So Long, Boy Scouts

The Boy Scouts have voted to open their membership to avowed homosexuals. From Breitbart.com:

Separately confusing is why openly homosexual adults are being excluded. Some BSA leaders are saying homosexual adults must be excluded because they are not suitable role models for boys. But if homosexuality is consistent with Scouting values and principles, why are homosexuals not good role models? Supporters on both sides of this issue should reject that specious argument. 

For the Scouts to say that homosexuality is compatible with Scouting but that homosexual adults cannot be involved in Scouting will land them in court. BSA can now be sued under numerous anti-discrimination and public-accommodation laws and will probably lose, since their exclusion is no longer driven by their beliefs protected by the First Amendment. 

In honor of this decision, here's my original post on the subject:

So Long, Boy Scouts

Think of the people you know who participate in the Boy Scouts, or who are the kind of people who might be inclined to participate in the Boy Scouts. If the Scouts decide to start allowing gay troop leaders, do you think those people would be more or less interested in Scouting? It's hard to see how such a move could lead to anything but extinction for the Scouts.


Edward Whelan writes on Scouting's suicide:

And many parents choose the Boy Scouts to provide the environment for these activities precisely because, in an age awash in the wreckage of moral relativism, the Scouts have stood strong. Those parents who wish a different environment for their sons should join other groups or build their own.  

The Boy Scouts are — or at least have been — a great organization that has done so much to help transform young boys into fine men and to serve America’s communities. Unfortunately, in the warped progressive understanding of diversity, all organizations must be the same. The Boy Scouts are a target of the Left precisely because they have, until now, upheld traditional moral standards.

The Scouts have been in decline in recent years, but it's certainly not because parents have been eschewing them in favor of other organizations that give them more opportunities to send their kids on overnight trips with gay men. They've been in decline because everything that they stand for has been in decline--honor, loyalty, integrity, and all the rest that serve only as a foundation for modern ironic humor. Capitulation to homosexual activists won't save them from that.