They didn’t really “back” the ruling, so much as they said they weren’t going to care about it one way or another. They have the right approach:
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints posted a statement on its website saying sexual orientation has never been, and is not now, something that precludes young boys from being in Mormon Scout troops. As long as youth refrain from premarital sex - a strict church rule - they can participate in Boy Scouts, church officials said.
“Willingness to abide by standards of behavior continues to be our compelling interest,” the statement said.”
I don’t really care if a kid who thinks they might be gay is part of a scout troop. When it wasn’t clearly encouraged, they would tend to be quiet, and the key was that scouts is not a sexual organization.
I urged the scouting organization to at least include in their new rule a strict ban on any sexual contact or relationships within the organization, but they did not do so.
Not really.
The LDS Church took a beating, from the inside and outside, for aggressively supporting Proposition 8 in CA during 2008. Since then, the Church has moved on to other battles in the cultural wars rather than to continue to take on the homosexual-rights activists for several reasons.
1. Church leadership felt like it was left holding the financial bag after other evangelical denominations failed to come through with promised aid in the fight against Proposition 8. Top church officials were heavily involved in the creation of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the primary player over the last decade in the fight to outlaw gay unions.
2. Church leadership feared that continued support of anti-homosexualsexual marriage measures would continue to generate negative publicity which in turn would limit the ability of its farflung missionaries to engage potential converts.
3. The Church wanted to be more welcoming to its members who are afflicted with same-sex attraction.
4. Mitt Romney, perhaps the highest profile Mormon in the U.S. today, had advocated membership for all homosexuals in the BSA since 1994. The chuch did not want to harm Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.
5. Another high-profile Morman, Jon Huntsman Jr., former governor (R-UT) and former ambassador to Red China under POTUS #44 BHO, announced his support of homosexual marriage in FEB 2013. He also signed on the amicus brief that opposed the DoMA which is currently before the SCOTUS.
6. BSA National President Wayne Perry is a lifelong Mormon. He convinced the Mormon leadership to change its adversarial position against homosexuality in Scouting, which went back to the 2000 SCOTUS case, BSA v Dale.