's increasing spite against scouting is likely bigger than the gay members thing. With non-heterosexual marriage winning acclaim in some states, the topic of gay rights and privileges indeed comes up constantly. Nonetheless, the flap over scouting's membership requirements reflects modern America's weariness with norms of any kind. That is the larger point.
Norms -- e.g., do my duty, keep myself thus and so, to this or that end -- look down from a towering height onto the squiggling mass of personal tastes, outlooks, biases, caprices, humors and moods that make up modern life. A norm counsels or reproaches: this is right; this isn't. A mere mood sticks out its tongue: shut up, lemme alone, none of your business. Guess which mode we lean toward in 2013.
The Scouts, its American branch dating from 1910, is a wondrously old-fashioned bunch, generally ignoring the Mood of the Moment, upholding truths deposited with them by generations of the wise and the able. If such a disposition makes the Scouts seem out-of-date, by the standards (if any) of 2013, more power to the Scouts and infinitely less to the shriveled standards of 2013. The America of the present could stand to learn from past Americas that understood the durability of truth.
We all know, we ex-Scouts and ex-Scouting dads, that ideals and behaviors don't routinely fuse; that becoming a Scout isn't the same as putting on sanctification. All the same, give me the Scout Law over any passel of uncooked, unexamined, morally incoherent 2013 notions.
Leave those guys alone -- you hear?
Bill Murchison was older than rocks when I was a college student in Texas in the 80s. Now he’s older than the hills, at least, bless his heart.
Good commentary. He’s right, it’s not just the homosexuals, but a whole society full of trashy, lower-class people.
“...the Ugly Moods of 2013...”
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I thought for a minute that said ugly mods.
My bad.
Sidebar Moderator is quite attractive. Admin moderators, overall, are not ugly to the eye. We do have one that children run from.
We keep him in a cage and only let him out for ZOTS.
Uh oh, you’re in trouble now. LOL
Perhaps the best thing the BScouts can do is disband, rather than become the gay counterpart to the lesbian Girl Scouts.
Just say NO!
Or...
HELL no!
if they persist in haranging you.
You did NOT just post this!
Say you DIDN'T!!!
The STUPIDest thing would be to even consider giving these FAGS the time of day!
Genesis 18:20-21
20. Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous
21. that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
Genesis 19:4-7
4. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house.
5. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
6. Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him
7. and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing.
Isaiah 3:9 The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.
2 Peter 2:13b Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
Ezekiel 16:49-50
49. "`Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
50. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
1. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
2. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
3. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
5. if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
6. if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;
7. and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men
8. (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)--
9. if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.
10. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings;
11. yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
12. But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.
13. They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
But there IS hope!!!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
If you could NOT change, you would be in most pitiful shape...
The leadership is already caving. Yeah, I posted it and I mean it. Better to disband than to acquiesce.
It's as if the wealthiest and most-influential people prefer, no, demand, that the rest of society devolve into a squirming mass of maggots, the better to serve them.
But what sort of person would rather be surrounded by maggoty people, than by people who are always reliable, honest, upright, prudent, clean, and brave? Morally straight, in other words? The "Lord of the Flies"?
Or at least people who are TRYING to be honest, upright, etc., most of the time. It sometimes seems like a preponderance of people aren't trying at all ... don't see any reason why they should.
IF that were the ONLY two choices; but they are not.
The Boy Scouts of America are in a position to draw a line in the cultural sand and refuse to allow homosexuals to be Scouts, much less, Scoutmasters. That will take courage. Something Boy Scout leaders should be familiar with. I wish some billionaire such as Donald Trump, who loves the spotlight, would offer to replace whatever corporate money the BSA loses by standing on principle. If the BSA caves to the demands of the gays and ‘the culture’, they are doomed. They will have abandoned their First Principles for corporate money and to avoid being bullied by leftists who love to see anything decent be ruined or co-opted. A momentous decision for the BSA leadership but one that shouldn’t be all that difficult to make.
I agree.
Retire the current colors with honors, until the passing of the current gaystapo PC soddomite regime.
If BSA is about money, they’ll cave. If they are about ‘for what good purpose’, they will survive. Grandsons are starting to work on their Eagle Scout project. They have purpose and discipline.
“If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them.”
Robert Ruark used this Basuto proverb as the basis for his novel “Something of Value.” When I was barely into my teens, I read the book, and have carried a copy of the proverb in my mind and heart ever since.
FRom time to time, I am compelled to compare the wisdom of that proverb to the silliness of contemporary life. The “Popular Culture” has a tendency to ignore the consequences of discarding good customs without thinking through the intended and unintended consequences.
The Boy Scouts need to tell the homosexual “community” to get lost!
One of the worst things they can do (short of allowing gays at a national level) is to make it a local issue.
This will simply be scattering your forces across the battle field to be picked off one by one.
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