Scouts and Honor

Last week the Boys Scouts of America changed their name to reflect a change of accepting girls. This week major Scouting sponsor, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced they will discontinue their association with Scouting at the end of 2019.

President Thomas S. Monson with Scouts
April 13, 2002
image from here

It looks like cause and effect. But I don’t believe that’s really accurate.

So, what I’m about to present are my personal views; I am in no way a spokesperson for either the Church or Scouting. But I have an insider’s view of both. So, maybe I can help offer some understanding.

Let’s start with what I see as the Church’s viewpoint.

For the past century the Church has adopted Boy Scouting as the activity program for their young men, starting with Cub Scouts at age 8 (so not including Tiger Cubs at age 7), and up through Boy Scouts, including Explorers, Venturers, and/or Varsity Scouts for ages 14-17. This has always been in addition to the larger youth program that teaches young men to grow into spiritual leaders in their homes and communities.

A year ago, the Church announced that it would discontinue the Boy Scout program for boys age 14+. For a very long time, the Boy Scout program for older boys has not been a good fit for the Church. With few exceptions, the Church has sponsored a troop for each congregation, called a ward, including the units from Cubs on up. But outside the Church, the older groups are designed to attract young men (and some young women) with similar individual interests, rather than the general interests of all the Boy Scouts in a unit’s neighborhood. So youth leaders have long struggled with various iterations, trying to make the program work for all the young men in a particular ward.

In other words, Boy Scouting has never been all there was for youth in the Church, because it has never been enough.

Add to that the fact that, for the past 22 years (since February 1996), there are more Church members outside the United States than inside. While Boy Scouts exist in some other countries, the reality is that the majority of boys in the Church have never had access to Boy Scouting.

That means the Church has long been developing a full, worldwide program for youth. That, program, along with changes for young women, was what was announced this week.

When the Church discontinued the Scouting program for older boys, the Church nevertheless paid sponsorship throughout the year as though they were still sponsoring those boys. In other words, the Church went out of its way to prevent its withdrawal from doing harm to the Boy Scout national organization.

Boy Scouts perform flag ceremony in the Mormon Tabernacle
in honor of Constitution Day celebration September 18, 2009
image from here

Now we come to the announcement this week. The Church is giving more than a year and a half for the BSA to prepare and rearrange their budget and planning. It will be a significant adjustment. As the news has been announcing, that’s a loss of about 425,000 boys nationwide. In the Sam Houston Area Council, where we live, about 3,400 LDS boys in 221 units make up about 10% of Boy Scout membership, and about 17% of the total units, along with their budgets, a portion of which goes to support the Council and the national BSA organization.

In Utah, I don’t have access to the numbers, but I’m guessing Boy Scout membership is probably north of 70%, and the budget might be more than that. That will include property, such as scout camps, which are outright gifted to the Boy Scouts.

Non-LDS boys have always been welcome in LDS troops. And after the pull-out, LDS boys will still be welcome in other community troops. But, in Utah especially, it will be a much smaller organization than it has been.

The Church could have simply made the announcement and gone ahead immediately. If they were reacting to last week’s name change or something else, that’s what you would expect. Instead, they’ve tried to make the transition as easy on BSA as possible. Why would they do that, unless they wanted the Boy Scouts to continue on without them?

In the joint statement made by the Church and BSA on May 8th, they say this: 

While the Church will no longer be a chartered partner of BSA or sponsor Scouting units after December 31, 2019, it continues to support the goals and values reflected in the Scout Oath and Scout Law and expresses its profound desire for Scouting’s continuing and growing success in the years ahead.

Scout Oath and Law

The Scout Oath and Law, as I’ve written before, are a very good guide for civilization. [In fact, I’ve written about Scouting here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.]

About the timing. For those paying any attention, the Church has been going through some major changes in the past few months. Our beloved Prophet Thomas S. Monson passed away in early January; he was a lifelong champion of the Boy Scouts, but it is obvious that any changes happening now were in the planning stages for a long time and had his full support. His successor, President Russell M. Nelson, is age 93 already—older than President Monson was. But he just finished a worldwide tour, and has been so full of energy it leaves many of us breathless. (He still skis with his grandchildren, by the way.) He is wasting no time putting changes into action.

None of these changes are doctrinal. All of them are designed to put more responsibility for our own spiritual growth on ourselves, from children on up, and for helping us put the gospel into action by ministering to one another. This has included changes in local priesthood quorums, retiring the visiting teaching and home teaching programs and changing them into more integrated ministering programs. There have been changes in what young people (ages 12+) are able to do in our temples—which follows lowering the ages for missionaries, a change that came about just a few years ago.

We’re getting so we’re expecting a new announcement every week. So the announcement this week—which was expected eventually, after last year’s ending of Scouting for 14+—is timed for the Church’s needs, and not in response to any BSA policy or name change.

Now for my view of the Boy Scouts.

Boy Scout badges, image from here

Here’s a brief timeline related to current issues:

·         1907 Boy Scouts are founded in Great Britain by Robert Baden Powell.

·         1910 Boy Scouts of America begins founded by W. D. Boyce.

·         1912 Girl Scouts are organized in America by Juliette Gordon Low, patterned after the Boy Scouts, but always a separate organization.

·         1913 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopts Scouting as its activity program for boys.

·         1969 BSA begins allowing young women to join Explorer posts wherever chartering organizations allow.

·         2000 After years of litigation, BSA prevails in the US Supreme Court’s ruling in “Boy Scouts of America v. Dale,” which means BSA and other private organizations have the right to set membership standards, including exclusions of homosexual Scouts and Scout leaders.

·         2000+ Despite the legal victory, BSA faces persecution and exclusion from organizations, institutions, and facilities over their exclusion of openly homosexual members (as Scouts or leaders).

·         Meanwhile, BSA tightens its training and rules to prevent molestation of youth, even as NAMBLA prints materials telling predators how to infiltrate youth organizations, particularly BSA[i].

·         2012 BSA’s 11-person national committee reaches “unanimous consensus” that continuing to exclude homosexuals from Scouting was in the best interest of Scouting.

·         2013 More than 1400 BSA volunteer leaders nationwide vote to accept all boys into Scout troops, regardless of sexual orientation; local entities retained the ability to abide by church beliefs. This became policy January 2014. Mr. Perry, the National President, said, “Everyone agrees on one thing, no matter how you feel about this issue, kids are better off in Scouting.”[ii]

·         2015 In July “open or avowed homosexual” adults were no longer banned from youth leadership.

·         2017 In January BSA began allowing transgendered boys (i.e., biological girls who see themselves as boys) to participate in BSA troops.

·         2017 In October BSA announces it will begin having Cub Scout dens for girls, and in 2019 will begin having regular BSA troops for girls (local units will have separate dens or troops for girls, and will not include girls within boy troops).

·         2018 On May 2^nd a name change was announced, from Boy Scouts of America to Scouting BSA, to accommodate the addition of girl troops into Scouting.

·         2018 On May 8^th The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announces plans to end its relationship as a sponsoring organization as of December 31, 2019.

The Boy Scouts have been pummeled for literally decades now, by people who, rather than start an organization catering to their own values, have insisted that the Boy Scouts become something different.

You’ve heard of the slippery slope. The Boy Scouts continue with the same Scout Oath and Law they have always had. But society around them, instead of recognizing those values, has derided and persecuted them.

In our Church, youth with same-sex attraction were never disallowed from any troop I’m aware of. However, there’s an assumption—because it’s in the Scout Oath as well as part of the religion—that the boys are not sexually active. A boy with same-sex attraction would receive the same level of care and attention as any other boy (maybe more, simply out of concern for him in his challenges). But the Church would never have supported a boy’s acting on those impulses, any more than it would have encouraged heterosexual boys to be sexually active.

Legally the Boy Scouts won their case in 2000. And they continued to stand strong for yet another dozen years. People who insisted that homosexual sex was not a sin told the Boy Scouts, who weren’t even accepting illicit heterosexual sex, that they needed to conform. The method of persuasion was persecution and pressure, to the point that Boy Scouts could no longer use public facilities, including many schools. Some schools even refused to allow them to recruit, or pass out informational flyers—while Girl Scouts and other organizations were allowed.

Every step of change has included considering, “How can we do what’s best for the boys?” Sometimes the decision went something like, “If we give in on this point, the pressure will go away, and it will have very minimal impact on the organization overall.” That was certainly true for allowing boys with same-sex attraction.

At this year's District Awards Dinner,
Mr. Spherical Model accepted
the Chartered Partner Award on behalf
of our local Church jurisdiction

Later, with the increased protection policies and training, there was less risk for allowing homosexual adult leaders, although there was the loss of leaders who would model only moral sexual behavior—i.e., marriage. I would have preferred they’d stayed strong on this. Unlike for boys, at this point it became about, not what a boy thinks, but what an adult does.

The transgender policy was another step with very little impact. The number of actual transgender teens is tiny, and the number of those individuals who would choose to join themselves to an organization with the Scout Oath and Law would be much tinier. And local organizations always retained their freedom.

Now, about girls joining.

The insider view looks more family friendly than feminist. What happens is that families who support their sons in Scouting also have girls. Those girls end up tagging along at those Scout activities. I did this myself, decades ago, as an unofficial Cub Scout. I did the field trips and the crafts. I just didn’t get any badges—and I didn’t get to make a pinewood derby car. But I was there, because, where else was I supposed to go?

So girls have been hanging around, unofficially for a long time. Or, sometimes the family gets split up trying to support a Girl Scout troop as well. During the few years when we had Boy Scouts and a Girl Scout at the same time, we divided duties that way, and kept ourselves very busy. But, as I’ve said before, the Girl Scout program wasn’t ever up to the level of the Boy Scout program.[iii]

What most families who will have girls join Scouting want is to have the whole family together. That does not mean the girls will be in the boys’ troops. It means that they’re hoping the sponsoring organization—their school, their church, their Kiwanis Club—will also sponsor a unit for girls. Then they can share some of the leadership, and can coordinate.

So you might have the boys’ troop meet on one side of the school cafeteria and the girls’ troop on the other. The family goes together to the same place at the same time. And the girls get a better program than they were offered before.

Girls have been part of older Boy Scout units—the Explorers, including the Sea Scouts—for decades, even in the same troops as boys. This is simply an expansion to younger ages, with more continued separation at the Cub and Scout levels.

Would I have liked this opportunity for my daughter? I might have. Much of it was about associations with friends, and meeting her needs. So I can’t be certain I’d have signed her up. But, because of my familiarity with Boy Scouts, I would have been willing to consider it.

It would be interesting to see the alternate universe in which the Scouts never gave in at all, regardless of the persecution. But, at the local level, among those who give all those thousands of volunteer hours for their kids, they’re still going by that Scout Oath and Law. And I hope they can hang on for the next generation.

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[i] Jeffery Curley, age 10, was raped and murdered Oct. 1 1997. The perpetrators had in their possession NAMBLA materials, as well as a book, “Rape and Escape,” published by NAMBLA. They used an idea from the NAMBLA materials to lure the boy. The family sued NAMBLA for its contribution to the murder of their son; the ACLU defending NAMBLA pro bono, claiming NAMBLA has 1st amendment rights to free speech; ironically, the ACLU requested a gag order against the prosecution and asked for witnesses who testified in the Curley case concerning the NAMBLA information to be disallowed.

[ii] “Boy Scouts End Longtime Ban on Openly Gay Youths,” by Erik Eckholm, New York Times, May 23, 2013:    https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/us/boy-scouts-to-admit-openly-gay-youths-as-members.html

[iii] We participated in Girl Scouts up through her Silver Award. But changes like this show why we didn’t want to further the relationship: “Girl Scouts Now Allowing Adult Males to Share Female Restrooms and Changing Rooms With Children as Young as 5” It isn't feminists who want to join the Boy Scouts; it's people who don't want that agenda pushed on their daughters who are likely to join Boy Scouts.

Defining Boy Scout Moment

Boy Scout badges, photo from here

Tuesday, before the big news about the Supreme Court nominee, some of us took note of a different announcement. The Boy Scouts of America made, not a change in policy, but a change in determining definition. Here is the specific wording:

Starting today, we will accept and register youth in the Cub and Boy Scout programs based on the gender identity indicated on the application.

The only difference is that, rather than requiring proof that an applicant is a boy by using a birth certificate—as do schools, youth sports, and other youth organizations—the BSA will put the burden on the child and the parent to determine whether the child is actually a boy.

There’s been a hue and cry from erstwhile supporters of the Boy Scouts—saying this is just one more nail in the coffin, following acceptance of homosexual scouts and leaders in 2015. [I wrote about this here.]

I agree that I would have preferred not to have this redefinition. I would have preferred not giving credence to the LGBT agenda at all. But, as with the previous announcement, this one will lead to no perceptible change for the vast majority of scouts.

There was a Q&A that came out in the afternoon from our council office. The impact for your basic troop out there—the majority of which are sponsored by churches and other religious organizations is this:

Q: How does this impact religious organizations who sponsor Scouting?

A: While religious partners will continue to have the right to make decisions based on religious beliefs, we will work with families to find local Scouting units that are the best fit for their children.

Q: Will non-religious chartered organizations be allowed to determine eligibility?

A: As with all Cub Scout packs and Boy Scout troops, volunteer leadership of each unit determines their ability to provide a safe and effective program for the youth who seek membership.

The answer, in case you can’t see it in the subtle answer, is that it is the responsibility of the Council to accommodate a transgender girl who decides she is a boy and has parents who go along with her. No unit, whether religiously affiliated or not, will be required to be the unit to accommodate her/him.

BSA is taking a bit of a risk here. If a unit cannot be found that is willing to accept a female “boy,” or cannot find one within a reasonable distance for the family, the family could sue. But the family would have to prove that the local area Council is purposely discriminating, and not simply unable to find an accommodating unit.

There are many good reasons for a boy to participate in Boy Scouts. Some of those reasons could hold true for a transgender child, but not all. And there are burdens a transgender child puts upon young growing boys that their parents very well might want to protect them from.

There are fewer problems for Cub Scouts—no campingvi, no puberty. So let’s set that aside for the moment and look at Boy Scouts, which officially start at age 12.

There are regular campouts, typically monthly. This requires boys to sleep together in tents; adults sleep in nearby tents, but for safety reasons do not share tents with the boys.

They use pit toilets, or bathrooms with urinals plus limited stalls. In primitive camps they might build a temporary lean-to latrine, which they take down and bury afterward. They use open shower areas.

Scout camps often include water sports. Boys typically swim shirtless. But even if they choose to wear a shirt, body shape is clearly visible.

If you are the parent of this child, what do you think will happen when s/he attends a scout camp with boys who are also going through puberty? They can see that her/his body parts are female. S/he will have to deal with menstruation—which there will be no accommodation for because the camp is for boys, which your child claims to be. And I’m not sure what you expect of early teen boys who can clearly see the developing breasts on this strange kid in their troop. Do you expect them not to gawk, or be embarrassed, or mention it? Do you know any real boys that age?

If not, then maybe you’re not aware that boys play rough. They kind of need to. They run hard, play hard, wrestle, and hit hard. Scout leaders keep violence in check, but there’s going to be a healthy amount of roughhousing they’ll allow while they’re outdoors, having guy time. If s/he gets hurt, will you immediately assume s/he’s been bullied? Or will you ask for special treatment? Because if s/he’s a boy, s/he won’t fit in with the guys that way.

There could be real bullying. Leaders can and will teach the boys to treat everyone with respect. But the purpose of Boy Scouts is to raise them into good men; you can’t assume they already are. Put boys that age in a situation where someone is weird, or clearly not what they claim to be, and you’ll get boys who push limits, quite possibly into bullying—because they don’t yet have the tools to deal with the cognitive dissonance. Parents aren’t supposed to throw them into that kind of situation.

You’re bound to get parents of Boy Scouts—in nearly every troop—who will insist that their son not be forced to sleep in a tent with a female-bodied person. Or to shower with her/him. Or swim with her/him half-naked. Or risk being accused of bullying if there is any roughness s/he doesn’t like.

It’s hard to imagine a parent who would push their transgender girl/boy to suffer the indignities of being a "boy" who menstruates, has breasts, and is missing male body parts into a situation where typical boys are likely to notice and have no politically correct agenda requiring them to pretend there are no differences.

Transgenders make up a minuscule portion, about .3% of the population; that is 3 per 1000. Most transgenders do not reassign their gender until adulthood. Certainly those who undergo chemical or surgical operation are adults—because the American College of Pediatrics calls such alterations child abuse when done to a minor.

Here are some numbers:

2.4 million	Youth participating in BSA (some girls are welcome in some programs)
45 million	Youth of scouting age in US[i]
5.3%	Percentage of youth who participate in scouting
94.7%	Percentage of youth who do not participate in scouting
.3%	Percentage of population who choose a gender other than their DNA indicates
99.7%	Percentage of population who accept the gender of their DNA[ii]
135,000	Total possible transgender youth in US
67,5000	Transgender youth in US who are female-bodied presenting themselves as male.[iii]
3578	5.3% of female-to-male transgender youth likely to participate in scouting[iv]
100,000	Chartered organizations in BSA[v]
3-4%	Percentage of troops who could theoretically face the question of whether to accept a transgender youth

So, in all likelihood, very few troops (probably much fewer than this estimate) would ever face the question of whether to accept a transgender scout.

My guess is that, taking away the news story is also likely to take away the incentive for such an eventuality. It could happen; it will probably not happen anywhere nearby. And if you are in a troop that determines, among its own volunteer leadership, that it cannot provide a “safe and effective program” for boys that includes a transgender child, your troop cannot be forced to do so.

There are some who disagree with the strategy of giving in where it won’t make a difference, so keeping what does make a difference—a good program for youth, in a safe environment—is possible. The change in policy toward homosexual youth and leaders led to very little—essentially no perceptible—change for Scouting, but it took away a news item. This is just the next thing. It’s a strategy question, and I don’t always know how to predict strategy effectiveness until hindsight.

There has been a huge amount of prejudice against the Boy Scouts for a couple of decades, coming from intolerant social engineers who use labels like “bigoted” and “homophobic” to bully people into submission. BSA won in court the right to decide who to accept so they can serve the needs of boys. But that didn’t stop the onslaught. There has been a lot of damage.

This past Saturday we attended a District Boy Scout dinner (Mr. Spherical Model serves as a volunteer leader there. There wasn’t, by the way, any mention of this announcement; we got no heads up.) At our dinner table a couple of the women, who volunteer in Cub Scouts, were talking about the difficulties of recruiting. They participate in a school-sponsored Cub Scout pack. They had a flyer they wanted to send home with kids, to let parents know about the troop, for recruiting. It met all the standards required by the school and school district. Other similar flyers for other organizations—including some fundraising ones—were allowed. But someone at the school, someone with no more authority than a secretary, decided the Cub Scout flyer wasn’t allowed, because it’s a bigoted organization.

When you add together the unfair prejudice against Boy Scouts with emotional reactions from Boy Scout supporters who believe the organization is losing integrity, you can see that the end game of anyone who would insist on either homosexual scout leaders or a transgender s/he in scouting is intent on destroying the organization—because it helps raise boys into good men.

It is not “unfairness” they are protesting; it is civilization.

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[i] Pulling from census data, the closest bracket to scouting age is 5-17; there are nearly 54 million in that bracket in 2010. That covers 12 years; Scouting generally covers 10. So we cut the total to 5/6, which is 45 million.

[ii] We’re using the whole population total of .3% transgender, even though it is likely lower in children.

[iii] For simplicity, let’s assume half of transgender youth might be male-bodied children who choose to present themselves as female—so they would have no effect on those joining Boy Scouts. So that leaves 67,500 female-bodied youth who choose to present themselves as male. It is possible there are fewer in this category, but we are estimating liberally.

[iv] For reasons given above, parents are less likely to put a transgender child in scouting than is the total population. So, again, we are estimating liberally.

[v] We’re simplifying here and not trying to figure out which children want to join Cubs or regular Scout troops, and just spreading them across the board.
[vi] I'm adding this note on February 12. Mr.Spherical Model pointed out some errors, so I'm attempting to correct those. I'm aware there are differences between Latter-day Saint-sponsored Scout troops and others, but I'm not always aware of what the specific differences are. Non-LDS-sponsored Cub Scouters do sometimes go camping. And technically regular Scouting begins at age 11. In our troops the 11-year-old Scouts are working on regular Scout things, but they do it separately until age 12. 

Century of Civilization Training

We take a break today from commenting on painful decay and problems in the news, and instead look at some positive signs of civilization.

Mr. Spherical Model recently volunteered as a district commissioner for one of the 27 districts in the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. So that put us on the invitation list for the gala in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Council—which began a few years after the original founding of BSA in 1910. It is the largest Boy Scout council in America (maybe in the world). And a lot of good has been going on during this century.

I’m usually a compulsive note taker when I hear speeches, but I hadn’t prepared with a large notebook in my bag. Nor was it convenient to pull out writing materials in the relative dark at our dinner table. So I missed a lot I wish I could share and have to depend mostly on memory.

There were three recent Eagle Scouts who spoke, all impressive young men. They talked about service and family, mainly. The keynote speaker was the current national president of BSA, Dr. Robert Gates. Yes, you’ve heard that name before. He was an Air Force officer early in his career, recruited by the CIA during the Johnson administration. He served in government for 26 years, including the National Security Council, and as head of the CIA during George W. Bush’s administration. After that he served as president of Texas A&M University (there was a “whoop” that arose from the audience every time that school was mentioned; I guess it’s a Texas thang). And now, in his “retirement,” he has taken on the biggest organization in the world for building civilized men.

Robert Gates, President of BSA
photo from Wikipedia

Despite his serious demeanor, he was a fun speaker. He had a couple of funny anecdotes about Washington, DC. One quip was, “The road of humility is not well traveled there; you can take that road and never meet another soul.” And he told a couple of stories about LBJ’s legendary self-regard, in which he needed reminding that he was not God. In one, during a prayer breakfast, LBJ interrupted the person giving the prayer (a name I recognized but can’t recall now) saying he should speak up, because he couldn’t hear. And the quick answer was, “That’s because I wasn’t talking to you.”

Gates talked about a particular campout with his son, what was supposed to be a primitive camp. But the atmosphere was interrupted somewhat by the several security vans that surrounded him, because they were tasked with protecting him as a high ranking CIA official.

He said that his many busy years of government service did interfere with his getting more involved in Scouting in those days. But the real reason was that no one asked him. I thought that was an important point. This is true for much of the volunteer work that gets done in society; people step up and do the work when someone asks them to, letting them know their service is needed and will be appreciated. What a bonus if the service is done in an organization with such a record of success!

The Sam Houston Area Council now has about 58,000 scouts, plus about 20,000 adult volunteers. Many of these (most) come from church congregations that sponsor troops. In our church most of the volunteers are asked to serve. Expressing interest usually leads to being asked, but it’s expected that, if you’re asked and you can serve, you will. Training follows. The latest position for Mr. Spherical Model, as commissioner, though, was not through the church, but through district leadership. It’s an honor, but also a challenge. Something years as a scout master and scout committee chair for the local troop has prepared him for.

This crazy troop are all grown now, most are married
and graduated from college, and four serve in the US Military.

There are plenty of ways to serve, as an adult. I’ve done a number of them. I spent three years as a den leader. I’ve been a merit badge counselor—something practically everyone could do to help. I’ve also been the mom who helps monitor advancement for boy scouts, through cub scouting, and on through Eagle. Our family produced one Life Scout (second highest level), and one Eagle Scout, by the age 18 deadline.

Then there’s the service as needed, like when a scout is doing his Eagle project and is recruiting help. And sometimes there are bigger opportunities. November 15, for example, is a community-wide Day of Service the Boy Scouts are sponsoring. Don’t wait to be asked.

There are various places I’ve listed the qualities individuals need to develop for civilization to thrive. The Boy Scout Law is one of those, worth repeating:

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

A Scout, or any person, who develops those characteristics becomes a civilized human being. We need more of those. The best way to grow a boy into such a man is to have a dad and mom who show the way. Scouting can be a tool those parents can use to help them.

Defense of Marriage Collection

A couple of weeks ago, when the Spherical Model blog reached the 400^th post, I posted a “best of” list for three days, relating to the three spheres: Political, Economic, and Social/Civilization. However, there are some topics that I cover fairly frequently, and over time I intend to offer links to those collections. One of those is the collection of pieces I’ve written about defending marriage.

After last week’s Supreme Court ruling declaring a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional—the part that allows the federal government to define the term—the majority took the opportunity to defame the majority of humankind as “enemies of the human race.” They include me in that definition.

Personally, I believe anything that sets out to undermine the basic unit of society is an enemy of the human race. But, while I think their ideas have that savagery-inducing effect, the people themselves are not de facto subhuman—just wrong. They’re deceived in the way the Old Testament prophet Isaiah predicted:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!—Isaiah 5:20

While I still have the freedom of speech to express these ideas (a freedom which tends to become illegal wherever same-sex “marriage” becomes the law), I offer examples of what I believe is both a logical and humanity-loving point of view. These examples are more or less limited to the definition of marriage, so there’s a lot about motherhood, fatherhood, population decline, and family that I’m not including in this list. (In other words, as long as this list is, it could be longer.) I did include two on the Boy Scouts, related to the homosexual agenda but not specifically to same-sex “marriage.”

·         My Rational Belief in Traditional Marriage, June 24, 2011

·         New York—If Only You’d Asked, We Have Answers, June 27, 2011

·         Devaluing Marriage and Family = Decay of Civilization: Part I—Vico and Unwin, June30, 2011

·         Devaluing Marriage: Part II—Death of Marriage in Scandinavia, July 1, 2011

·         Devaluing Marriage: Part III—Decay of Civilization, July 7, 2011

·         Speaking Up, August 31, 2011

·         One Small Victory, November 18, 2011

·         War against Women and Children, March 19, 2012

·         In Defense of Marriage, reprint, April 25, 2012

·         Defining Marriage and Making Cream Sauce, reprint, April 30, 2012

·         Controversy Still (The Gay Marriage Fantasy, reprint), May 4, 2012

·         Why Protect Marriage (Why Texans Will Vote Yes to Protect Marriage, reprint), May 8, 2012 

·         Loving and Logical, May 14, 2012

·         Tolerance—You Keep Using That Word, May 16, 2012

·         Remembering Richard Wilkins, November 30, 2012

·         Each Life That Touches Ours for Good (Remembering Richard Wilkins, Part II), December3, 2012

·         Defending the Boy Scouts, Part I, February 11, 2013

·         Defending the Boy Scouts, Part II, February 14, 2013

·         Supreme Court and the Definition of Marriage, March 27, 2013 

·         SCOTUS on Marriage, Part II: The Gotcha Question, March 29, 2013

·         SCOTUS on Marriage, Part III: Outcomes of the Cases, April 1, 2013

·         Marriage Rulings, June 28, 2013

Defending the Boy Scouts, Part II

I got this Norman Rockwell painting on a
magnet as a reminder of the day
I got to pin the Eagle badge on my son.

In the last post I made the assertion that those pressuring to change the Boy Scouts of America rules to allow active homosexuals as leaders and members have a real agenda of wanting to destroy the Boy Scouts. They don’t want to join them; they want them not to exist. This post offers evidence.

This isn’t going to be pretty. It involves talking math, and unfortunately also discussion of pedophilia. My apologies. There are also footnotes worth following. (If you look up the references, some of them will lead to additional references, which I do not list.)

The number of children who undergo molestation is not precisely known, but can be estimated, as has been done in a number of studies. Logic tells us there are four combinations possible: male molester/female child victim; female molester/female child victim; male molester/male child victim; female molester/male child victim. For our question about the Boy Scouts, we can delete female victims for both male and female predators, simply because girls don’t belong to the Boy Scouts.[i]

Homosexuals make up about 1.5% of the population, according to careful research. Frequently this number is cited as 3%. The homosexual community often makes the unsupported claim that they make up 10% of the population. Some of the data I’m about to present uses the generous percentage of 2%. So, using that compromise, we can logically assume that heterosexual molestation comes from the 98% of heterosexual population. Same-sex molestation, therefore, comes from 2% of the population.

About 17% of young men in America are sexually abused before adulthood. Only a small percentage of these are female molester/male victim cases. For comparison, some estimates are that one in four girls (25%) will be molested (which goes up to one in three for females during their lifetime), the vast majority are male molester/female victim cases—in other words, coming from the 98% heterosexual population. The male abuser/male victim cases, then, come from the 2% of the population that are homosexual.

Note that the data does not imply that all homosexuals are predators; that is certainly not the case. However, the risk of someone in that demographic being a predator is much much higher than in the population at large. And at this point we don’t have a way for a “safe” homosexual to certify that they are one of the harmless ones.

Here are a couple of summaries from those who have done the math. This first one is from Steve Baldwin in “Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement”[ii] :

Family Research Institute founder and psychologist Paul Cameron, reviewing more than nineteen different academic reports and peer reviewed studies in a 1985 Psychological Reports article, found that homosexuals account for between 25% and 40% of all child molestation. Sex researhers Freund, Heasman, Racansky, and Glancy, for example, in a 1984 Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy article, put the number at 36%. Erickson, Walbek, Sely, in a 1988 Archives of Sexual Behavior article, places it at 86% when the children being molested are male.

However, it should be noted that homosexuals account for only 2% of the population which statistically means that a child molester is ten to twenty times more likely to be homosexual than heterosexual. In other words, heterosexual molestations proportionally are a fraction compared to homosexual molestations. More recent studies confirm this statistic. In 2000, the Archives of Sexual Behavior published an article by seven sex researchers concluding that ‘‘around 25-40% of men attracted to children prefer boys. Thus the rate of homosexual attraction is 6-20 times higher among pedophiles."

There are additional versions of the research. One study by homosexual activists and researchers revealed that 73% of homosexuals surveyed had sex with boys sixteen to nineteen years of age or younger.[iii] Additional studies compare female and male targets as well as homosexual vs. heterosexual predators, such as this one: “Child molestation, by comparison, was a relatively infrequent crime occurring from an average of 23.2 times by a pedophile (nonincest) with female targets to an average of 281.7 times by a pedophile (nonincest) whose targets were males.”[iv]

Baldwin makes specific references to pedophilia infiltration within the Boy Scouts:

When a California family sued the Scouts in 1993 for exposing their son to a Scout leader who molested him, the Scouts were ordered to turn over 25,000 pages of documents to the plaintiff.  This unprecedented glimpse into the world of Scout pedophiles revealed that thousands of boys had been molested by Scout leaders and other volunteers between 1971 and 1991 resulting in the expulsion of over 1,800 Scout volunteers for pedophile activity. The documents show that some Scout leaders molested over forty boys before getting caught, and that many, once caught, simply moved to a different Scout troop and continued abusing boys.

Gay activists have spun the Scout molestation epidemic as a heterosexual problem. Examination of many of the higher profile cases, however, reveals that Scout molesters are attracted exclusively to boys and many lead mainstream gay lifestyles. John Hemstreet is a typical example. Hemstreet is a convicted child molester, former Boy Scout leader, and currently the President of the Toledo, Ohio, chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). PFLAG is one of the groups leading the nationwide attack on the Boy Scouts of America.

Incredibly, the pro-pedophile group North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which calls itself a homosexual group, wrote a letter to the national Scout office urging “the Boy Scouts of America to cease its discrimination against openly gay or lesbian persons in the appointment of its scout masters and its scouters and in its membership. This will permit scouts to be exposed to a variety of life styles and will permit more of those individuals who genuinely wish to serve boys to do so.”

NAMBLA used to make even other homosexual groups uncomfortable. But in the last couple of decades they have been embraced as part of the movement. You will find them represented at any gay parade or bookstore; they have been mainstreamed. NAMBLA has actually published information instructing pedophiles on how to become Boy Scout leaders, and other ways to profile, lure, befriend, and rape a child, then avoid detection and prosecution.[v]

People who think the argument is about eliminating discrimination against a harmless, helpful segment of the population are being duped.

Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has responded by improving and increasing sexual molestation prevention training; I have been through it, more than once. Even volunteers at a Cub Scout day camp must have received the training and must abide by safety policies, such as two-deep leadership.

I know in Scout troops we have been involved in, sponsored by our church (and Latter-day Saints sponsor more troops in the US than any other sponsor), do not allow youth to be led by anyone of any sexual orientation that engages in sex outside of marriage. There is no discrimination against a segment of the population; there is discrimination against behaviors that do not qualify as moral to religious people. And the Boy Scouts is a tool for raising boys into moral men. It is not the only such tool, but it has been a good one.

If the Boy Scouts fail to remain true to their long stated mission, they will be less useful as a tool. If they stand strong, they may lose funding because of the pressure from the homosexual community on donating corporations. If the Boy Scouts give in, they may lose sponsorship by most of their individual troop sponsors. (I can’t say for certain that will happen, or when, but it does appear to me to be a likely eventuality.[vi])

What I can say for certain is that allowing homosexual leadership will have two certain outcomes: First, teaching boys to be “morally straight,” i.e., sexually pure, will be more difficult. Second, more boys will be exposed to the risk of sexual predators. Resisting the pro-homosexual pressure is the only way for the the Boy Scouts to meet their mission for boys.

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[i] In some Explorer level troops, girls do participate. The number is so small compared to the general population of the Boy Scouts that I do not include them in the equation. Likewise, there are women leaders, in Cub Scouts as well as some peripheral leadership positions in regular Scout troops, but not as Scout Masters, and never as leadership during overnight activities without male leadership present. So, while female predators cannot be 100% eliminated, they are clearly not part of the question about allowing homosexual leaders. 

 

[ii] See Baldwin, Steve, “Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement” and associated notes: http://mail.famguardian.org/Subjects/SexualImmorality/Pedophilia/14_2baldwin.pdf

 

[iii] K. Jay et al, The Gay Report:  Lesbians and Gays Speak Out About Sexual Experiences and Lifestyles 275 (1979).

 

[iv] Eugene Abel et al., “Self-Reported Sex Crimes of Nonincarcerated Pedophiliacs, 2 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 3, 5 (1987). See also R. Blanchard et al, “Fraternal Order and Sexual Orientation in Pedophiles,” 29 Archives Sexual Behav. 464 (2000); K. Freund & R I. Watson, “The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children:  An Exploratory Study,” 18 Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 34, 34-43 (1992).

 

[v] Jeffery Curley, age 10, was raped and murdered Oct. 1 1997. The perpetrators had in their possession NAMBLA materials, as well as a book, “Rape and Escape,” published by NAMBLA. They used an idea from the NAMBLA materials to lure the boy. The family sued NAMBLA for its contribution to the murder of their son; the ACLU defended NAMBLA pro bono, claiming NAMBLA has 1^st amendment rights to free speech; ironically, the ACLU requested a gag order against the prosecution and asked for witnesses who testified in the Curley case concerning the NAMBLA information to be disallowed.

 

[vi] http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-cautions-against-speculation-on-scouting-decision.