The Boy Scouts’ 24th annual World Scout Jamboree is scheduled for July 21 through August 1, 2019, and global Boy Scouts leadership is mandating that condoms be “readily and easily accessible” for the event.
The theme of the 2019 Jamboree is “Unlock a New World,” and the event is being hosted by three international Scouting groups — Scouts Canada, the Asociación de Scouts de México, and the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). “These three distinct cultures will join together to host the world Scouting community in a celebration of cultural exchange, mutual understanding, peace, and friendship,” the official Jamboree announcement explains.
What it does not inform the reader, however, is that the world Scouting organization has lost the moral and ethical edge with which the Boy Scouts were launched over 100 years ago. Nearly five years ago, the Boy Scouts of America jettisoned its traditional take on sexuality and now allows homosexual Scout leaders as well as boys who self-identify as homosexual.
And while the Boy Scouts have always proudly identified as a male-only organization, last year the BSA announced that it would now allow girls to join its ranks — and even earn the coveted Eagle Scout status. That announcement was followed in May of this year with the news that the Boy Scouts of America will ditch the gender specification from its name and now be known simply as Scouts BSA.
Now the Boy Scouts appear to have sunk a little lower with the mandate, issued by the World Scout Committee in the latest handbook of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, that the group hosting the World Jamboree (in this case Scouts BSA), must “ensure that condoms are readily and easily accessible for all participants and IST [staff] at a number of locations on the site.”
Additionally, according to the handbook, “exceptions” and allowances will have to be made for the consumption of alcohol by adults in “confined areas.”
As reported by Charisma News, “It appears the Jamboree guidelines were drafted after the 2015 World Jamboree in Japan in preparation for the 2019 event and were just recently released in an email.”
More than 160 Boy Scouts organizations from around the world are expected to participate in next year’s 12-day Jamboree event in West Virginia, and with all the gender and sexuality changes in the wind, participants could include openly homosexual boys and adult Scout leaders, transgender and cross-dressing boys (and perhaps adults), and even an assortment of girls who have decided to join the once-respected organization.
John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council as well as chairman of the board for the Christian scouting movement Trail Life USA, noted that with news of the condom policy, it appears the Boy Scouts have sunk to a new moral low. “With the addition of condoms and alcohol, the World Jamboree is starting to sound more like a 1960s Woodstock festival rather than a campout that parents would want to send their children to,” Stemberger wrote in a prepared statement. “All of this should be deeply disturbing to the churches that are chartering Boy Scout Troops. These policies present a clear youth protection problem that the BSA absolutely refuses to recognize. The fact that they are requiring that condoms be ‘readily accessible’ and are communicating this to everyone — including youth participants — shows that the BSA is both anticipating and facilitating sexual conduct between minors at this event. These policies are both outrageous and completely irresponsible.”
In reality, this is not the first time that condoms have been made available at world Scouting Jamborees. As reported by CNSNews.com in 2008, “Bangkok’s public health ministry announced this week that condoms would be handed out to participants in the 20th World Scout Jamboree [in Thailand] on request…. A ministry spokesman was quoted as saying the aim was to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as AIDS, not to promote sexual activity.”
According to CNSNews, Jamboree spokesman Richard Amalvy “said [back in 2008] it had been the scout movement’s policy for more than 10 years ‘to have condoms freely available in each health center of the [Jamboree] event for any participant that makes this request.’”
Photo: AP Images
