Boy Scouts

As one of the most nasty and mean-spirited figures of the Religious Right, it was no surprise to see Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel tweet this cartoon implying that a gay Boy Scout troop leader would sexually assault his scouts:

Liberty University professor Judith Reisman appeared on TruNews yesterday to speak with Rick Wiles about her latest venture: fighting against sex-education in Croatia. She told Wiles that George Soros has “brought in pedophiles from around the world” to the country.

According to Reisman, the debate over letting gays join the Boy Scouts all goes back to when Alfred Kinsey convinced the group to overturn its ban on masturbation, which she said is “one means, one very important way for men to seduce boys.”

“The Boy Scouts are up for grabs at this point in time, and I mean that in many ways,” Reisman said, to which Wiles replied: “literally.”

Reisman: It’s very serious and of course the Boy Scouts are up for grabs at this point in time, and I mean that in many ways. Wiles: Literally.

Reisman: Yes.

Wiles: Unfortunately, literally. This is what it’s all about; it’s about getting sexual predators into the Boy Scouts.

Reisman: Yes. That’s been an active campaign, as everybody knows, ever since forever. By the way it’s really interesting Dr. Kinsey himself was an Eagle Scout and he had groups of younger boys in his tent that he did reports on and he was the guy who wrote to the Boy Scouts to insist that their prohibition against masturbatory activity was just foolish, it was not grounded in anything at all sensible and we ought to get rid of it in their manual. And they did, thanked him and got rid of it in their manual. Of course that’s always been one means, one very important way for men to seduce boys, is to get them into that situation and to move in on them so to speak.

She concluded by talking about how sex leads to Communist-style tyranny. Reisman maintained that the “the drive for homosexual, bisexual, bisexualization of the children” is meant to make people become “controlled by their sexual lust.”

At that point, they will become a “slave population” who will lose their sense of right and wrong and “buy into the tyranny.”

Wiles: Is there a link in all of your years of research, is there a correlation between the sex-education movement and pornography to sexual deviancy and communism, Marxism; is there a connection?

Reisman: Yeah, certainly there is because when you have an enslaved population which sexual addiction and sexual pornography creates, a slave population, when you have a slave population, when you have people whose focus is by no means on anything upper air, they’ve given up their religion, you can’t have two masters, they are controlled by their sexual lust, when you have that kind of population, that kind of population will do anything to fulfill their lusts, their interests and they have no compunction about forcing other people to adhere to that. Part of that is the drive for homosexual, bisexual, bisexualization of the children, we see it reflected in child pornography and we see it reflected in what has become a whole industry of child sex trafficking, if that isn’t slavery I don’t know what is.

Wiles: So if a political ideology wants to subjugate an entire nation they must first break down that society’s moral code, break down its family, all of the social fabric that holds that society together because once they can get the people to depart from their moral code then their primal, physical desires will rule those people and they’ll do anything just to gain physical pleasure and that means allowing tyranny to rule over them.

Reisman: Absolutely. If tyranny allows them to do what they want to do sexually then they will buy into the tyranny, no problem at all.

Last night, the Family Research Council held a “Stand with Scouts Sunday” event, featuring politicians such as Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Steve Palazzo, to oppose a proposed resolution that would end the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay members who are under the age of eighteen.

The event included an address by pastor Robert Hall of Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho, who warned that the push to end the ban on gays is a sign of the End Times and will ultimately make America “self-destruct.” FRC president Tony Perkins argued that the BSA should fear what happened to the military after it repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, even though all reports so far have found no problems as a result.

Boy Scouts who participated in the webcast described homosexuality as unclean and expressed fears that he might “have my buddy come on to me.”

Watch highlights here:

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) appeared in the Family Research Council’s “Stand With Scouts Sunday” webcast last night where he told FRC president Tony Perkins that the Boy Scouts of America must resist those trying to “tear apart” the organization’s values and replace them with the “flavor of the month”—homosexuality.

He warned the BSA against becoming “more like pop culture” and urged scout leaders to channel the spirit of Sam Houston, whom Perry said lost his governorship because he was “against slavery” and opposed secession.

Watch:

Alan Keyes is out with a new column opposing efforts to end the ban on openly gay members of the Boy Scouts and it is about as dumb as you’d expect.

He argues that if the Boy Scouts change the policy, then straight Boy Scouts will be forced to acquiesce to the “sexual advances” of their gay peers in order to avoid being “viciously accused of unrighteous bigotry.” Once they deny their faith and turn gay, Keyes warns, they will “slip into a whirlpool of compulsive sensual indulgence, moral guilt and spiritual confusion.”

“What is most disturbing is that it uses the young participants in the Scouting movement as cannon fodder in the battle against the natural family,” Keyes writes. “In the realm of moral contention, this deployment of, and against, children reminds me of the way the strategists of terror exploit kids in their perpetration of deadly acts of physical violence.”

We are in the midst of an historically unprecedented campaign to deny and disparage the rights of the God-endowed natural family. Do the top leaders of the BSA naïvely believe that the emotionally charged, personally confrontational situations their proposal will inevitably foment will not be exploited as part of this campaign? Obviously, the policy being proposed will produce situations the powerful elitist forces pushing for the normalization of homosexuality will portray in the worst possible light.

Ignoring the logic of God-acknowledging moral conscience, they will portray these situations as proof of willfully hurtful personal prejudice and unfair discrimination by the BSA. They will seek to prejudice public opinion in a way that lends credence to civil lawsuits and even criminal prosecution (on civil-rights grounds) against individual BSA leaders and the BSA itself. In addition to the erosion of trust and support from people who have relied on the BSA’s respect for the moral tenets of their faith, the BSA will have to devote financial and personnel resources to defending against these charges. Wrenched between these whirlpools of public reaction, the organization could easily go under.

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The residual moral appeal of that façade will be used to attract and indoctrinate youngsters in an essentially self-serving, hedonistic and unmanly understanding of human family life, one that destroys the independent moral basis of the family as the primordial, God-ordained institution of human self-government. This will effectively deny the family’s institutional claim to possess God-endowed authority and rights which all other institutions of human government are obliged, by the Creator, to respect.

Thus understood in terms of its likely consequences, the latest proposal for ending the BSA’s ban on homosexual participation in Scouting is a strategic ploy. What is most disturbing is that it uses the young participants in the Scouting movement as cannon fodder in the battle against the natural family. Some youngsters will be positioned to draw other youngsters into situations where, because they react against sexual advances according to the moral precepts of the faith of their fathers, they will be viciously accused of unrighteous bigotry. Or else their vulnerable adolescent emotions will impel them to betray the tenets of conscience derived from their faith, and slip into a whirlpool of compulsive sensual indulgence, moral guilt and spiritual confusion.

In the realm of moral contention, this deployment of, and against, children reminds me of the way the strategists of terror exploit kids in their perpetration of deadly acts of physical violence. I earnestly pray to God to open the eyes of the BSA’s grass-roots leaders and participants. I pray that He will grant them the wisdom to see past false pretenses of compassion and tolerance, in order to recognize a strategy that intentionally and recklessly endangers the moral lives of the youngsters God has entrusted to their care. These young souls deserve better than to be casualties in the battle to force the American people to surrender the unalienable natural rights endowed by their Creator’s provision for the wholesome life of the human family.

After writing a column for WorldNetDaily reprimanding the Boy Scouts of America for proposing a policy to lift the ban on gay members under the age of eighteen, Linda Harvey of Mission America took to the airwaves today to warn Scout leaders that such a move will “betray children” and engender “destructive psychological dynamics” within the organization. She alleged that homosexuality is a “high-risk and sinful lifestyle” and that gay scouts will inevitably try to have “physical and sexual contact” with their “fellow troop members who may not welcome this attention.”

The fiction of a fixed homosexual identity has no basis in fact and is terribly harmful, especially so to children. Why would a youth organization betray children so terribly to establish a regulation like this affecting over two million boys in America, leading them to condone a high-risk and sinful lifestyle? Then there’s the adult portion, of course open homosexuals should not be allowed as leaders, as with the president policy but if it’s wrong for adults why wouldn’t this be just as wrong for kids if not more so?

The people proposing this policy are not weighing the most pertinent factors. What exactly do they think boys who are bold enough to label themselves as gay to their fellow troop members will do? Not all but many of these will be middle or high school aged boys open to or actively seeking other boys to have a relationship with. Attraction means attraction; it’s not just a theoretical thing. That will most likely include confessing attraction to fellow troop members who may not welcome this attention followed by possible physical and sexual contact.

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If this is voted in, those casting the votes will demonstrate an ignorance of basic facts that there is no science supporting an inborn gay identity for kids or adult. They will ignore health risks, especially to boys, and the destructive psychological dynamics of same-sex attraction within a small group of children of the same sex.

Mission America’s Linda Harvey is warning that leaders of the Boy Scouts of America who seek to end the ban on gay members under the age of 18 will have to answer to God for their move to let in gay youth and their “nail polish, dangling earrings and make-up.”

In her WorldNetDaily column, she called such BSA officials “monsters” who will transform the scouts into a “pedophile’s dream” where “the likelihood of sexual abuse is extremely high.”

Congratulations on advancing the sexual anarchist agenda and drawing countless numbers of children into sin. What will these leaders say to Jesus when they meet Him?

It’s a lie. No child’s same-sex attraction should be condoned, but instead, caring adults will guide them toward overcoming these feelings while recognizing a red flag signaling abuse or other disorders.

The Scout board, however, by publicly proposing this change for an upcoming vote, betrays the trust of millions of American boys and the media attention profoundly damages boys’ beliefs about responsible manhood. The ideals of the Scouts are a sham without the recognition that growing into an honorable, mature male means embracing masculinity, not femininity, and eagerly anticipating marriage with a woman and fatherhood in that union.

Who are the monsters on this board who would callously foster and feed the deception that any valid orientation exists except God-designed heterosexuality, and that all else is deviance? Neither Christian doctrine, nor epidemiology, nor social science, nor genetic research supports this fiction. The vote in May should not only say “No” but toss these guys out on their deaf ears.

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So early sexual experience is common among youth who adopt the unnatural “gay” identity, but to depict it as positive is another level of depravity. I reported several years back about books recommended by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. In its reading recommendations, young teens having homosexual sex, sometimes with an adult, were common. And of course, adverse consequences are rare in these stories – no diseases, criminal prosecution of adult predators or emotional trauma. It’s truly a pedophile’s dream, where abused children “choose” to have early sex.

But such stories are now the guidebooks for the new “gay” teen, the troop members our sons will camp out with. Troop should not turn boys away, but deviant notions of sex and gender need to be turned away. And under current policy, they are.

Yet we have this new regressive proposal. Homosexual labels are to be OK for boys, but not adults, one more piece of nonsense. Some Scout leaders will conceal same-sex attractions and yet lead boys who confess these attractions. Won’t some leaders be unable to resist temptation? And predictably, won’t males with these proclivities be drawn in greater numbers than ever to Scout leadership, given the chance to meet willing boys? We would be handing them proximity and access, two basic pedophile/pederast values.

The Boy Scout cover story is that no sexual behavior is allowed in the Scouts, which will, of course, prevent this, as well as an out-and-proud 15 year old from making moves on your still impressionable younger sons. Does anyone realistically trust this will never happen? On the contrary, this policy sets up situations where the likelihood of sexual abuse is extremely high. And the Scout organization is reckless and naive if they don’t see the litigation coming from broken-hearted families whose sons have been victimized either by an older boy or an adult.

Homosexual attraction doesn’t behave by the nice rules constructed by the Boy Scout leaders. Visit a “gay” pride parade to observe what many of these folks consider proud and acceptable behavior in public. The homosexual youth members of your son’s troop may, in all probability, participate in such parades. They may belong to their school’s “gay-straight alliance,” groups that promulgate the myth of inborn homosexual identity, believe any objection to homosexuality is grounded in hate and that Christian conservatives are their enemies.

And let’s not forget the support these homosexually attracted youth will get from the “gay” lobby. The new policy provides a convenient weapon of intimidation to make sure these homosexually identified boys are able to fully “express who they are” within the troop – and nail polish, dangling earrings and make-up are just the beginning. Troop leaders who try to restore order should prepare for legal action.

Anthony Esolen of Providence College is out today with a column for the Witherspoon Institute, which funded the very much discredited Mark Regnerus study on same-sex parenting, warning about the perils of lifting the ban on gay members in the Boy Scouts.

In an essay about a young boy named Luke and his father, Esolen writes that “even savages” have rejected the idea of same-sex marriage. He also describes gays as “confused” people who “do bad and unnatural things with their bodies” and therefore “become prone to terrible disease.”

But while Luke’s dad wants his son to join the Boy Scouts, he is worried that troop leaders now have an “eye for young men” while teachers will “cheer when a boy publicizes his entry into the bizarre and self-destructive.”

Esolen warns that the Boy Scouts are transforming into the “Unisex Scouts” and that certain boys will “inevitably be enticed, by loneliness or a trick of the lewd or boredom or a desperate need to be noticed or a despair that they could ever become true men, into the life of the male forever seeking the male.”

I see a boy.

Luke is ten years old. He sports a cowlick across his forehead, and a bright smile.

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He is a boy: vir futurus, a going-to-be man. Meaning: He will join other men, brothers fighting to attain or defend the common good. Greater meaning: He is made for a self-giving that is categorically impossible among his male friends. He is made for a woman. It is the orientation of his body, in its sexual form. It is the orientation of his masculine being, developing in a natural and healthy way.

None of this should be controversial, no more than claiming that the noonday sky is blue. Should someone protest, “It isn’t so! I saw it green once, when a tornado was coming,” we’d look askance, and wonder whether he had lost the capacity for normal communication. A boy is not a girl. A boy grows up to be a man. A man marries a woman, for love and for a family: That goal is stamped upon his body. Even savages without a doctorate in philosophy can figure it out.

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With his own sex, however, there should be naturalness and ease. So the father, on their treks alone, undresses before the boy as carelessly as he would undress before the dog, teaching the boy to do the same. The meaning is clear: You and I are alike. That is why we can do this.

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What about aberrations? When Luke asks about them, because of things he’s heard at school, the father says that certain people are confused, and do bad and unnatural things with their bodies. They become prone to terrible diseases. But when he catches Luke in a tiff calling another boy a sissy, he reprimands him severely. Since he would not complicate Luke’s passage to manhood, he grants other men’s sons the same courtesy, especially when those boys are walking a more difficult path.

He and his wife keep destructive images out of their home. No pitching the tent beside a cesspool. Luke doesn’t have a computer or a television in his bedroom. Why should Luke be taught his morals by people who dwell in a world unparalleled for its combination of depravity, stupidity, luxury, and vanity? Better to play with his little sister and brother, and talk to his parents.

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Of course, Luke will not be at home all the time. Lately he has been asking to join an old group called the Boy Scouts. Luke’s father has to think about this.

In a healthy time, not so long ago, he would not have had to think about it. He’d have taken for granted that his commonsense view, that a boy is a boy, avir futurus, meant in the very structure of his body to be for a woman, for the begetting and raising of children, would have been shared by everyone else. In particular, it was shared by the Boy Scouts. For the Boy Scouts were, to quote the pastor whose homily appears in the first issue of Boys’ Life magazine, to “quit themselves like men.”

The boy in the title was, if anything, more important than the scout. If a certain boy in the ranks were caught trying to entice others in things unmanly, and here I am including also the unmanly things that boys attracted to girls do, he’d have been taken aside, or sent to the counseling he badly needed, or quietly dismissed from the corps.

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He does not want any word, or suggestion, or tale, or touch, to make Luke’s passage through the straits any more troublesome than it must inevitably be. Most especially does he not want a young scoutmaster with an eye for young men to drop a casual hint about his life, as if it were as moral as eating.

Luke’s father has a right to expect that people will not obtrude themselves into his son’s normal growth to manhood. It is wrong to lay a snare in the boy’s path. It is downright wicked to do so, when the life held forth not only frustrates the natural aims of Luke’s parents and the natural fulfillment of the boy’s masculinity, but also leaves those who are snared prone to an array of terrible diseases, both physical and moral.

He notes with wry irritation that Luke’s teachers are apt to wag their fingers at perfectly innocent things, like cupcakes in a lunchbox, but will cheer when a boy publicizes his entry into the bizarre and self-destructive.

But it isn’t just the pitfalls that the father is thinking of. It occurs to him that the Boy Scouts and he have come to an impasse. There is no reconciling them. The Boy Scouts now proclaim that there is nothing to being a boy, and nothing to the boy’s becoming a man; they might as well be the Unisex Scouts, as they are in Canada, where the scouting movement has collapsed.

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What is the father supposed to do? He can recall that better time, that healthier time, and can name several boys he knew who, if they were boys today, would inevitably be enticed, by loneliness or a trick of the lewd or boredom or a desperate need to be noticed or a despair that they could ever become true men, into the life of the male forever seeking the male.

He knows that most of them weathered the storms, precisely because the assumption that a boy is a boy gave them protection, some breathing space, some time to sort out their feelings and to grow up. He wants for Luke some small survival of that better time.

Florida Family Policy Council head and anti-gay activist John Stemberger has created a new group, On My Honor, to oppose the “hyper-sexualization” of the Boy Scouts of America that he fears will take place if the group lifts its ban on gay members.

During an interview with Religious Right talk show host Janet Mefferd, Stemberger argued that if the BSA lifts the gay ban, the organization will experience a rise in “boy-on-boy” assaults and “emotional, sexual, psychological and physical abuse.”

He told Mefferd that kids these days all want to be gay and will then join the Boy Scouts to molest each other.

“It’s hip, it’s edgy to be gay and so they’re all saying they’re gay—they have no idea,” Stemberger said. “Well if scouting sends the message, ‘we’re open for gays,’ you’re going to have so much nonsense going on between older boys and younger boys.”

Mefferd: Now I know you are raising awareness as well about the dangers that open homosexuality within the scouting organization would present, what do you believe the biggest dangers would be if this policy were reversed and open homosexuality would be permitted in the Boy Scouts?

Stemberger: My personal opinion based upon my experience and talking to leaders all over the country and other scoutmasters, it is not going to be primarily adult gay men. Scouting has a very strict child protection program that requires two-deep leadership, that means that no adult can be alone with any child except with their own child at any time, they are extremely strict with it. So I don’t think the primary threat, although it could potentially be a threat, is going to be adults.

I think it is going to be boy-on-boy. My sister is a middle school teacher in Florida and she said, ‘John, everybody in the whole class is talking about ‘are you gay,’ ‘I’m gay,’ ‘I’m gender confused, what are you?’ It’s just like they don’t even know what they’re talking about. It’s hip, it’s edgy to be gay and so they’re all saying they’re gay—they have no idea. Well if scouting sends the message, ‘we’re open for gays,’ you’re going to have so much nonsense going on between older boys and younger boys, it’s just going to create a myriad of problems that really is going to result in further scandal, further disgrace to the scouts, not to mention just the tragedy of the emotional, sexual, psychological and physical abuse that will occur in the program. If even two children, even one child is going to be molested by another boy in the program, that is enough compelling in my judgment to say no, we are not going to do this, there is no reason for it whatsoever.

According to Stemberger, there really isn’t a ban on gays because you can still join as long as you are in the closet.

Later, Stemberger argued that the BSA should fear the example set by the Girl Scouts, which he claims is “being run by lesbians” and has “been really politicized and sexualized in a way that is inappropriate for children.”

Stemberger: Here’s an important point I want to make: currently there are people in scouting who are probably homosexual, there’s no litmus test, there’s no witch hunt to find out who they are; they’re discreet, they’re appropriate, they’re personal, they’re private, they’re not loud and proud, they’re not out there waving the rainbow flag and trying to make a big deal about it and trying to promote gay marriage and all this business. There’s no application question on what your sexual orientation is when you join scouting, the problem is what they’re allowing is open homosexuality. That’s a very different thing; that is promoting the gay agenda, that is promoting politics and it is just inappropriate. When it comes to children we think that sex and politics should stay out of the Boy Scouts, it should have no place in it whatsoever.

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Stemberger: We have about two months to really make sure that this timeless institution is not transformed into something politicized thing like the Girl Scouts have, unfortunately where it is being run by lesbians and promoting Planned Parenthood, it’s just been really politicized and sexualized in a way that is inappropriate for children.

Mefferd: Yes, absolutely right.