The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that some Christians, irate over the Boy Scouts’ failure to discriminate against gays, are leaving the organization to try and start their own initiatives.
Scott Scarborough, a former Boy Scouts volunteer and committee member under the South Plains Council, resigned his position with the organization on Sept. 1 and is bringing an emerging faith-based alternative to West Texas.
This is great news for the Boy Scouts. Without the influence (financial and otherwise) of the narrow-minded bigots, the Scouts will have a much better chance of growing into the kind of helpful, mind-broadening, and character-building organization it ought to have been all along. Someday they might even admit *gasp* atheists.
Meanwhile, the bigots are forming a “faith-based” alternative to the Boy Scouts (and thus unintentionally beginning to turn “faith-based” into the kind of term that “fundamentalist” has become). Their shirts will likely be brown, and they will boldly and prophetically announce their mission as being the oppression of gays, atheists, and anybody else who differs from the ideal white male Christian patriarchy. Oh wait, no, that’s a secret. Better let some non-whites in too, to keep it from being too obvious.
I wish them every bit of the kind of luck they deserve.
The BSA still disallows gay scout leaders, so why are we holding them up as “the good guys”?
Yes, they are marginally better than this splinter group, just as the current pope is marginally better than his predecessor.
We’re not holding them up as the good guys yet, but their odds of becoming good guys just improved a little.
And the closed-in, cultish behavior becomes just a bit more obvious.
I had to read the story three times to understand that the people leaving though the Scouts weren’t bigoted enough, not that people were leaving because of the bigotry the Scouts still have. I’m glad for it, though, because it’s much easier for an org. like the Scouts to weather a minor percentage leaving than it will be for the splinter group to gain any ground, and as you said, the change ought to be for the better.
Here in Snyder, Texas, 85 miles from Lubbock, our Boy Scout Splinter Group has chosen the name “Creation Explorers.” They allow girls to join, and appear to have rather an evangelical viewpoint…..it remains to be seen if the “Creation” refers to a 6000-year-old earth or not.
Of course they’re letting girls in. Who else are they going to get to do the cleaning and cooking on campouts?
What the hell!? I’ve never understand this incessant need to Christianize the BSA. Especially since Christians already have their own separate scouting organization that I had to participate in when I was a church going youth:
http://www.csbministries.org/site/programs/stockade/
Don’t hold your breath about atheists:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/05/31/why-mormons-back-the-new-scouting-policy/
Yeah, i’ve actually got a student at the high school where i work who was talking about how he had been close to finishing his Eagle when he decided that he needed to quit BSA because of the new policies. i usually keep a pretty good lid on my “unpopular opinions” because i’m afraid of potential professional blowback here in the buckle of the Bible Belt, but i couldn’t hold back from telling him that i thought the organization taking a step toward being more inclusive was actually a good thing…