Friday, February 1, 2013 (All day)
The Boy Scouts of America have broken the line on morality they have defended for generations.
[Darris McNeely] When I was a young man, I was in the Boy Scouts. Every Thursday night in the basement of a local church building I would raise my hand like this, and with my fellow Boy Scouts we would recite the Boy Scout oath, which I have to read off the notes because I've forgotten it just a little bit. But it said, " With all my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. "
For decades many other young men have said that particular oath at Boy Scout meetings. The scouting movement in the United States has been a very, very strong force.
Just this week the Boy Scouts of America made a decision to stand down from their longstanding opposition to allowing openly gay leadership and membership within the organization. This has been an ongoing part of the culture wars in the United States, and the Boy Scouts made a decision to resend the strictness of their moral code and allow individual Boy Scout Councils to decide how to handle this. And so what's going to happen is that openly gay leadership and membership in the Boy Scouts is going to likely be allowed.
Now, gays have been a part of the scouting movement for a long, long time. That's not a secret. That's not the issue. What has changed here is the stance that the scouts have taken to recognize that in a sense they cannot any longer hold the line on this moral code, and they have come to a point where they're going to make a break with that moral code in their own approach to this particular social issue and this issue of morality. And so perhaps one might think that they will need to revise even their oath because if you're going to invoke the name of doing duty to God and allow openly gay individuals as part of the organization, then you're dealing with a violation of the Bible, God's laws of morality, and there is a problem there.
Why this has happened? It's openly admitted within the system that corporate sponsorships have begun to decline because of their position against gay membership in the organization. For the modern scouting movement as I understand it, I've been even connected with it in recent years, renting some of the facilities of large Boy Scout councils in the eastern part of the United States, it takes a lot of money to operate the modern Boy Scout movement, and a lot of that is dependent upon corporate sponsorship.
And when that money dries up, which is the lifeblood of the modern scouting movement, when large corporations like Intel or other companies begin to withdraw their money and support, then that speaks very, very loudly. And there has been an agenda to put pressure upon corporations to withdraw their financial support to the Boy Scout movement because of their stance against gay membership and leadership within their organization.
There's an interesting scripture in 1 Kings 18:21 where the prophet Elijah went before the people of Israel. Because of their worship of Baal and their mixture of good and bad, good and evil within their religion, he said, "How long will you go on limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him, but if Baal, then follow him."
What we have here is an example of an organization that has had a very strong stance on their moral code for a long period of time kind of beginning to weaken it and break it and to limp between two opinions. It's a further sign of the decay and the erosion of the moral standard in this country and of course in the world when it comes to the morality that is based on God's law.
The truth is you cannot limp between two opinions. You must either follow God or you must follow Baal. That's what the prophet Elijah said to Israel. And on this particular issue it seems that the Boy Scouts have raised a question of ambiguity that will have interesting repercussions going forward for the culture of the United States.
That's BT Daily . Join us next time.
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