31 January 2013 –
On 6 February, the
national board of the Boy Scouts of America meets to discuss the removal of the
national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation. If the board votes to remove the restriction,
homosexual men can be scoutmasters. The
board offers the sop to its many church sponsors that if it lifts the
restriction, local sponsors can still decide for themselves on such issues for
their troops.
The sponsors of local
BSA troops, the majority of which are churches, must think cleanly and clearly
about how this decision may indeed pollute their local organization through
association. Would you, as an upright,
church-goer want your twelve-year-old daughter in a girls’ softball league
where the other teams’ uniforms bear the sponsor names of local strip joints,
saloons, and x-rated movie parlors? I
don’t think so. You might be able to
protect her from such influences during closed practices and scrimmages; but, once
your daughter runs on the field to play the other teams, you won’t be able to
control what is imposed upon her. And
whose fault would that be? Yours. After all, you knew what the league was when
you joined it.
Churches claim, by traditional
definition, to be organizations built on enduring principles—truths. Churches claim that these truths come by commandment
from God. By living according to these
principles, one builds in one’s character certain virtues that enable one to draw
closer to God. Among the virtues that
Christians want to develop are the following:
trustworthiness, loyalty, charity, compassion, courtesy, kindness,
obedience, happiness, thrift, bravery, cleanliness, and reverence. If one’s church—the structure that enables one
to draw closer to God, the structure that one supports with sacrifice of time
and effort—preaches that homosexual acts cripples one’s ability to be close to
God, and, by extension, defining oneself by one’s indulgence in such acts continues
to distance one from God’s presence, then why would one want to continue to embrace
a church when that church associates with a secular organization that now
endorses the opposite? And, indeed, why
would one offer up as sacrifice one’s son to the false gods of such a secular
organization?
Christian churches,
particularly the Latter-day Saint and Catholic churches, sponsor many of
the Boy Scouts of America’s tens of
thousands of local troops. They are
found in nearly every community in America.
These two mentioned churches are more centralized in their policy and
doctrine making than any other Christian churches in America. Therefore, they should take the lead in the
Christian community. They should show
others how to build better programs to teach their young men the truths
necessary to develop the virtues that will enable these young men to be
physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. Otherwise, their sacrifice to Baal will have
already been offered.
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