Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, Boy Scouts was an important part of my family’s life. My dad served as a troop leader and a scouting commissioner. Dad was very athletic and taught canoeing, swimming, life guarding, rope climbing, knot tying and first aid among other things. One of the things that dad always stressed was to lead an honest and moral life and believe in God, Jesus and the Bible. He was always popular and well-liked by the scouts, their parents and other leaders.
My mom was also active in working with dad in the Boy Scouts. My two older brothers were eagle scouts and I made it to a Life scout before having to quit.
I have fond memories of all of the different scouting events, especially the weekend campouts and the summer camps. As I got older, I was in an Explorer post that specialized in marksmanship and gunsmithing. We had a shooting team and I was generally number two in points. That’s where I learned how to strip down many different types of guns, repair them and put them all back together. I also learned how to make custom stocks and handgrips.
Through it all, I was always taught honesty, integrity and moral values including that sex was strictly between one man and one woman in a marriage relationship and anything else was a sin and wrong. Prayer and Scripture were also an integral part of my scouting experience. They also taught me never to compromise my values for anyone.
As I heard the news about the Boy Scouts of America voting to allow openly gay boys into their ranks, I was deeply saddened. I believe that they voted this way not just to allow all boys to have the scouting experience, but to avoid costly lawsuits in the future. They chose to undermine the century old values of the Boy Scouts by giving into the pressures of a group of people who promote a perverted and sinful lifestyle. The Boy Scout leaders did the very thing that they taught millions of boys never to do – compromise their moral values.
When the Canadian Boy Scouts voted to accept gays into their ranks in 1998, it was the beginning of a mass exodus. Within ten years, the number of Boy Scouts in Canada had decreased by 50%. Many scout troops are sponsored by churches and a great many churches discontinued their scouting programs because of the decision to compromise the morals and values of what the Boy Scouts have always stood for.
A number of churches in the US have already been preparing for what seemed to be the inevitable outcome of the leadership vote on Thursday and will discontinue their sponsorship of their scouting programs when the ban on gays is lifted come January 1, 2014. If I was a boy now and was in Boy Scouts, Thursday would have been the day I quit. I would never trust camping out with a gay scout and I know many others feel the same way. It pains me to know that thousands of boys who would have greatly benefitted by the scouting experience will never have that chance because of the whining of gay activists.
I know that I can no longer endorse or recommend the Boy Scouts to anyone. In fact, I would encourage every parent to seek out other options, perhaps church groups for boys that would teach them some of the things that the Boy Scouts teach. If there aren’t any church programs in your area, find out what it would take to start one. If that’s not an option, then take the time that your sons would normally spend with the Boy Scouts and you spend it with them, teaching them and preparing them to be upright young men who value their relationship with you, with Jesus Christ and to never compromise their values. Those are the men our nation needs.
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