Talking Points in response to BSA proposed resolution

* The proposed resolution is unworkable and incoherent. The resolution requires all Scouting families and faith-based organizations that object to homosexuality on religious grounds to affirm something their faiths teach is wrong. The beliefs and convictions of parents and untold numbers of Scouts themselves would be made subordinate to the insistence of a special interest group. * The proposal says, in essence, that homosexuality is acceptable until a boy turns 18. Then, when he comes of age, he's prevented from remaining in Scouts because the BSA says it wants to retain its ban on homosexual Scout leaders. The proposed policy is incoherent at best and may very well be deceptively designed to appear as a compromise when such distinction in membership would never survive a court challenge. * A change in policy would mean that boys of a young age will be forced to consider issues of sexuality that not only have nothing to do with Scouting but which are the exclusive right of parents to discuss with them at the time and in the way the parents think best. * Once an organization begins negotiating away its core principles, it has lost its integrity and it will soon lose its identity. If homosexual activists can force the organization to abandon its moral standard, it wont be long until the atheists will force the organization to abandon their belief in God who gave the moral standard. * It is really fair for a handful of people to deprive hundreds of thousands of the organization that they helped build? If there really is a demand for a boys organization that includes homosexuals, then those trying to force their view on the BSA should start their own organization. * We only need look to Scouting in Canada to see the impact this will have on the organization. Like their Canadian counterparts, Scouting families in the US will vote with their feet and leave by the thousands. How does a mass exodus of Scouts and, with it, a dramatic loss in revenue, advance the interests of boys and young men, of the BSA as an organization, or the country Scouting is designed to serve? * About 70% of scout troops are chartered by faith-based organizations, because of their religious convictions, many will be forced to drop their sponsorship of Scouts. * The proposed resolution introduces what Scouting itself calls open and avowed homosexuality into an organization that is designed to foster trust, camaraderie, character and leadership, thereby clouding Scoutings most fundamental purposes. * The pressure to change the policy for the most part comes from outside the Boy Scouts and its membership, who only last year completed a two-year study in which Scout parents overwhelmingly said they wanted to keep the present policy. The latest survey again found overwhelming opposition. Respondents support the current policy by a 61 percent to 34 percent margin ... 72 percent of chartered organizations favor the currently policy. The organization has a responsibility to its membership first and foremost.