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During the past few weeks, homosexual activists seem to be increasing their relentless salvo against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), and it shows no signs of letting up. Although gay rights groups are quick to cry "gay bashing" when someone doesn’t accept their lifestyle, it appears that they are the only ones who truly have a green light to bash others and get away with it. If BSA was to launch the same type of offensive against the homosexual community that has been waged on them, the liberal media would really have a field day. The Boy Scouts have joined Christians as one of the minorities that John Q Public deems it politically correct to oppose.

The Supreme Court ruled in June by a 5-4 vote that the Boy Scouts have a constitutional right to exclude gays from membership and leadership positions because opposition to homosexuality is part of the private organization’s "expressive message." The Scouts are not attacking homosexuals, but rather, are asserting their lawful right to limit their organization to people who pledge to abide by the Scout Oath and Law which states that they agree to be "physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Homosexuals, who have their own definition of "morally straight," are adamantly opposed to BSA’s policy and have initiated a vicious nationwide campaign to change it.

Their avenue of choice seems to be by hitting below the belt.... namely in the wallet. On Tuesday, August 29, Chicago Sun Times reported that "Giant firms like Levi Strauss & Co., Wells Fargo and Textron have cut funding and others are thinking about it because Scout policies conflict with company policies encouraging tolerance. Rick Garcia, political director of the Chicago-based gay rights group Equality Illinois, said his 10,000-member organization plans to apply pressure to United Way of Chicago and corporations that donate to the Scouts."

On Wednesday, August 30, the news became even bleaker for the scouts as the Sidney Morning Herald reported that in addition to rapidly declining corporate and government support for the organization, many troops across the country are being prohibited from using public facilities. "Chicago, San Francisco and San Jose, California, have told local Scout troops that they can no longer use parks, schools and other municipal sites. Companies such as Chase Manhattan Bank and Textron Inc have withdrawn hundreds of thousands of dollars in support," the paper stated. The state of Connecticut has banned contributions to the Scouts by state employees through a state-run charity, and is also thinking of barring Scouts from public campgrounds or buildings. BSA is suing the state over these two issues.

Adding insult to injury, BSA, whose purse-strings are threatening to become a noose, is now coming under the gun from another direction. Not only are they losing funding and facilities, but an article in the Framingham Metrowest News states on Monday, September 4, that their recruitment efforts are being hampered as well. Reacting to the Boy Scouts’ ban on gays, Mark Smith, the superintendent of the Framingham, MA, school district says he will no longer allow the organization’s local chapter to hand out information or recruit members on school grounds. Smith was quick to add that he "would take the same stance against any group that excludes people on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or sex", although by the looks of his list, "religious fanatics" will have to fend for themselves.

The opposition suffered a major blow on Thursday, September 7 as WorldNetDaily brought to light the fact that no one had verified the accuracy of the countless reports of the Boy Scouts’ impending demise. The claims, which first appeared in the New York Times and were then spread via many papers and news programs, erroneously reported information that had originated on websites of homosexual activist groups such as Lambda Legal. WorldNetDaily found most of those claims to be false. In fact, both funding and membership for BSA is at record levels, as reported in The Washington Times on Tuesday, September 5. "All across the country, Scouting is prospering and growing," said Robert M. Gates, president of the National Eagle Scout Association in a recent letter to members. "Every council is enjoying improved financial support, to the extent that many are making capital improvements in their camps and council service centers for the first time in years." Despite the 3 year onslaught from gay rights forces, enrollment in scouting is higher than at any time since the 1970s, according to BSA national spokesman Greg Shields.

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a family-values activist organization representing 43,000 churches in America, has also investigated the claims made by the New York Times and activist groups and found them to be a blatant exaggeration. Sheldon warned that the homosexual activists would not stop their efforts to hurt the Boy Scouts financially, and challenged corporate America to support the Boy Scouts rather than sodomy. "We are also calling upon corporate heads to reject the strident demands of homosexual activists to destroy whatever groups they cannot control," he stated.

In an outrageous 180 degree turn of events, WorldNetDaily announced on Wednesday, August 30, that Boy Scouts of America is named in a civil suit alleging that the organization failed to protect a scout from molestation. The plaintiff’s attorney, Charles A. Bonner, said BSA national leaders know that "the organization attracts pedophiles like a magnet attracts metal." BSA has an extensive child sexual abuse prevention and awareness program, part of which is the exclusion of homosexuals. According to a 1992 report titled The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles among Sex Offenders against Children, child sexual molestation is over three times more common among homosexuals than among heterosexuals. The bottom line in this catch-22 situation is clear: Protecting scouts from sexual predators is admirable when viewed through the eyes of the victims and their families, but is considered hateful intolerance when viewed through the eyes of the American Civil Liberties Union and gay activists. The boy scouts are in a no win situation.

The question of the homosexuals’ true motives begs to be asked, "Are all these thousands and thousands of protesting men really interested in becoming Boy Scout leaders in order to help boys to learn how to build fires and earn merit badges?" Or is there another strategy at work, such as the opportunity to spread their perversion through an organization considered to be a pedophile’s dream? What would happen if tens of thousands of Christians wanted to join the North American Man-Boy Love Association with the expressed purpose of pushing their agenda and religious principles on gays? Perish the thought! They would never get so much as a foot in the door.

The Boy Scouts did score a victory, however, on Tuesday, September 13, when Congress voted 362-12 against a proposal to revoke their eight-decade-old federal charter because of the scouting organization’s policy of excluding gays. In trying to spin the crushing blow to homosexual activism, David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights organization, said Republicans were "trying to change the subject from hate crimes to Boy Scouts.’’ Well, Smith is right. The fight is about good verses hate. The homosexual activists have declared open season on the Boy Scouts, and their liberal media supporters have tried their best to portray the Boy Scouts of America as homophobic because of their refusal to let homosexual men lead young male children—even, as stated earlier, it has been shown that homosexual men are three times more likely to sodomize these young boys.

Although the good guys scored one, the zealous homosexual agenda continues to grind on. Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily, reported the same day that the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association had their annual meeting in San Francisco. Apparently, the meeting never touched on generic national events or on journalism. Instead, the big debate was on whether journalists should even bother to report opposing points of view on homosexuals’ issues and stories. For instance, CBS correspondent and NLJGA member Jeffrey Kofman made his thinking clear: "The argument (is): Why do we constantly see in coverage of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues the homophobes and the fag-haters quoted in stories when, of course, we don’t do that with Jews, blacks, et cetera?" Paula Madison, vice president of diversity at NBC and news director for the NBC’s New York City affiliate WNBC, added: "I agree with him. I don’t see why we would seek out ... the absurd, inane point of view just to get another point of view."

At the same time, CNS News reported on September 13 that Congress was considering hate crime legislation to support homosexuals that the Senate had passed last June. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2000 expands federal penalties for crimes based on race, sex, religion or sexual orientation, and funds hundreds of diversity and tolerance programs in public schools. Many conservatives are also concerned that hate crimes legislation, which includes millions of dollars in funding for public school-based "diversity" programs, would denigrate or attack students’ religious beliefs concerning homosexuality. "What the Clinton administration is trying to do with these programs is to disparage Christianity," said Andrea Sheldon, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, which has lobbied against the bills. "We’re seeing this on a whole host of fronts, whether it’s telling fifth graders that Baptists and Pentecostals are perpetrators of hate, or ignoring religion as a part of culture."

If Congress does pass this hate crime legislation, it will be an open door for the homosexuals to totally exclude any opposition to their agenda, including the Christian church, and a golden opportunity to promote graphic sex education in public schools. Once the homosexuals have legal minority status, an open war will be waged against anyone, any group, or anything that would stand against them. The Church will not only be denied the right to refuse to employ a homosexual as a pastor or other leadership position within the church, but would eventually be denied the right to preach and teach that homosexuality is a perversion and a sin to God.

1 Corinthians 6:9 makes it very clear that homosexuals will neither see the kingdom of God nor have eternal life with Him. Not that God does not love them. He does, and so should every Christian. But God hates their actions and simply cannot have fellowship with sin. Unrepentant homosexuals see-saw between two conflicting ideas: On one hand that their lifestyle is merely a "sexual preference," but on the other hand, that they were born that way. In either case, Christ’s blood cannot cleanse their sin because they deny they are even in sin. This should grieve all Christians to reach out with the good news of Christ to the gay population. But according to the hate-crime legislation that is now being considered in Congress, a Christian would be breaking the law if he called a homosexual a sinner or attempted to share the gospel with one, and would receive a severe punishment. This is a very dangerous bill that must be stopped at all cost. DTT will keep you informed of its progression through the US House of Representatives.