My comments on the BSA membership requirements change

The Boy Scouts of America have provided the text of the "Membership Standards Resolution." You should read it; it won't take too long. While the content will be far more meaningful to those of us who have lived within the BSA culture, the language is fairly plain and accessible. As a Scouter (i.e., adult leader/volunteer), I have had to decide what this this resolution means for me and my family, but more on that some other time. Here I want simply to present some analysis of the decision.

In defense of the national council, the resolution makes a valid point when it says, "youth are still developing, learning about themselves and who they are, developing their sense of right and wrong, and understanding their duty to God to live a moral life…." In other words, "Hey, these are adolescent kids we're working with here, and they're all pretty confused about sexuality and everything else." Fair enough. I've spent some time around late-night campfires listening to Scouts discuss life, the universe, and everything; anyone who's done that knows a teenage boy will often question the existence of God but never really be an agnostic, let alone an atheist. No reasonable person would suggest barring a boy from membership simply because he was wondering about his place in the world and his relationship to the religions of the world, and the Membership Standards Resolution suggests we ought to be likewise inclined with regard to sexuality.

However, the comparison with atheism is apt because the BSA has a long history of denying membership to youth who are avowed atheists. Youth are prone to wonder whether God exists, but a Scout is reverent and atheism cannot be reverence. Likewise, I'm sure there have been any number of sexually-confused youth in Scouting programs over the years, but up until now the BSA has recognized that avowed homosexuality is not "morally straight." A Scout is kind, and Scouters ought not think adherence to the Scout Law is something other than kind.

In my opinion, there's not simply an analogy between a Scout's duty to God and to be morally straight, and that seems to be the opinion of the national council as well. The second and third "whereases" of the Membership Standards Resolution reiterate the BSA's commitment to reverence, and methinks the national council doth protest too much. "Morally straight" has historically had an objective content (implicitly, if not always explicitly, the Ten Commandments as popularly understood) because morality must be rooted in supernatural revelation: that is, "morally straight" is ultimately an aspect of "duty to God." The BSA has chosen to ignore every world religion's definition of morality. If human beings can define morality, rather than God, then duty to God has been subverted and will, in time, be rejected.

In other words, if the definition of "morally straight" can be upended by a single vote, then why can't "duty to God" be redefined as "don't cuss too much"?

At this point, it might appear I'm making a slippery slope argument, so I want to make clear I'm arguing the BSA didn't slip. At one fell swoop, it plunged right over the edge of the cliff into the bottomless moral abyss of contemporary American popular relativism. And frankly, that's why I feel so betrayed and angry. A Scout is trustworthy, and the national leadership of the BSA has demonstrated it can't be trusted to maintain a commitment to the Scout Law for so much as a single year. I believe in the Scout Oath and Law, but the BSA's national leadership has demonstrated it does not.

I'd like to think this is the beginning of the end. Sadly, it seems to me much more like the end.