Boy Scouts May Not Survive With Gay Members, Santorum Says

Posted on Feb 4, 2013

Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)

Noted homophobe Rick Santorum is urging the Boy Scouts of America not to capitulate to the “intolerant liberal mind” and overturn its discriminatory policy of banning gays from joining the youth organization.

Removing the prohibition would pose a challenge “to the Scouts’ very nature,” Santorum writes in an op-ed for the conservative website World News Daily titled, “Stop the War on Scouts.” He adds that this is yet “another example of the left attempting to remove God from all areas of public life.”

Santorum concludes that if the organization does overturn its policy, “Scouting may not survive this transformation of American society.” He adds, in overly dramatic fashion, that “for the sake of the average boy in America, I hope the board of the Scouts doesn’t have its fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

The former Pennsylvania senator’s column comes as the Boy Scouts of America prepares to discuss ending its decades-long national policy of barring Scouts and troop leaders because of their sexuality.

Santorum’s hardly the only Republican to express distaste over the group ending its long-standing ban. Texas Gov. Rick Perry expressed a similar sentiment, saying that he hoped the board members would “follow their historic position of keeping the Scouts strongly supportive of the values that make Scouting this very important and impactful organization.”

Santorum in World News Daily:

This is not a new fight. Liberal activist lawyers went to court to force the Boy Scouts to change, but the Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the Boy Scouts’ right to set its own policies. In that case, the Court ruled that the freedom of association, a constitutional right, permits a private organization to exclude someone from membership when “the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group’s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints.”

That did not deter lawyers, anti-scouting public officials and liberal Christian denominations from keeping the Boy Scouts in their cross-hairs. All of these attacks have been cheered by a mainstream media that see an opportunity to advance a liberal cause while vilifying a theistic-based organization standing by its outdated principles of developing boys into men.

Over the years I have been a champion of the unique role that civil society, through voluntary associations, plays in shaping individual character and the common good. What makes these organizations so effective, I believe, is precisely their ability to appeal to something “other,” to some higher authority to which we are accountable. I believe what makes the Scouts so successful, therefore, is loyalty to its first principles, its history and its understanding of what it means to live in duty to God.

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