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The Boy Scouts Are No Longer Welcome at This Anti-Gay Jamboree

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And they've been replaced by a Christian alternative.

Poor Boy Scouts. Earlier this year, their leadership made a 
fairly dramatic change in policy to allow gay people to become 
troop leaders, following on the heels of last year's decision to 
stop kicking out gay Scouts. The move to end discrimination has 
cost the organization some members and donations from religious 
groups that were outraged about the change. But it's also 
suffered smaller, pettier indignities—like its banishment from 
this weekend's Values Voter Summit, the premier political 
conference for evangelical Christians.

The DC summit, organized by the conservative Family Research 
Council Action, is headlined by no fewer than seven GOP 
presidential candidates. For many years, the Boy Scouts have had 
a place of honor at the event, presenting the American flag as 
the color guard. This year, though, the Scouts are nowhere to be 
found. In their place are boys from Trail Life USA, the outdoor 
adventure and character development group created last year as a 
Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts. Joining them were 
American Heritage Girls, the religious alternative to the Girl 
Scouts.

Trail Life was founded by a religious-right activist from 
Florida, associated with James Dobson's Focus on the Family, who 
was active fighting the Boy Scout policy change. The group's 
official policy on gays says:

We believe that homosexuality is sinful and immoral, as is any 
sexual activity outside of the sanctity of marriage between a 
Man and a Woman. Consistent with this belief, we have specific 
policies that address membership and sin in both youth and adult 
members.

Trail Life also excludes Mormons and Jews because they don't 
subscribe to the group's particular theology.

A spokeswoman for the summit's organizers didn't respond to a 
request for comment. But Trail Life CEO Mark Hancock, at his 
booth in the convention hall, said his group was invited to 
replace the Boy Scouts color guard because of "the direction the 
Boy Scouts have taken. They think we're a better fit." Asked 
specifically if it was because of the acceptance of gays, 
Hancock demurred, saying it was simply the Boy Scouts' "general 
departure from their traditional values" that prompted their 
exclusion.

Kim Luckabaugh, the DC-area coordinator for the more established 
American Heritage Girls, said her group replaced the Boy Scouts 
at the conference last year, when Trail Life was just getting 
off the ground, because "we are aligned ministerially. We are 
aligned in our values." She says the FRC organizers have "been 
very kind and gracious to us."

The booting of the Boy Scouts from the event isn't all that 
surprising. The Family Research Council, which sponsors the 
Values Voter Summit, has been an ardent opponent of the Boy 
Scouts' acceptance of gays. Earlier this year, FRC head Tony 
Perkins lamented that the Boy Scouts were moving "away from 
their moral standard of being morally straight and clean and 
moving into open homosexuality." He claimed that both the Boy 
Scouts and Girls Scouts "are done" as organizations because of 
their acceptance of gays.

A regular speaker at the event, Mat Staver, with the legal group 
Liberty Counsel, said last month that the change in policy at 
the Boy Scouts meant that "you are going to have all kinds of 
sexual molestation. This is a playground for pedophiles to go 
and have all these boys as objects of their lust. This is 
insane, and we need to literally abandon the Scouts because the 
Scouts, unfortunately, have abandoned us."

The Values Voter Summit has long been a hotbed of anti-gay 
activism, but this year, organizers are going to great lengths 
to honor people who've personally discriminated against LGBT 
people, such as Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who refused to follow 
the Supreme Court edict and issue marriage licenses to gay and 
lesbian couples; a florist who dissed her friend and refused to 
do flowers for his gay wedding; and a pair of bakers who refused 
to make a cake for a lesbian couple's wedding. The organizers' 
exclusion of the Boy Scouts seems only fitting, but perhaps 
they've done them a favor: The boys will be spared from 
associating with people who will be remembered on the wrong side 
of history.

Comments:

Satch of Bridgend • 18 hours ago
My God! They look like a bunch of Nazis! Or are they Russian?
11  • Reply•Share ›
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1Pokey4  Satch of Bridgend • 13 hours ago
Nazis for Christ! That's the big difference.
15  • Reply•Share ›
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belseth  1Pokey4 • 9 hours ago
The Nazis claimed to be a Christian movement. People tend to 
forget that particular aspect of Nazi Germany.
15  • Reply•Share ›
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yankee dandee  belseth • 8 hours ago
People have no knowledge about WW2 because they don't care--it's 
all about burgers and beer with their marijuana.
 • Reply•Share ›
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Liz  yankee dandee • 5 hours ago
Do you speak from experience?
2  • Reply•Share ›
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ydnas639  yankee dandee • 3 hours ago
uh . . . can there be onion rings, too?
2  • Reply•Share ›
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Mike Meagher  yankee dandee • 3 hours ago
Sorry dude: i'm a docent at Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front 
National Historical Park in Richmond CA, a vegan, a wine drinker 
and a pot smoker.
2  • Reply•Share ›
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Edward Mumpster  yankee dandee • 2 hours ago
I prefer mountain dew with my meat and pot, otherwise I fall 
aslee...
1  • Reply•Share ›
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didactic1  yankee dandee • 2 hours ago
And they are all going into "IT". Great idea. When the climate 
collapses, no electricity, water or food. I guess some of the 
rednecks might have an advantage. Oh. And knowing how to use an 
AR15 and a few shotguns might help too. Like "gun control" is 
like the LAST thing you want with what's goin' down.
 • Reply•Share ›
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d-Democrat  belseth • 7 hours ago
No . . . they replaced it with their own religion, Nazism . . . 
for example, "Gott" was replaced with "Got" . . . particularly 
amoung the SS.
 • Reply•Share ›
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Kyler Phoenix  d-Democrat • 2 hours ago
No, they were Christians.
1  • Reply•Share ›
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didactic1  belseth • 2 hours ago
No they were a pagan or neo pagan movement.
 • Reply•Share ›
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dagobarbz  didactic1 • 2 hours ago
Nope. Gott mit uns means exactly what it says. But they DID 
dress it up with pagan trappings to capture followers' Inner 
Odin.

But no, despite the occultism and paganism, they were at core 
just another flavor of asshole Christian.
2  • Reply•Share ›
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didactic1  dagobarbz • an hour ago
They were pagan.
 • Reply•Share ›
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jmtaylor700  didactic1 • an hour ago
So you're argument is that 64 million Germans quit the Christian 
Church and joined a pagan movement.

And boy did they raise all those old Christian Churches... oh, 
never mind, that was the Allies that bombed all those old German 
Churches that the Nazi's apparently glorified.

The usual right wing trappings - take an outlier and declare it 
the brand for the whole so that they continue their life of 
irresponsibility here on earth
2  • Reply•Share ›
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dagobarbz  belseth • 2 hours ago
Gott mit uns, baby!
2  • Reply•Share ›
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clemans  1Pokey4 • 4 hours ago
these parents abuse their children, handicap them, and teach 
them to embrace ignorance, and have hate in their hearts.....and 
there isn't anything that society can do to protect those poor 
kids. As a parent this is so very sad.
3  • Reply•Share ›
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didactic1  1Pokey4 • 2 hours ago
Nazis were very gay.
 • Reply•Share ›

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The Boy Scouts Are No Longer Welcome at This Anti-Gay Jamboree "Poofs of MotherJones" <faggots@motherjones.com> - 2015-09-29 00:30 +0200

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