OK. I’m also going to post part of it [the Catechism] here:
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
…
Based on this, I think the BSA policy is in fact talking about those who merely have SSA, not those who are acting on their disordered desires. If a scout is not acting on their desires or being distracting, I don’t think they should be excluded.
I think we are just talking over each others’ heads here; let me reset and let’s see if we can understand each other.
The big unworkable problem with allowing openly gay boys into Catholic units of the Boy Scouts of America is this:
It creates the near occasion of grave sin under the sponsorship of the Catholic Church.
This is why. In BSA, all boys camp, shower, etc. together. Suppose you have a 15 year old Girl Scout and a 17 year old Boy Scout. Are you going to allow them to do all that together?
No way. Even if you take every precaution short of separating them by gender, you still have the near occasion of grave sin. They are going to see each other naked or nearly naked; and they are going to be in close space to each other in that state without adult supervision (adults cannot sleep with children in BSA for obvious reasons). So you would do what Camp Fire USA, which is coeducational, does–they make an exception to coeducation when it comes to camping.
The problem, however, is that we are dealing with only boys. You can’t do a Camp Fire solution here unless you are going to inquire into the sexual orientation of each boy. If you do that, everyone in the troop will know that Scout X is gay. Just as if he was a girl among boys in Camp Fire, he gets a separate gay shower, a separate gay tent, and you will not be able to avoid constantly acknowledging, throughout the program, that Scout X is gay. And you must do this for EACH gay Scout. Now putting aside all the embarrassment that inflicts on Scout X, here is another problem: How on earth are you, as a Catholic Scoutmaster, going to address the morality of homosexuality?
If you say nothing, you are affirming his lifestyle as NORMAL when the Catechism says that it DISORDERED. So what are you going to say? Are you going to quote the Catechism? It’s going to sound something like this:
“Now boys, Scout X is gay. Our tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. But he is struggling with his attraction to boys and he is trying very hard to avoid committing any homosexual acts. He is not a sinner just because he is gay, because he is making his best effort to control himself. But that is why he has to have his own shower and his own tent. And all of you need to understand, respect and welcome him.”
Do you really think that this is going to work? And even if it does, how do you think this makes Scout X himself feel?
Is this helpful for the salvation of Scout X?
And it gets worse. BSA has already said, or at least implied, that they are not going to indemnify chartered organizations (read: your parish and its staff) for restricting access to BSA activities on the basis of sexual orientation. What if Scout X says that your “Scout X is different” talk, and your accommodations for him, discriminate against him? He’ll complain to National, and so you won’t be allowed to talk about what the Catechism says. Well…
Is this helpful for the salvation of Scout X?
And it still gets worse. You have done your level best to accommodate Scout X, insulate him from near occasions of sin (intimate contact with other boys), and so on. The problem is,
there are other troops at your camp and not all of them are Catholic. They may or may not go through all of the steps you have gone through to protect homosexual boys from temptation and intimidation. And these boys, with sexual orientation unknown, will be constantly commingling with Scout X and all of the other boys in your troop.
This is just a disaster.
No matter what you do, the BSA has increased the vulnerability of all of the kids to sexual abuse while putting their souls in jeopardy.
But under the old policy, none of this was necessary. Scout X, although gay, could simply keep his sexual orientation to himself (which is what all of us are supposed to do anyway outside of marriage) and work his way to Eagle Scout without the shame of having a separate tent, separate shower, special gay talk from the Scoutmaster, etc. I think anyone could conclude that Scout X was better off under the old policy. That is why the
OnMyHonor.net dissenters had as their slogan, “keep sex and politics out of Scouting.” The new policy is not less discriminatory than the old one; it just discriminates in different and worse ways.
Are you saying they wouldn’t? I think you’re assuming that sexual harassment is about attraction, and I don’t make that same assumption. I think that bullies look for any angle they can find and use whatever leverage they have. This is beside the point, though.