The decision of the Boy Scouts of America to stop ostracizing and defaming gay Scouts has drawn support from a broad spectrum of scouting supporters, including the conservative National Catholic Commission on Scouting.
Mormons, Methodists, the National Jewish Committee on Scouting, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association also have voiced support for the Scouts.
But leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have responded by declaring war against gay youths, even as a body of scientific research and anecdotal evidence suggests that this war — and not sexual orientation per se — threatens the health of gay youths.
Enter Robert Gagnon, board member of the Restored Hope Network, who yesterday protested both the inclusion of gay Scouts and the state of California’s pre-existing lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America over its refusal to employ gay scoutmasters.
Gagnon wrote on Facebook:
Homofascist bullying. This just goes to show that once you accommodate to the homosexualist lobby at any level, they smell blood in the water like piranhas: ‘The state Senate approved legislation Wednesday that would use California’s tax policy in an attempt to pressure the Boy Scouts of America into fully accepting gay members. The bill would make the organization ineligible for nonprofit tax breaks, despite its vote last week to accept openly gay scouts while blocking gays from becoming scout leaders….
Lara’s SB323 would deny state tax breaks to youth groups that discriminate on the basis of gender identity … sexual orientation…. It passed the Senate with a 27-9 vote, with the minimum two-thirds majority needed to alter the state’s tax policy.’
Once again, we see no interest on Gagnon’s part in reaching out to gay youths and supporting healthy spiritual development. Nor do we see an acknowledgment that gay adults are as responsible and concerned about children’s physical and spiritual health as anyone else. In short, from a religious perspective, we see no grace whatsoever; from a political perspective, we see hypocrisy and chutzpah.
All that we see here is a desire to harass and ostracize kids, to prevent fellow Americans from helping to raise healthy men, to deny freedom of religion to scouts and their families — and to seek taxpayer handouts for groups that will carry out his partisan vendetta.
Gagnon’s tone belies a political extremism which he projects onto others.