The announcement on Wednesday that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), which has changed its name to Scouts BSA (SBSA), is about to declare bankruptcy should surprise few. The Scouts’ “perversion files,” which first surfaced back in 2012 during a lawsuit, cost the formerly respected organization and its insurers nearly $20 million. Following its decision in 2013 to allow openly homosexual boys to join, and then in 2015 to allow openly homosexual leaders to lead them, the group’s legal fees paid to just one of its law firms have increased by a factor of 10. In 2015, fees paid to Ogletree Deakins were $859,347; in 2016 they jumped to $3.5 million; in 2017 they totaled $7.6 million; for 2018 the numbers aren’t yet available. And those are fees paid to just a single law firm defending the group.
The decline in morality began decades ago, but has accelerated as homosexuals have flowed into the morally corrupt organization.
The organization claims that it has put in place various rules and provisions to keep sexual predators from preying opon young boys joining what they thought was a moral and upstanding organization.
However, so numerous are the lawsuits that BSA’s insurers are being sued by the BSA itself for not paying the increasing number of claims. Hence the announcement it was “considering” bankruptcy.
Membership in the group that used to honor “God, Family and Country” in its oath (A Scout is to be “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent”) now includes not only homosexual scouts and leaders, but also girls, in a failing effort to save itself from extinction by being “inclusive.”
Instead the organization is fading away into insignificance and irrelevance. In 1979, there were five million active Boy Scouts in the United States. Today there are 2.3 million, and that number is about to get even smaller. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) parted ways with the Scouts in May of this year, officially ending its affiliation and support by December 31, 2019. Its 400,000 members will be invited to be active in a Mormon group supporting the values that the Scouts have left behind. As The New American noted at the time, while the statement from the LDS church said nothing about the decline in morality being inflicted by progressives at the top of the BSA, it left no doubt that that was one of the primary causes. Said the LDS leadership: “While the Church will no longer be a chartered partner of BSA or sponsor Scouting units after December 31, 2019, it continues to support the goals and values reflected in the Scout Oath and Scout Law.” To which we added: “While there was no indication from the statement of ideological or moral differences between the two organizations, one suspects this might have been a factor. In recent years the Boy Scouts have made major decisions at odds with Mormon religious convictions.”
Indeed they have. And the chickens have come home to roost. In 2012, a Portland judge discovered that Scout headquarters had been hiding a stash of what became known as the ”perversion files,” which detailed the expulsion of 1,247 Scout leaders from 1965 to 1985. Even after the court order, the Scouts continued to hide new files from public view. “One thing we’ve found, when we look at all the Boy Scouts’ cases, is a constant fight against releasing any of the documents,” said Emma Hetherington, director of the University of Georgia Law School’s Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic, founded to assist the survivors of child sexual abuse. She added: “If you really want to protect more boys, you release the names of the offenders. It’s about holding them accountable and holding the Scouts accountable. This is an organization that led the public to believe their child would be in one of the safest places they could be if they were in Boy Scouts.”
That, unfortunately, is no longer the case, which grieves this writer, the holder of the Eagle Scout designation. That award is earned by fewer than four percent of boys in the program, and only after earning at least 21 merit badges. But by trying to cater — some would save cave — to the world’s values of political correctness, (im)morality, and inclusiveness, the Scouts organization has successfully emasculated itself and is succeeding in making itself irrelevant.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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