Southern Baptists condemn Boy Scouts over admission of gays

FoxNews.com ^ | 6-12-2013 | FoxNews.com

[servo1969]

HOUSTON – The Southern Baptist Convention, which represents thousands of churches that sponsor Boy Scout troops, approved a resolution opposing accepting gay scouts - with a top church leader predicting a "mass exodus" of youths from the program that has been a rite of passage for more than a century.

The move came as the convention held its annual, four-day meeting in Houston, and three weeks after the Boy Scouts of America voted to allow gay youth to join. With more than two-thirds of Boy Scout troops sponsored by religious organizations, and Baptists being the nation's largest protestant denomination, the strongly-worded resolution could have a crippling effect on the Boy Scouts.

"There will be a mass exodus over time," said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. “Churches are finally going to have to come to realize – there is a point when you say, ‘sorry, no more.’"

[manc]

OK thank you , I did not know that

[CA Conservative]

This is patently false. The Boy Scouts do not have a gay pride merit badge.

It is true that the BSA does not have such a badge, but there is a group that offers such a merit badge for Scouts - from a pro-gay group called Scouting for All. Also, the Boston-area council tried in 2002 to create a "diversity" merit badge that included a homosexual component. (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/699745/posts). I don't know if they were ever disciplined by the national BSA or not.

[manc]

sure isn’t

[manc]

yuck

[CA Conservative]

Here is a little bit of info from the website:

Our Mentoring METHODS
Boys will be boys! They are God-designed to be assertive, competitive, and energetic. Our experienced mentors provide needed guidance, discipline, and structure, using the methods described below.

Friendship
Our mentors are committed to insuring friendship charges our ministry atmosphere. Boys develop lifelong friends in Royal Rangers and meet wholesome men, who will affirm them and who they can look up to.

Activities
Royal Rangers is about hands-on adventure and side-by-side relationship building. It's how boys learn and relate best. Beyond the fun, boys discover they have what it takes to be men as they spend time with mentors outdoors, in the gym, at the computer, on the service project site, or on the stage. Royal Rangers provides boys with fun activities in five areas of interest, which we refer to as our "core competencies": Outdoor Activities, Sports, Trade Skills, Technologies, and Arts. Many activities in Royal Rangers involve earning merits, which are awards based on the development of skills in one or more of these core areas. A complete list of the merits used in Royal Rangers can be found on our Merit Index page.

Advancement System
In Royal Rangers, boys and young men are challenged to embark on an adventure that requires them to participate actively. It is a spiritual journey that will forge their character and maximize their leadership potential. To the uneducated eye, boys are just learning survival skills in the wilderness, playing sports, producing a music video, repairing the home of an elderly person, etc., but in the process, our mentors are intentional about laying biblical foundations of sexual expression, worldview, culture, manhood, and leadership. By awarding merit badges, boys are guided on a measurable, personal, and spiritual growth process. (They think they are just having fun, so let's keep that our secret!)

Interactive Learning
Personal development in Royal Rangers is all about hands-on fun and getting dirty! Boys learn by hearing, seeing, doing, and when appropriate, teaching others. It's learning by doing.

Uniforms
Boys want to belong! Royal Rangers gives young men who want to band together to serve Christ wholeheartedly that place of belonging and an image and identity of which to be proud.

Patrol System
Young men want to influence and try their wings. Guys-only small groups allow boys to have fun together, share responsibility for leadership, learn teamwork, and grow spiritually.

Service & Ministry Outreach
"It's not all about me!" This is a lesson boys learn in Royal Rangers. Meaningful opportunities are provided for young men to move beyond themselves to help others, instilling attitudes and behaviors of lifelong servants.

Read more at RoyalRangers.com.

[Telepathic Intruder]

You know, I do think I’m mixing this up with the global warming merit badge. I don’t often make these types of mistakes, by the way. It’s better if I can be caught early doing it. But we know there is an agenda that is being pushed into the Boy Scouts with both these issues.

[CA Conservative]

Also check out Frontiersmen Camping Fellowship, a group associated with Royal Rangers but focuses on primitive camping and the associated skills - blackpowder rifles, knife and tomahawk, campfire cooking, etc. It is for older boys, so you couldn't put your 8-year old in it, but it is a great program for teenagers and adults.

[Vigilanteman]

Show me a Boy Scout— or anyone else— who can’t keep his piehole shut about being “openly gay” and I’ll show you one who can’t possibly keep the “morally straight” part of the scout oath.

[CaptainMorgantown]

I repeat, the BSA does not offer a Gay Pride merit badge. The first example you cite is a non-scouting group offering a pretend badge. The second example you cite is some kind of diversity program that a single Boston area council proposed in 2002. Local councils cannot offer their own merit badges.

There are many reasons to be concerned about the recent policy change by the BSA, but it does the cause of conservatives no good to spread false information.

[CA Conservative]

I was not disagreeing with you - I was merely pointing out why someone might have thought otherwise...

[yellowhorse]

Exactly. Things are going to get a lot worse before Christ returns. And then one day all his children will be gone in an instant. That will be just the beginning of the unbelievable joy we as Christians will experience for all eternity.

[PapaNew]

Thanks for the input. What I meant to say was I wish the name and reputation of RR was more widely disseminated to a nationwide audience that would influence a mass migration.

[super7man]

This whole thing has not been about allowing homosexual Scouts. It is about destroying anything that does not celebrate homosexuality.
Scouting (if it continues to exist) will now have to have some training of the Scouts on how to behave and accommodate homosexual Scouts. This alone sexualizes a youth program that does not need it.

Our Troop will not re-charter in the fall. The commitment to the male youth is still there. I just will not be through Scouting.

Eagle Scout ‘69
Scouter 2001-1013

[MCH]

That was the goal - they didn’t want to join the Scouts, they wanted to destroy the Scouts.

Just as in the marriage issue - they don’t really want to get married, they want to destroy marriage.

I have come to totally agree with you on both counts. What's more, they're becoming wildly successful at incrementally destroying both at this point, as these two institutions continue to decay and move toward oblivion and irrelevance.

[DYngbld]

You cannot do your duty to God, or be morally straight, by accepting openly gay/homo behavior as a part of scouting.

My Son pulled himself out of Scouts for that very reason. It is sad he really enjoyed it, but his moral values no longer line up with Scouts. I am proud of him for taking a stand, he told his scout master why he was done. We are waiting for the 'hate calls', and nasty emails, from the liberal members of the troop.

[SZonian]

"We are waiting for the 'hate calls', and nasty emails, from the liberal members of the troop."

If they come, just reply that the Scout Oath and Law are still the prime components of demonstrating Scout Spirit in their daily lives and hang up.

Then calls to all members of the Troop Committee and Chartering Organization are in order as the Scoutmaster would be the source of said harassment since he violated your son's confidence.

As a soon to be EX-Scoutmaster, I never divulge why a Scout left the Troop if it were for personal reasons. If one moves or transfers and another Scout asks, I'll tell them, but never when it involves something personal.

Best wishes to you and your son. I hope he finds something that will continue to promote the interests he has.

SZ

[MasterGunner01]

I’m not a Southern Baptist, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand what the BSA Board was WRONG. The BSA Board caved to the Gay Mafia agenda (and their gay loving big business leaders). Follow the money — the BSA Board was told by their big business members that if they didn’t go with the gay agenda, the big businesses would cut their funding of BSA programs.

[Iscool]

I;ve seen combat and don’t want my boys to see it, I don’t want them to fight for a Govt which would rather spy on us and not care about him.

Why should he lose limbs or his life while those who send him there care more about cocktail parties but to have someone say they are not men because they listen to me is out and out wrong.

And then won't send help when they are in trouble, ie. Benghazi...I'm with you...

[MacNaughton]

http://www.baptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=40499
Boy Scout resolution adopted by SBC

Long article explaining the debate at the link above. The resolution is presented below.

RESOLUTION 6
ON THE CHANGE OF MEMBERSHIP POLICY OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

WHEREAS, For more than a century, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has been a values-based boys organization designed to "prepare young people for a lifetime of character and leadership," equipping them "to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law"; and

WHEREAS, The Scout Oath contains language that is consistent with belief in God and biblical precepts that serve as the basis for Christian faith: "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"; and

WHEREAS, The leadership of the Boy Scouts throughout its history has restricted from membership and leadership those persons who would affect the group's ability to advocate its viewpoints in regard to belief in God and His moral precepts; and

WHEREAS, In 1992, and again in 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted resolutions affirming the Boy Scouts in their stand that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations of the Scout Oath, encouraging the BSA "to maintain its historic commitments" (1992) and "to hold fast to its traditional ideals" (2000); and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the constitutional right to freedom of association allows a private organization, as part of its "expressive message," to exclude a person from membership when "the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group's ability to advocate public or private viewpoints" and that allowing homosexuals as adult leaders would interfere with that message (Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale); and

WHEREAS, In 2004, the Boy Scouts adopted a policy statement that said, in part, "Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed"; and

WHEREAS, In 2012, an eleven-person committee appointed by the National Council of the Boy Scouts completed a two-year study and reported its unanimous decision that the Boy Scouts retain the current policy as outlined above; and

WHEREAS, NBC News reported in breaking news on January 28, 2013, that the BSA executive leadership, in concert with certain members of the BSA board of directors, was poised to change the Scouts' historic policy at its February 4–5 board meeting the following week to allow avowed homosexuals into membership and leadership positions within the Boy Scouts of America; and

WHEREAS, During the week between when news broke of this proposed policy change and the February board meeting, the Boy Scouts received an outpouring of feedback from Scouts, Scouting families, sponsoring organizations, and the American public; and

WHEREAS, On February 6, 2013, the BSA board determined that, "due to the complexity of this issue, the organization needs time for a deliberate review of its membership policy"; and

WHEREAS, The National Council of the Boy Scouts voted on May 23, 2013, to approve new membership guidelines that state, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone"; and basic understandings of male friendships, needlessly politicize human sexuality, and heighten sexual tensions within the Boy Scouts; and

WHEREAS, Many Southern Baptist churches sponsor Boy Scout troops and many Southern Baptists are involved in Scouting; and

WHEREAS, The Baptist Faith and Message states that "Christians should oppose ... all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography," and Southern Baptists consistently have expressed their opposition to the normalization of homosexual behavior in American culture through more than a dozen resolutions over the past thirty years;

now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Houston, Texas, June 11–12, 2013, express our continued opposition to and disappointment in the decision of the Boy Scouts of America to change its membership policy;

and be it further RESOLVED, That we express our gratitude for the thousands of individuals within the Scouting family and the culture at large who expressed their opposition to the BSA executive leadership's intent to change its membership and leadership policies in regard to homosexuality, leading to the compromise recommendation it presented to the BSA National Council;

and be it further RESOLVED, That we express our gratitude to each voting member of the National Council who voted in opposition to the policy change for membership;

and be it further RESOLVED, That we express our well-founded concern that the current executive leadership of the BSA, along with certain board members, may utilize this membership policy change as merely the first step toward future approval of homosexual leaders in the Scouts;

and be it further RESOLVED, That we call on the Boy Scouts to remove from executive and board leadership those individuals who, earlier this year, sought to change both the membership and leadership policy of the Scouts without seeking input from the full range of the Scouting family;

and be it further RESOLVED, That we affirm the right of all families and churches prayerfully to assess their continued relationship with the BSA, expressing our support for those churches and families that as a matter of conscience can no longer be part of the Scouting family;

and be it further RESOLVED, That we encourage churches and families that remain in the Boy Scouts to seek to impact as many boys as possible with the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ, to work toward the reversal of this new membership policy, and to advocate against any future change in leadership and membership policy that normalizes sexual conduct opposed to the biblical standard;

RESOLVED, That we encourage churches that choose to sever ties with the Boy Scouts not to abandon their ministry to boys but consider expanding their Royal Ambassadors ministry, a distinctively Southern Baptist missions organization to develop godly young men;

and be it finally RESOLVED, That we declare our love in Christ for all young people regardless of their perceived sexual orientation, praying that God will bring all youth into a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[manc]

exactly