Perhaps the best analogy to what is likely to happen to the Boy Scouts is the Episcopal Church, wherein the Scouts will eventually have their own Jefferts Schori leading the organization. The leader will say something embracing the practice of sodomy, which will trigger a massive exodus….

[D]oes anyone believe that all Boy Scouts keep their virginity until they turn 18 and leave?

I have to wonder, which policy would prompt a swifter demise for the boy scouts:

1) Admitting that some scouts are gay, and accepting those scouts.

2) Truly enforcing traditional standards of sexual morality for EVERYONE. For example, having every unmarried scout to recite a Pledge of Virginity (just after the Pledge of Allegiance), having all these scouts wear virginity badges on their uniforms, and expelling unmarried scouts who claim to be, or are alleged to be, not virgins.

For people who object that a BSA “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality would reflect a compromise on sexual ethics, face it – the BSA has always been compromised, because they’ve always had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” standard with respect to heterosexuals.

Jeffrey Weiss,

Lifting a ban on gay scouts does not promote homosexual sex any more than not banning straight boys from the scouts promotes heterosexual sex.

By the way, does anyone believe that all Boy Scouts keep their virginity until they turn 18 and leave? Perhaps someone involved in scouting can tell us if it is standard procedure to expel boys from the scouts if they are discovered to have had (heterosexual) sex. The average male loses his virginity at 16.9 years of age. Even assuming the average Boy Scout is more chaste than the average boy, there certainly must be tens of thousands of Boy Scouts who have had (heterosexual) sex.

Douglas Johnson,

Crying “Selma analogy” is about as helpful in these conversations as crying “class warfare” is in politics.

If you have paid any attention to what I have been writing, you will see that I have taken the position that it would not be discriminatory for scouts to have a code of conduct that prohibited sex outside of marriage. I would hardly describe that as a radical position promoting sodomy in the Boy Scouts.

and anyone who does not believe that sodomy should be a valid part of the Boy Scouts is a Mississippi Burning racist.

Huh. Douglas Johnson’s the only one who’s said that here. Is this a case of Proverbs 28:1?

atheists, so long as they’re “ethical” and “morally serious.”

Are the scare quotes meant to imply that atheists cannot be such?

It is false that an atheist can recite the Scout Oath and be ethical.

Since I didn’t believe in God, my ‘duty to God’ was zero and I could take the oath in good conscience. I eventually became SPL and made Eagle.

The Scouting Schori will do interview after interview where he/she will be asked about the exodus of boys from the organization and he’ll say that the dwindling numbers are not a primary concern, and he’ll also invoke the Selma analogy as David Nickol does above. And all the while their Schori will relish the exodus from the Boy Scouts and the rush to sell property to keep the organization afloat.

In 1914, the BSA gave local councils the power to treat African Americans differently in Scouting, such as following local school practice. Until 1974, some southern councils of the Boy Scouts of America were still racially segregated.

The NAACP sued the Boy Scouts in 1974, and the suit was settled out of court.

“That we cannot leave well enough alone is a testimony to the sad state of our culture.”

I assume some people said that about the NAACP’s lawsuit.