SECOND OPINION

"Americans have confused tolerance and relativism; often, they assume that tolerance means not merely respecting people's right to their opinions but refusing to make any reasoned judgments about those opinions."
—William Bennett

The drifting paradigm of sexual morality has beached on the shores of the Boy Scouts of America, and the BSA has, unwillingly, become the frontline of the Left's campaign to normalize the abnormal. Though fewer than 3% of Americans are afflicted with homosexual pathology (according to research from the Centers for Disease Control), they are a very vocal 3% and are waging a very real assault on American youth.

When visiting the Web site of "Scouting for All," the organization featured prominently in the latest PBS homosexual advocacy propaganda film "Scout's Honor" (which aired this week), Federalist editors were greeted by this 1945 quote from Martin Niemoller about Hitler's National Socialist Party:

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."

One might fairly conclude that when radical Leftist homosexuals equate the BSA's rejection of their ilk with the Holocaust and wholesale slaughter innocents — such an assertion exposes SFA's gross lack of perspective and moral authority.

Given a big promo by PBS (thanks to your tax dollars), "Scouting for All" is endeavoring to extort the Boy Scouts of America into accepting homosexual mentors for young boys (and opening its ranks to other gender morphs and atheists) by coercing religious institutions, United Way chapters and corporations to defund the BSA. Thus far, many Unitarian and some Episcopalian congregations, about 40 United Way chapters, and a handful of national corporations (Levi Strauss, J.P. Morgan, American Airlines, Textron and Fleet Bank) have pulled their support of the BSA.

The unchallenged and oft repeated premises of the film "Scout's Honor" are that homosexuality is "normal" (based on the thoroughly debunked theory of a homosexual gene), and that excluding homosexuals is tantamount to a civil rights violation — a shameful affront to those legitimate civil rights issues for which so many have sacrificed so much. It is the height of arrogance to make such a ludicrous comparison.

The BSA is, at its foundation, an organization which encourages morality as stipulated by God's law. The Scout Oath and Laws state in part: "A Scout...keeps his body and mind fit and clean. He goes around with those who believe in living by these same ideas. ... A Scout is reverent. A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties."

Prior to any meaningful discussion about what God has to say about homosexuality, it is necessary to dispel a false dichotomy. Homosexual advocates and groups like "Scouting for All" rebut dissenters by claiming they are pharisaical, intolerant and "mean-spirited." But correctly viewing homosexuality as a violation of God's law and nature has no correlation with one's capacity to love or have compassion for others. Nor is dissent related to judgment, which is God's alone. Rather, it is about discernment between right and wrong, and obedience to objective truth rather than the cult of subjective relativism popularly justified under the contemporary aegis of "tolerance" and "diversity."

The teachings of both the Old and New Testaments tell us homosexuality is wrong. Among the various references, we find in Leviticus that it is "an abomination." In the New Testament, Romans 1:24-32, Paul says, "...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.... Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up unnatural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.... Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who would practice them." In 1st Corinthians 6:9, Paul adds, "Do not be deceived, neither the immoral...nor sexual perverts...will inherit the Kingdom of God." Paul uses the Greek word "arsenokoitai" in these texts, which means "sodomites."

In Matthew 19, Jesus Christ speaks to us about marriage and sexuality: "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female, man and woman, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh'. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."*

Relativists in the modern church endeavor to bury Scriptural understanding with "reason." However, God's universal plan and its inherent truths are thoroughly revealed in science and the study of natural order. Within that order, we are entrusted with the sexual design and relationship between "male and female, man and woman." This design is as clear in reason as in Scripture. The objective truth concerning homosexuality has long been revealed through Scripture and reason, and should not be violated.

Romans 12:21 teaches, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." While discerning right from wrong, the BSA has not predicated love for others on their obedience to God's moral truth. Nor have they equated unconditional love with subjective relativism. To do either violates God's word, and design.

As for religious congregations who have been led astray by errant teachings of clergy, Jesus said in Matthew 7:15 — "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."

Amid the heated religious and social campaigns to "normalize" homosexuality, it takes real courage to do as God has commanded all of us as sinners — stand firm in our love for those who are afflicted with homosexuality, while refusing to embrace their sin. Embracing sin under the aegis of "tolerance" and "diversity" only serves to abandon homosexuals in their sin.

*(Matthew 19:10, Jesus also says: "Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth...." Homosexual advocates in the church often incorrectly invoke this passage as justification for accepting homosexual norming. In the Greek text, one finds the word "eunouxoi," meaning one with a congenital defect or castrated, and without the ability to consummate marriage. The reference is distinctly different from the Greek word for homosexuals or sodomites as referenced by Paul.)

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