I'm sure most gay scouts would act perfectly acceptably, but I think if you put all kids in a co-ed situation where boys and girls were sharing a tents and bathing facilities, unsupervised, on multiple night trips several times a year, most would behave respectably as well. That doesn't mean that I think it would be a good idea to allow that or that I'd want my child to be in such a group.

You don't make the rules for the vast majority of kids whom you can trust, you make them for the ones that will make mistakes and you apply those rules to all alike. Even though most gay scouts would probably be perfect gentlemen on scouting trips, the time honored approach for supervising adolescents removes them from situations where sexual misconduct can easily occur. It protects the children and the institution, it's just plain common sense. If you don't agree, I'll have to ask you whether you would want your 14 year old son or daughter to go camping in the situation I described above. If you'd be uncomfortable with that, why?

It would. Why is that a problem?

Nor do I, has anybody suggested or implied in any way that they were?

No need for you to be offended as no one is assuming, knee-jerk or otherwise, that every homosexual scout is "open for business." That you would mischaracterize people's arguments so grossly is something you should rethink if you want people to believe in your good faith.

(cont. below)

I know you are. When you have two openly gay boys in a troop on a scouting trip who want to share a tent, how will the BSA handle that?

When an openly gay scout wants to share a tent with someone's son who doesn't want their son to share a tent with a gay scout, what will the BSA say about that?

DADT has only been implemented for a very short time. I think it's far too early to tell what the affect of the new policy is. Have you not been following all the problems with sexual harrassment and assault in the news recently. Do you think that integrating the sexes in the armed forces hasn't produced all sorts of problems?

The homosexual agenda isn't through with the BSA. Openly gay scout leaders are next, and it will happen soon. After that we can expect to not hear about all sorts of sex scandals because the MSM will be too busy ignoring them. They will instead be busy following up every lead about sexual scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and trying to advance the narrative that traditional religious institutions are dens of hypocrisy and bigotry toward homosexuals.

There certainly is when boys are bathing and sleeping together in unsupervised quarters in the middle of the woods.

That's because prudent, responsible adults don't rely on the infallible virtue of adolescents. As you know Boy Scouts share close quarters, they bathe and sleep together and engage in all sorts of activities, often in remote places, which often have limited adult supervision. Injecting the potential of sexual attraction to that mix creates opportunities for hormone driven young men who haven't yet developed good judgement to misbehave.

There is a reason the Boy Scouts aren't a co-ed institution. If we could trust that adolescents would behave virtuously and resist temptation, what a wonderful world it would be. There is a very sound and reasonable design behind removing the possibility of sexual temptation from activities which provide opportunity for sexual misbehavior. If thinking this way is this foolish then perhaps it's time we merge the BSA with GSA.

If a scout intends to not act on his sexual attractions, ie be celibate, what need does he have for the BSA to acknowledge or accommodate his sexuality at all?

The definition of chastity I subscribe to respects the procreative essence of sex and how sex is properly open to that fundamental nature. So I don't see how homosexual activity can be chaste.

Well, homosexual behavior doesn't fit in with any traditional moral standard I'm aware of, so I don't see how this pertains.

What I would like to see is the Boy Scouts focus on civic virtue and duty to God, country and your fellow man. Sex was never something that was brought up or discussed by my scout leaders or in any of my scout activities. Why we should inject it into Scouts now is beyond me.

That which cannot go on forever will eventually end. The question is how catastrophic an ending we will see to all of these wishful, utopian fantasies about human nature our society keeps on indulging.

Looks like you copied that article twice. And it was really long the first time. Not sure it is kosher to post an entire published article here, might be some copyright infringement violation there. I might also suggest that you'd get more people to take in the info you're offering up if you to top line the points you think are most important.

Laws against theft, murder, assault, battery, fraud, etc. are all laws promoting basic morality.

Zoning laws prohibiting certain types of activity in certain areas promote basic morality.

Regulations governing what media content can go over the public airwaves promote basic morality.

Laws prohibiting or strictly regulating certain activities like gambling and use of inebriants and controlled substances promote basic morality.

Of course we want and need laws that promote basic morality. There are questions of degree and about what penalties should apply, but to say we don't want laws promoting basic morality or that doing so causes more harm to society than good is foolish.

Well, excuse me, you were the one who thought it was clever to call all government action poor.

Besides, it was the last of several examples I provided. I could come up with many, many more.

How the Canadian healthcare system is analogous to civil marriage you'll have to elaborate on a bit more. The Canadian health system is a mandatory top down government policy that eliminates the free market. It is nothing like marriage law.

Friedman was a brilliant man, that doesn't make his prognostications infallible. What he says about Central Park is exactly wrong. Central Park would have been bull-dozed into more concrete jungle without government action. It would have been the same as Cleveland's lake front. Cleveland's lake front is an industrial mess. Compare that to Chicago's pristine lake front. The difference between those two places is that Chicago by government action prevented industry from developing the lake front and designated it public park land. Friedman is wrong.

No, I'm not. I'm claiming that good government policy need not interfere with people's lives. As I pointed out, marriage doesn't interfere with anything that people would like to do privately. It is entirely voluntary and people can engage in whatever alternative to civil marriage they'd like. 

You have yet to describe how civil marriage impinges on anyone's freedom whatsoever.

If evangelicals want stricter bonds, they are free to make themso, just as the Catholic church does. A Catholic can dissolve his state marriage, that doesn't mean its dissolved in the church's eyes.

You don't seem to understand the ways in which civil marriage relates to private definitions of marriage.

No fault divorce is poor policy. It doesn't take into account the weakness of human nature, and it doesn't promote moral virtue, as good policy should.

National Parks are government action. Are those part of the progressive agenda? Would the country be better without them?

The GI Bill was government action. Was that poorly designed?

The interstate highway system was government action. We'd have something better without government?

Your snark about the always inferior worth of government action doesn't hold up to even mild scrutiny.

This is just nonsense. There are all sorts of benefits and efficiencies created for couples because of state recognition of marriage that private institutions couldn't achieve on their own. Of course state support makes religious marriages even stronger.

You conflate all government action with the "progressive agenda." One need not be opposed to government action to be conservative. One should be opposed to poorly designed government action which doesn't take into account wisdom we've learned about human nature. Government action that promotes well regulated markets or civic virtue and basic morality is perfectly fine.