An outspoken supporter of the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) ban on gay participants has vowed to withdraw his own sons out of the scouting organization.
In an editorial for CNN, John Stemberger called the BSA's May 23 announcement that sexual orientation would be eliminated as youth membership criterion would eventually "lead to myriad bad consequences."
"First, the new BSA policy is logically incoherent and morally and ethically inconsistent. The BSA had never discriminated against homosexuals," Stemberger, who is an Eagle Scout, writes. "The BSA membership application did not ask about sexual orientation, and there has never been a witch hunt in the BSA to find or remove its gay members."
Before referring to the Boy Scouts as "one of the great jewels of American culture," Stemberger continues:
"Most important, the new policy robs parents of Boy Scouts, like me, of the sole authority to raise issues of sex and sexuality with their kids.
Parents should have the exclusive right to raise issues about sex and sexuality with their children in their own time and in their own way, in the privacy of their homes, not brought up by other older boys around a campfire. Allowing open homosexuality injects a sensitive and highly charged political issue into the heart of the BSA, against the wishes of the vast majority of parents."
You can read the rest of the editorial here.
Stemberger is also president of On My Honor, which is described as "a coalition of concerned parents, Scout Leaders, Scouting donors, Eagle Scouts and others" who are "united" in opposing "open homosexuality" in the Boy Scouts.
Likely to defend Stemberger's statements is the National Organization of Marriage's (NOM) Brian Brown, who said the Boy Scouts' decision to admit openly gay Scouts would end up "sexualizing the organization."
"All of this is happening not because of a true grassroots demand of gay youth to be part of the organization but by an orchestrated political effort by gay activists who want to punish any group or organization that does not embrace homosexuality," Brown wrote in a statement. "It's the beginning of the end for what once was one of America's noblest organizations."
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