"When I heard I finally made Scoutmaster I just broke down and cried..."
Posted on 06/02/2003 6:39:40 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Philadelphia’s Cradle of Liberty Boy Scout Council self-destructed last week. Its executive board voted unanimously to include "sexual orientation" in its nondiscrimination code. The outrageous move came after years of intense pressure from radical homosexual and atheist rights groups in the area and nationwide.
The Philadelphia Council is the third largest local council in the country, serving 87,000 boys and men. It is an unfortunate addition to a list of councils that have eagerly given the finger to the Boy Scouts of America and its associated moral codes. Last year, San Francisco and Boston became the first branches to reject the concept of “moral straightness.”
We must be reminded that the Boy Scouts are not an intolerant, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic bunch. In fact, the Boy Scouts have always taught tolerance and have been at the forefront of celebrating diversity. Since 1911, the BSA has reached out to disabled youth, racial and ethnic minorities, Native Americans, and inner city children.
And Scouting has also taught the difference between right and wrong, between honor and indecency, between justice and perversity.
When it comes to a Scout troop, sexual orientation is an issue that goes beyond differences in skin color or economic status. It affects such matters as tenting arrangements and the development of pre-teenage masculinity in a close-knit group of boys and men. But the BSA’s position against homosexuality is not just an issue of moral principle in an effort to affirm the Scout Oath and Law, it is a serious safety effort to prevent cases of sexual abuse and harassment.
To the vast majority of Americans who understand the importance of Scouting in every community across the nation, preserving the traditional moral code of Scouting is a no-brainer. It is time for families in Philadelphia to show that they oppose the leadership of their local council by leaving the organization.
Furthermore, the BSA national office must entirely disconnect itself from the Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco Councils. And Boy Scout councils around the country must take notice that their entire mission is staked upon the moral character of the boys and men involved, and that if they sever those core principles from the program they will destroy the entirety of Scouting.
The pressures from the radical Left must be dealt with as well. As the Left has opened fire on the Scouts, the reaction of Americans has been interesting. I’ve heard some say that the Scouts don’t need to be defended because they are strong enough. Many would argue that ignoring the opposition is the best thing for the Scouts. Perhaps that would be true in a small-scale conflict, but those who lead the drive against the Scouts have proven their capacity for a dangerous perversion of morality when, in a hundred other scenarios they’ve struck deepest when decent Americans chose not to fight back. They didn’t fight back because they weren’t looking in the first place.
Now, America - now is a time to turn our sullen eyes on Philadelphia. Now is the time to awaken to the awful stench that arises from the moral relativism condoned by Boy Scout Councils in Boston and San Francisco. Now is the time to fight back and defend the Boy Scouts from further damage.
As an Eagle Scout and an assistant Scoutmaster, I cannot couch myself in the dark chamber of apathy as my organization is taken over by special interests whose political agenda contributes to a breakdown of character and the family. The Boy Scouts have the God-given right to establish standards for membership, and those standards have been highly respected for over 90 years. Citizens across America have the God-given obligation to see to it that the Boy Scout Oath and Law are upheld for another 90 years.
Hans Zeiger, 18, is an Eagle Scout and an outspoken advocate on behalf of Scouting with the Scout Honor Coalition. He is a Seattle Times columnist and chairman of Washington Young Americans for Freedom. He may be contacted at hanszeiger@yahoo.com.
There's been plenty of those that were either unconnected to any adult sexual contact, or were married with kids. Keeping gays out won't change this; what's needed is proper supervision of leaders by sponsors and parents.
What will prevent Scouts from going on trips with good adult male role models will not be any policy of the Cradle of Liberty Council. It'll be the lack of good male role model from volunteering as leaders, and from a lack of sponsors and parents from overseeing them.
We quit when GSUSA took part of the proceeds from cookie sales and donated it to ERA support. And I miss Thin Mints terribly also.
WHAT 'Gay Agenda'??
Actually, I believe once the wall comes down the Supreme Court (see how I avoid that problem?) may rule that the Scout Organization is no longer entitled to protection. I believe they won based in part on a fundamental policy not to allow the gay philosophy because it was fundamentally different from the heterosexual philosophy esposed by the BSA. There is a lot of potential for a slipery slope here and I would stand by the national council withdrawing the charters of each and every unit that does accept a gay leader.
I see the homo apologists are out again. I guess in your world it's quite rational for men who shove things up their rectum to mentor little boys. Bye.
"When I heard I finally made Scoutmaster I just broke down and cried..."
While I agree that a minority of homosexuals are pedophiles... I still don't think homosexuals belong in positions of authority within the church..and they sure shouldn't be priests.
Church leaders and priests should be examples to young people of the morality taught in the Bible. Same goes for Boy Scout leaders or any an organization that claims Christian values as foundational guidelines.
Nice to see a knowledgeable voice speaking up. Good to see you again.
National doesn't seem to have a problem with it. Minuteman Council's policy seems to be "Don't ask, don't tell", which is National policy. They just stated it in a fashion that makes it a little more palatable for the locals.
This isn't my impression at all from reading BSA's briefs and press releases during the James Dale case that we discussed ad infinitum with the gays on Salon's "TableTalk" two and three years ago.
BSA National has been forthright: No Gays, no way. What we are discussing here is Blue America's attempts to overthrow the rule by issue creep and what used to be called "salami-slicing".
BSA National may never have admitted it in a court brief or a public statement, but the entire issue has been precisely about pederasty and the gay drive to get at the boys. They've cracked open the schools behind GLSEN and rhetoric about "protecting" students who are (arguably) endogamously gay and profess themselves to be gay; but the struggle isn't about self-identifying gays, it's about developing pubescent sexuality and the fact that pederasts know that they can impress unformed youth into accommodating sexual partnerships regardless of gender identity. I would further suggest that such partnerships, formed outside society's bounds of approval, are the reason why the gay activists at the American Psychiatric Association eventually took down the term "ego-dystonic homosexuality" for such accommodations, because of the imputation that there was something unhealthy about accommodative homosex. There is, but the activists won't admit it, and instead wage war on anyone who thinks there might be.
Thus GLSEN propagates an essentialist line on gender identity, for polemical effect, which the practical experience of the gay community shows is untrue. At these ages, young people's sexual orientation is mutable and susceptible to interference by aggressive homosexual adults -- which I submit is the whole ball game, and precisely what the Youth Protection program is all about. So to say is not to say that heterosexuals do not behave badly, but simply to acknowledge what gays themselves know but will not honestly admit, that gay men in particular are more of a problem where youth contact is involved. Man-for-man, they are markedly more likely to act out even than married heterosexual peds, who are the largest group of bad actors.
As for the essentialist roorback itself, that children "born gay" will inevitably "become gay" and that the community shouldn't, by further implication, interfere with the efforts of adult gays to contact "their own" youth to support, protect and "counsel" them, we can profitably reread the demurrer of Charles Socarides et al. on gender identity and essentialism:
Gender Identity
It is a matter of professional responsibility to correct certain statements made by Lawrence Newman, M.D. in the December 5 article, “Children With Gender-Identity Disorder Benefit From Early Psychiatric Intervention.”
To his credit, Dr. Newman urges compassion and kindliness toward children with a disturbance in gender-defined sexual identity. He accurately states that such a condition leads to a lifelong disturbance in an individual’s relationship with himself and with others, as well as producing isolation, depression, and anxiety in a prehomosexual child as he grows from childhood into adolescence and later adulthood. He announces correctly, but with apparent unconcern over this dire development, that such children, of course, will “develop a homosexual orientation in later life.” But he makes no reference to the possibility of the reversal of this condition, while, in actuality, there are multiple case reports now appearing in the literature attesting to its reversibility.
He bases this assertion on a mysterious “landmark long-term study”-without citing it-that there is “no known therapy which could change this probability.” This is completely erroneous and misleading, both to parents and to the child, as well as to the multitude of readers of Psychiatric News worldwide.
We cite, for example, Edward Glover’s report (1960 Portman Clinic Survey), a fact-gathering committee report of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1956), the Bieber et al. report (1962), and the findings of Socarides (1978, 1997). He has completely disregarded the MacIntosh report (1994) published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1995) that in a responsive survey of 285 psychoanalysts who reported having analyzed 1,250 homosexual patients, 23 percent changed to heterosexuality from homosexuality and that 85 percent had significantly benefited from therapy. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality report of 1997 confirms MacIntosh’s study.
We take exception to Dr. Newman’s attitude that parents disturbed over this development are “homophobic” -- an erroneous term (for it does not meet the criteria of phobia) coined by the gay movement to stigmatize all parents who disapprove of this condition, for no parent ever raises a child to be a homosexual.
Tolerance, compassion, and understanding of both child and parents, along with a recommendation for psychoanalytic therapy, should be the position of dedicated and responsible psychiatrists.
One’s compassion for the plight of the prehomosexual child and his parents, the child’s own responsiveness as a patient, and his value as a human being lead to a mutuality of gratitude and satisfaction between child, parent, and therapist that well justifies the commitment to the alleviation of this important and serious disorder. It is no kindness to children with a gender-identity disorder disturbance in gender-defined self—identity-a precursor to adult homosexuality and other sexual deviations-to suggest that this condition should be not only accepted but embraced by both the patient and his family.
Charles W. Socarides, M.D.
New York, N.Y.
For:
Abraham Freedman, M.D., Philadelphia, Pa.
Harold Voth, M.D., Topeka, Kan.
C. Downing Tait, M.D., Atlanta, Ga.
Benjamin Kaufman, M.D., Sacramento, Calif.
From NARTH's site.
It seems to me, as an outsider, that BSA's best course of action now is to step up and 1) reaffirm the "no gays" policy that they defended before the Supreme Court, 2) explain that the policy is an integral part of the YP program, 3) restate the need for the YP program, and 4) state for the record that yes, the gay ban is about pederasty and the disproportionate tendency among gay men to participate in, or wink at, pederastic abuse of youths, inasmuch as it is visited not just on gay youth, but on all youth indiscriminately.
Gays who brag in private about their exploits with teenaged boys and "skinning some chicken" cannot then expect to be believed in the forum when they profess with a straight face that their concern for youth protection is the equal of the rest of the community's. The record of scandals and abuses, not just with the Catholic Church but generally, shows that this is just not so. It's high time that BSA grasped that nettle and pulled it up.
As an aside, it would have made a difference to me, if gay leadership at e.g. HRC and GLSEN and PFLAG had rung down interdicts of the most wrathful punishment on pederasts and pedophiles generally, and professed publicly a promise and pledge of fidelity to the community's sensitivities about young people and sexuality. But they have not done this, and so far as I can see, even from the chitchat on "TableTalk", they remain in solidarity with, and secret or even public admirers of, gay men who succeed in introducing formative teenagers to homosex as their first significant sexual experience.
What we have here, Ron, is you guys on the one hand trying to maintain the YP program, and these other people acting in bad faith to break it down.
My two cents.
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