Liberty Institute

With the Boy Scouts of America board planning to vote Wednesday on whether to allow local troops to accept gay members, Religious Right activists are ramping up their efforts to keep the ban in place. And Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel believes that Satan is the real culprit behind the potential shift in policy.

Barber blamed “spiritual pressure” from Satan — “the Prince of the Earth” — for the potential decision of the BSA board and claimed that Jerry Sandusky may soon “join the jamboree.”

The Prince of the Earth seeks to corrupt and ultimately destroy all that is righteous, honorable and good. It’s little wonder, then, that for years the Boy Scouts have faced a malicious and unrelenting assault at the hands of those “who call evil good and good evil.”

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If the BSA, with its proud tradition of teaching millions of young boys how to become honorable young men, gives in on this, the organization is toast. Oh, it might limp along as something else – something entirely different, worldly and weak – but its long history as an upright, ethical and God-honoring safe-haven for boys will come to a disgraceful close.

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Still, under immense socio-political – indeed spiritual pressure, the Boy Scouts appear poised to play a very dangerous, self-deluded game of “the Scoutmaster wears no clothes.” They’re flirting with the queer idea of an about turn – of betraying both absolute truth and the very boys they serve.

Instead of teaching young men to stand up to the bully, they would model surrender – teach them that, when you reach an adversarial fork in the road, take the primrose path of least resistance.

But it’s much worse than all that. We mustn’t ignore the pink elephant in the room; the Penn State factor. Should the BSA cave beneath the weight of sexual anarchist intimidation, Scoutmaster Sandusky joins the jamboree.

Liberty Counsel joined the Liberty Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom in a letter to the BSA insisting that any change in policy will undermine their “religious liberty and First Amendment rights.” Meanwhile, the American Family Association said that “the homosexual machine will continue to attack” the BSA until no troops have bans on gay members.

Liberty Counsel’s posted a graphic on its Facebook page that says that Boy Scouts will compromise their ability to “participate in healthy activities without fear of predation or moral confusion.”

The Iowa-based Family Leader warned of “sexual abuse” in the Boy Scouts if the ban is lifted:

The Boy Scouts of America, under intense financial pressure from homosexual activists, are considering changing their 100-year old policy of not allowing openly homosexual Scout leaders and Scouts. This pressure tactic is an attack on religious liberty, would teach our youth the wrong lessons, and should put every God-fearing individual on alert.

The Scout oath includes promises to keep oneself “morally straight,” and to be courageous. If the Boy Scouts’ leaders compromise on moral principles under political and financial pressure, it will only teach boys cowardice, not courage.

The current policy is also designed to protect Scouts from sexual abuse. How will parents be able to entrust their children to the Boy Scouts if they trade the well-being of the boys for corporate dollars?

Janet Porter of Faith 2 Action also argued that the Boy Scouts will “put boys at risk” in her radio alert:

Will the Scouts put boys at risk by inviting homosexual activists to become the scoutmasters at their campouts in the woods?

While the Boy Scouts of America have for many years taken a protective stand against homosexual scoutmasters, they are inviting public opinion on whether to put impressionable boys at risk by changing their policy.

They are “discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation.”

We need to call before their board meets and likely decides this week at 972-580-2000. Urge them to stand firm in the best interest of the boys in their care, rather than the interests of homosexual activists. Then, ask others to call at 972-580-2000.

The AFA’s Randy Sharp told the group’s leader Tim Wildmon that including gay Boy Scouts is “a very dangerous and unhealthy thing.”

Wildmon: Who is putting pressure on them?

Sharp: Mostly it’s the homosexual lobby in America, the Human Rights Campaign, groups like these that are trying to pressure the Boy Scouts into opening up their membership to open homosexuals to serve not only as leaders and mentors but also to boys who may be questioning their sexuality or have claimed to be openly gay. The Boy Scouts find that when you’ve got the homosexual leaders it’s a very dangerous and unhealthy thing.

Wildmon: That’s the reason they’ve always had the policy. That’s the Boy Scout pledge, isn’t it, “morally straight”?

Sharp: Absolutely, it’s in the oath.

Wildmon: That means “morally straight” sexually too and being homosexual would not be being straight.

Sharp: It’s not being very moral either.

Wildmon: Exactly.

Buster Wilson of the AFA last week went on a tirade against the Human Rights Campaign and maintained that “there is a day of reckoning that will come” to them for creating the “Boy Scouts of Gay America.”

Folks, in any other avenue in American life that would be called extortion. In any other venue of American existence that would be seen as villainous and as extortion. The Human Rights campaign, for all humans except those that are not gay, it’s a joke. They ought to be ashamed and there is a day of reckoning that will come.

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If the Boy Scouts cave to the extortion-demands of the Human Rights Campaign through all of the corporate sponsors they’ve threatened then we will lose this venerable group for good. It will be a trophy on the wall of Big Gay and their agenda and we will see one more portion of moral American life gone.

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If they wilt under the pressure of the Human Rights Campaign and they fold like a cheap tent they will cease to exist. Let me tell you what the Boy Scouts of America will become, if they change their ruling and they give into the pressure and the extortion of the Human Rights Campaign this is what’s going to happen: the Boy Scouts of America will falter and fall and become nothing in the end but the ‘Boy Scouts of Gay America’ because that’s the only folks that’ll support them.

• Bill Donohue says that "listening to [Joe] Biden discuss his Catholicism is getting weary." We say that listening to Dononhue discuss anything is getting weary.
• Mitt Romney has secured the coveted Lindsay Lohan endorsement.
• Gun Owners of America has endorsed Joe the Plumber.
• Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day does not seem to be taking off like Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day did.
• Finally, the Liberty Institute has now launched something called "Texas Values" which vows to "to stand for biblical, Judeo-Christian values by ensuring Texas is a state in which religious liberty flourishes, families prosper, and every human life is valued."

Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford appeared on Today’s Issues yesterday with Tony Perkins and Tim Wildmon to discuss Missouri’s Amendment 2, the so-called “right to pray” amendment which may allow students to refuse to study any topic they deem to conflict with their religious beliefs, like evolution. Schakelford said the amendment was needed “to really bring their state back to full religious freedom like we had in this country until a decision about twenty to thirty years ago that came down from the Supreme Court.”

While Shackelford did not say which Supreme Court case apparently curtailed the freedom of religion, saying that we had “full religious freedom” only until two decades ago ignores periods in American history when the people of minority faiths and even certain Christian denominations sometimes faced hostility from the state. Ironically, Shackelford was speaking to the leader of the American Family Association, whose own Director of Issues Analysis wants to ban mosques, bar Muslims from the military, deport Muslim-Americans and convert all immigrants to Christianity. He went on to say that the health care reform law is creating a “totalitarian” government that undermines the freedom of religion.

What we did is we came up with the idea that states need to go and pass religious freedom amendments to really bring their state back to full religious freedom like we had in this country until a decision about twenty to thirty years ago that came down from the Supreme Court. And a number of states have started to present those and pass those. It’s like the atomic bomb to the left because we noticed anything they’re after, the thing they can’t handle is religious freedom. I mean whether it’s Obamacare or anything else, when the government wants to take over everything they can’t handle religious freedom because that means people are actually going to be able to stick with their own religious conscience, express their own religious beliefs and that kind of lack of unanimity for the state is something they can’t allow.

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You know a government that is totalitarian, the one thing it will never allow is citizens who have allegiance to one higher than the government. So you will see as soon as the government takes over something the first thing that will have to go is religious freedom. Obamacare is a great example; as soon as we have it what do we have right after that, the HHS regulations. When the government is trying to touch its citizens directly and it has what it thinks is a good and noble cause it will not allow anyone to get in the way, including intermediary institutions like the church.