Personally, I think the Scouts are seriously outdated anyway. I think they are going to lose members no matter what. Kids just don’t care anymore about “merit badges” and sashes and silly little uniforms. It’s actually a good time for another group to step in and actually be cool. There is something just…OFF about a bunch of adolescent boys in tassels and kerchiefs and sashes in the woods together alone with an older man. It starts getting creepy around age 8.
So yeah, I am paranoid and I don’t personally want my boys spending huge amounts of alone time with ANY man who is not my husband. Sporting events are acceptable because they generally have an open door policy with parents for the most part. But with the scouts, if you’re not a member, you can’t really participate once your kid reaches a certain age. I don’t like that.
I just find that a lot of people on here are so worried about things like homosexuality (which, if your child is one of the 97% of boys who is NOT gay, is going to affect them minimally), but aren’t nearly as concerned about letting their kids play with people who are irreligious or who have their own computer upstairs in their room or whose dad is divorced with a girlfriend. I’m not saying I would “shun”’ these people either, but situations like these are going to have a MUCH greater impact on your child than a gay friend in the Boy Scouts.
Your teenage son going to a friend’s house and looking at porn when his parents aren’t there, talking for hours with that same friend who has no belief in God or religion, eating dinner with that friend’s dad and his girlfriend, THESE are the things that will slowly but surely pull your child away from God and the Church.
And yet I see the same people on here harping on gays like they are Satan himself. It’s EASY to tell a straight boy that homosexuality is wrong and disordered and even if the kid has a gay friend or two, just the fact of NOT being gay makes it really easy to see homosexuality as being something intrinsically wrong. 99% of the guys I know who think pre-marital sex is fine and going to church is optional and downloading porn is ok are DISGUSTED by homosexuality and believe it to be utterly wrong-and we have gay friends! Don’t believe me? Just mention the subject of gay porn to ANY straight man or boy and watch his gay reflex take immediate effect.
These people need to get off the subject of homosexuality and start worrying about the other things that creep into our lives that turn our kids away from God much faster and much more easily than a gay scoutmaster.
Everybody is all “The gay ‘agenda’ is RUINING society! Not the gays! Anything but that!” Really? Your teenage son masturbated to lesbian porn 3 times today, had sex with his girlfriend, got high on YOUR “secret” marijuana stash and then stole an IPod.
It’s possible the scouts might be outdated, but not because of the little symbols of achievement, I don’t think. Kids are actually very big on those. Those in wrestling wear those safety pins and their medals on their jackets. What high school freshman doesn’t proudly wear that football letter if he manages against all odds to get in enough varsity game time? Swimmers wear little symbols of even their victories in heats. Basketballers in grade school wear shirts showing their victories. Kids who advance in JROTC wear their uniforms, rank and decorations proudly. I know. I have grandchildren who do all of those things. Kids aren’t at all symbol-averse, though perhaps those things in which they take pride have changed over the years.
Personally, I did not, and would not, knowingly expose a child of mine to a morally dysfunctional family or group. My adult children to not allow their children to even watch television except carefully chosen shows on their own “Family movie night”. They do (as I did) encourage reading that may well deal with human evils, but do so in a way that imparts correct moral values and/or that informs. A lot of that exists.
That’s not to say none of them were or will be exposed to corruption. They will be, and, by living in this morally adrift society, are. But I am not obliged, by my actions, to condone it or seem to condone it. Rather, I am morally obliged to speak against it and act accordingly. Certainly, if I keep a marijuana “stash”, my words to them in condemning its use will seem hollow and unpersuasive. Therefore, I have a moral obligation not to keep a “stash”, or to use it at all. I have a moral obligation never to have pornography in my possession or presence. What was it that Jesus said about all of this? "
“But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Serious words, those. Foolish and un-modern as I may be, I actually think it’s possible to live in accordance with them.
But we’re encouraged by this increasingly pagan society to think of sexual perversion the way most pagan societies have thought of it; “something to be open and accepted even if I don’t indulge in it myself”. But when the “authorities” in a society openly condone and encourage scandal among “these little ones”, one really does have to draw the line against their message.
This whole business of “gay acceptance” is a marvel to me. We would not condone children overtly expressing sexual proclivities of other sorts, and we largely do not. We do not condone overt expression of other moral failings, and do not, by our acceptance, passively approve of them. And yet, when it comes to homosexuality, we are somehow expected to accept expression of that gravely disordered condition among children and see nothing wrong in it.
Those who promote its acceptance as “normal” are fools. We who agree with them to the extent of exposing our children to it are the greater fools.
