They are too late there are already gay and lesbian scouts and scouters.

That phone line must be jam packed. While I wish they had the fortitude to make a decision this week, pushing it off onto the General Meeting isn't a bad idea. A lot of people will get a chance to hash things out and come to terms with each other. Units can get through the program year and take the summer to realign themselves if need be, families as well.

Regardless of your opinion on this issue, I suspect that a long cooling-off period is a very good thing.

I think a lot of Americans right now are experiencing what futurist Alvin Toffler termed "Future Shock" in his bestseller of the same name way back in 1970: a personal perception of "too much change in too short a time." It leads to a sense of deadened personal exhaustion, like a rat trapped in an unsolvable maze, and a resistance to additional social change.

Consider what we have been through as a nation in the last several months: An incredibly divisive and vicious political campaign that alienated many longtime friends and families, facilitated by a 24-hour news cycle and a social media network that magnified every slip, every flub, every misstatement by every candidate to be endlessly rehashed and blown out of proportion in the media. The head of the CIA, a well-respected war hero, was caught in a long-term adulterous affair. Several states have de-facto legalized marijuana through the medical marijuana campaign, and several states have simply legalized marijuana use. A series of mass murders, from the shootings of innocent little schoolchildren in Connecticut to the shootings by a deranged ex-policeman in Los Angeles in the last few days, and a socially divisive demand to return to a previously abandoned gun control policy, has made some people feel that their personal safety is at risk and others feel that their ability to defend themselves from deranged maniacs will be taken from them by the government. Without any congressional input or warning, the current administration unilaterally decided to put women in ground combat arms for the first time in U.S. history, and legal challenges will probably require women to register in the Selective Service system within the next few years. Several states have enacted laws legalizing marriage between two men or two women, and the Supreme Court will now weigh in on the issue too. The ObamaCare policy has discovered a new-found right not only to health care, but has decided that "health care" must also include contraceptives and abortifacients that adherents of many faiths feel impinges on their 1st Amendment rights. America is just beginning to feel the sticker shock of the requirements of that policy, the CBO just announced that Obama wasn't really being serious when he said you can keep your health policy if you like it, and having kicked the can down the road on one budgetary crisis, another is fast approaching. Americans are starting to notice a bigger cut out of their paychecks due to the expiration of the payroll tax cuts. And now, homosexual members must be accepted into the Boy Scouts of America, even if a large number (possibly a majority, possibly not) of the private membership of that organization disagrees.

I don't want to argue any of those issues again on this forum, but I don't think anyone can argue that we are in a period of extreme social change from what many people have regarded as traditional truths: A man's religious rights are sacrosanct, marriage is between a man and a woman, men shouldn't committ adultery, marijuana is bad and its use should be discouraged by society, the role of infantry combat in warfare is best left to men, the government has limits to what it can and should do, and so forth.

Whether you agree with some or all or none of those statements, consider that the modern rate of social change can be overwhelming and if you push people to change too much, too fast, they will eventually draw a line in the sand and say, "no further." For many people, whose image of the Boy Scouts is (rightly or wrongly) a mix of hazy pleasant memories from childhood and Norman Rockwell oil paintings, this is one change too many. Even if you think this change is required (and I do not), you are not giving people enough time to adjust and to change their views of American traditions, and trying to demonize them (such as calling them "homophobic," a made-up psychological term that is grammatically meaningless) only makes them dig in their heels and resist more. The BSA is one of the icons of Americanism for most of us. If you were to demand that turkey and pie be banned at the Thanksgiving dinner table or that the Superbowl be played as flag football, the resistance would be no less. Many Americans of a traditional state of mind feel they are being pushed around by a dominant popular culture that does not respect their beliefs, and they are tired of it.

This is the wrong time in American history to demand such a major change, in my humble opinion. I know many people in support of a local option feel that the time is always right for massive change, either a local option or total abolishment of any policies against homosexual membership and atheism, but a cooling-off period is a good thing right now. More democracy is always a good thing, so the more people voting on this, the more feeling of ownership and buy-in scouters will have in whatever we wind up with.

Will it be a smaller scouting organization? Probably, however it turns out. Some people of a progressivist slant will probably leave, or some people of a traditional frame of mind will. I've heard the figures bandied about lately that after the Boy Scouts of Canada allowed homosexual leaders in 1999, they lost 36 percent of their membership over the next five years, and went from about 200,000 to about 122,000, to a current low of about 100,000. Are those figures accurate, and if so, were other societal and demographic issues also at play? I have no idea. But something of the same kind, of possibly a greater magnitude, would be likely to happen here if the left pushes too hard. Will we get fewer corporate donations if National votes the proposal down, or only votes in a local option? Probably, if anything other than total capitulation occurs. The Boy Scouts are probably uniquely suited to survive lean times, as it has always been more about what happens at the local level, and Scouts survive periods of no money pretty well - look at how scouting survived under the great Depression, when few parents could afford uniforms for their kids.

We all want to know what the final decision is going to be, but regardless of your opinion, I think a cooling-off period is a good idea. Let tempers cool off, let the bluster die down, and spend the time working with the boys and doing the things we should be doing. Let the media and the activist groups, which have their own agendas, do their own thing and let's ignore it. Let scouters talk, work out their agreements or disagreements in a civil manner that is consonant with the values of Scouting. To jaw-jaw is always better than war-war, as one of Baden-Powell's friends said.

Our work continues.

Those who oppose change will argue that change is coming too fast, that we suddenly need a "democratic process" that has been denied us while a secret committee worked. They will argue that the BSA policy has remained unchanged for 100 years while forgetting women, DRP, and segregation; America has changed. They will ignore that they themselves do not have to change as they are adamant in denying others the freedom to change.

Other scouters and their CO's are tired and ashamed of turning away congregation and community members, great families with much to offer. These scouters and their CO's want an inclusive program that turns away no boy and his family who want to be involved in Scouting. With no National leadership, we will lead at the local level and change our membership policies. Where threatened with charter revocation, we will continue our inclusive policies quietly or go public in defiance . We are exploring other youth program alternatives to better serve all. It is good to have a Plan B.

Our work continues. Change is coming from the outside in and from the bottom up....and so is Leadership.

See you on Scout Sunday for the sermon about the lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King.

My $0.02

The only time Dr. King publicly mentioned homosexuality was in 1958, which revealed that he viewed those with a same-sex attraction with compassion while obviously condemning the sin. Dr. King wrote in response to a question in his advice column in Ebony magazine in which a boy asked:


"I am a boy. But I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don't want my parents to know about me. What can I do?"


King answered: "Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it."

Dr. King's own family has objected to attempts to shoehorn him into the gay rights cause. As his daughter Bernice said, "I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex unions." His niece, Dr. Alveda King, wrote,"My Uncle Martin Luther King, Jr. Did Not March For Same Sex Marriage."




"The group of black clergy and civil rights leaders say it is time to turn the tide against the 'hijacking' of the civil rights movement," said the Rev. Bill Owens, the organizer of the Coalition of African-American Pastors. Owens and his peers gathered at a press conference last week to protest the comparison of same-sex marriage to the civil rights struggles of black Americans.



"A 50-year-old can only read about the struggles and protests of the civil rights era, but some of us who are older have the battle scars to prove it. And the rights we fought so hard to acquire did not include same-sex marriage," the Rev. Owens added.


Arguments for or against this issue should not include specious and inapplicable appeals to a borrowed moral authority.

perhaps having the "Perversion Files" out in Public is not such a bad deal. Does anyone know if any analysis has been done to see how many of the files recounted abuse by openly gay adults versus married with children and a pillar of the community? We hear about teachers who sexually molest students all the time, How many are openly gay and how many are married with children?

It all makes sense now: http://www.theonion.com/articles/boy-scouts-to-try-out-single-gay-12yearold-before,31194

From a blog on the Scouting magazine website:

• Planning (Feb. 6-28): The BSA defines desired process and intended outcomes.
• Listening (March 1-April 5): BSA committees engage key stakeholders for input and the development of assessments.
• Evaluating (April 5-17): BSA officers review committee reports and prepare a resolution that the National Council voting members will act on at the National Annual Meeting in Grapevine, Texas.
• Educating (April 18-May 24): The reports and the resolution are shared with the voting members of the national council and the Scouting family.
• Deciding (May 22-24): The BSA conducts on-site information sessions for voting members at the National Annual Meeting, and a vote takes place.
• Implementing (May 24 and on): Based on the results of the vote, the BSA will determine and implement the next steps for the organization.

More here: http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/201...cy/#more-17985