Boyscouts Add a Sex Badge

“If you're honest,

you sooner or later have to confront your values.

 Then you're forced to separate

 what is right from what is merely legal."

 ~ Tom Robbins

Most Americans don't even know that America is not a Democracy but a Republic, much less understand the differences between them. 

Both can go south, but a Republic is designed to protect its citizens from the moral decay of a majority.   

Like a Democracy, anything can become legal in a Republic.  Slavery, the murder of certain groups of people and even incest can be legalized. 

The elected officials in a Republic are supposed to separate right from wrong and ensure that laws protect both the citizens and the country from the harm and consequences of immoral and unjust ideas.

The tipping point in a Republic comes when a generation is left without leadership with the intellectual and/or spiritual capacity to carry out their duties.

We have passed that tipping point and we are now all scrambling to know what to do, what to say and how to proceed.

I am still very much intrigued by Pope Francis.  In each of our own lives, it so important to demonstrate how love intersects with truth about right and wrong, sin and virtue and the tools for our salvation.

He made a statement a few days back about atheists (more on that later) which has been grossly misunderstood, about meeting people where they are to do good works, going forward from there.  

In good faith, I think the Boyscouts were trying to apply this ideal - but the execution has gone awry.

In a society sexually demoralizing its citizens, even its children, the Boyscouts were at a crossroad familiar to all of us.  

The challenge in a society that legalizes what is harmful and lethal are complex, especially for Catholics whose love goes too deep to ratify what we know is destructive.   

Sexually charged immoral adults have always sexualized children and those children sexualize other children.    This is nothing new.

It is a predatory use of human sexuality and there are laws which prevent sexualized adults, and in fact children, from acting upon those attractions.  The laws are written to protect children who are incapable of consenting to sexual exploitation.   The age of sexual consent is 16 in most states, 18 in others.

The inappropriate nature of a child revealing sexual attractions - and demanding affirmation - in an apostolate that has nothing to do with sex,  is actually quite disturbing.  It is too much information to put on a pair of khaki shorts, tie a kerchief around your neck to go pick up sticks along the highway or visit a nursing home.

Imagine, if you will, organizing a youth group to serve the poor in the inner city.  During sign ups, a young man steps forward to tell you he is sexually attracted to girls and will not join unless the group adopts a policy that ratifies his sexual attractions.

Since an apostolate that serves the poor would have absolutely nothing to do with this young man's sexual attractions, such a revelation would be so disturbingly inappropriate, the young man's motives and state of mental and spiritual health would be considered dangerous to female children in the group and the people to whom you plan to serve.

Any rational person would conclude that this young man plans to make use of his sexual attraction to girls in your apostolate to serve the poor.  

Aside from incorporating the sexual exploitation of children into policy, the Boyscouts decision to include homosexual children but exclude homosexual adults is rather perplexing.

Homosexuals are not pedophiles.  Pedophiles are a breed of their own. 

I could misunderstand, but what the Boyscout policy seems to be saying is, while they are willing to encourage sexualized children to make a statement about their sexual attraction to other children prior to the age of consent, at the worst possible time in their formation, when their hormones are raging, they are protecting children from being sexually exploited.

They are only kidding themselves.

Time to say adios to the Boyscouts.