Longtime Boy Scouts Supporter Pulls Family Out Over Gay Ban Reversal

In an editorial for CNN, outspoken Boy Scouts of America (BSA) supporter John Stemberger has decided to pull his sons out of the organization following the overturn of their ban on gay participants this week.

Stemberger said that the May 23 announcement, which stated that being gay would no longer preclude prospective members from joining the BSA, will ultimately lead to “myriad bad consequences.”

“First, the new BSA policy is logically incoherent and morally and ethically inconsistent. The BSA had never discriminated against homosexuals,” he writes.

“The BSA membership application did not ask about sexual orientation, and there has never been a witch hunt in the BSA to find or remove its gay members.”

Stemberger, himself an Eagle Scout, called the Boy Scouts “one of the great jewels of American culture,” but argues that the BSA’s decision robs parents of their authority to talk to their kids about sexual issues.

“Most important, the new policy robs parents of Boy Scouts, like me, of the sole authority to raise issues of sex and sexuality with their kids.

“Parents should have the exclusive right to raise issues about sex and sexuality with their children in their own time and in their own way, in the privacy of their homes, not brought up by other older boys around a campfire. Allowing open homosexuality injects a sensitive and highly charged political issue into the heart of the BSA, against the wishes of the vast majority of parents.”

Brian Brown, of the National Organization of Marriage, said that the BSA’s decision to accept openly gay Boy Scouts risks “sexualizing the organization.”

“All of this is happening not because of a true grassroots demand of gay youth to be part of the organization but by an orchestrated political effort by gay activists who want to punish any group or organization that does not embrace homosexuality,” he wrote in a statement.

“It’s the beginning of the end for what once was one of America’s noblest organizations.”

You can read the rest of John Stemberger’s editorial here.

What do you think? Does the BSA’s reversal on this issue carry negative, unintended consequences?

[Image via: Anthony Berenyi / Shutterstock]