WaPo: If Scouts Go Gay, How About Atheist?
No good (or at least spineless) deed goes unpunished. As the news broke that the Boy Scouts of America is considering allowing local charters to decide whether to admit homosexual scouts and leaders, the left just won’t let up. Networks like ABC and NBC have already called for more inclusivity this week and so has Washington Post guest writer Herb Silverman, a self-described “Jewish Atheist” and “founder and President Emeritus of the Secular Coalition for America”
If the Scouts do adopt that policy, Silverman suggested that the next “step forward” is to admit atheists as well. He wrote, “I look forward to a day when the Boy Scouts become as tolerant as the Girl Scouts, who have refused to discriminate against any girl for any reason because they regard lesbian and atheist girls as equals.”
The Girl Scouts of America caved to leftist sensibilities long ago, but the Boy Scouts of America have held their own, despite heavy opposition, to uphold their original ideals in an increasingly morally relevant culture. Until this week. The Scouts’ decision predictably opened the door for the next special interest group with an ax to grind.
Silverman cited the case of Darrell Lambert, an Eagle Scout who was asked to leave because of his vocal opposition to the BSA’s belief in God. Silverman’s special pleading sounded a lot like ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’S “Today” did on Tuesday, when they celebrated the victory of a small minority over the will of the majority, Only 3-4 percent of the general population self-identifies as homosexual and obviously a much smaller percentage than that will want to join the Boy Scouts of America. It is the same for atheists, who make up just 1.6 percent of the population, according to a Pew Study in 2007. Yet the Left pressures historically conservative organizations like the BSA to cater to the minority at the expense of the majority of Americans.
Silverman envisions an ideal where the Boy Scouts have virtually no moral ideology that directs their membership. When that day of “anything goes” arrives, he said, they will “be as morally straight as their exemplars--the Girl Scouts of America.”
Funny how the Left likes to claim moral relativism as a moral in itself.