IF what the mayor and the schools chancellor report about the New York Boy Scouts caving to gay activists is true, it’s a grievous day for America.
Simply put: Boy Scouting is dead.
The worthy movement will have suffered mortal blows by selfish gay activists, cowardly corporations, pusillanimous politicians and the indifference of ordinary people who failed to speak out against militant homo-fascism.
It’s all over but the death throes, which will be painful to watch – but not as painful as the inevitable ugly backlash against gay activists.
Sooner or later, people will get enough of their bully-boy tyranny. The failure of decent folks to stand up to it will only empower the true gay-bashers.
Why would the New York BSA’s caving doom the scouts nationally?
If they were not excommunicated from the national organization, the door would be open coast-to-coast for Scout chapters to decide gay policies.
But if they were to be tossed out, the national organization would lose one of its biggest fund-raising chapters. Gays, emboldened by their stunning success here, would redouble the attack nationwide.
Finally, wherever local Scouting goes gay, it would tear apart the movement at the pack-and-troop level. Mainstream parents would likely withdraw their sons before sending them on camping trips with openly gay Scoutmasters.
Many Scout troops are sponsored by churches and synagogues, which will be put in a terrible moral bind by the non-discrimination policy.
“If they’re telling me that I have to work with openly gay scout leaders, I won’t do it,” says assistant Scoutmaster Chris Slattery. “I won’t participate in a movement that endorses scandalous lifestyles.”
Slattery, a Catholic, works with a Cub Scout pack at Immaculate Conception Church on East 14th Street. The parish is home to one of the most active chapters in the city, with 50 Cub Scouts in the pack, and around 40 Boy Scouts in the troop.
He says scout leaders within his own pack and troop are divided over the gay issue. They need leadership from the archdiocese, he says.
Archbishop Egan, who should be giving voice to those faithful Catholics disdained and dismissed by elitists at The New York Times, has been deafeningly silent.
“Where has the Church been in the last month, when we’ve seen a systematic juggernaut out to destroy the scouts?” Slattery said. “Is the Catholic Church going to stand up for the proper moral formation of our boys?”
Well might he ask. As a bishop serving under Cardinal O’Connor in the 1980s, Egan bravely and eloquently took on the radical left when it tried to institute the Rainbow Curriculum in the city’s public schools.
Egan’s public courage helped keep 7-year-olds from having to hear about lesbian artificial insemination by reading “Heather Has Two Mommies.” He needs to find that voice again, and very soon.
Who dares to stand up to the gay fascists? Not George W. Bush, who is a flat-out coward on cultural issues.
It’s outrageous that he has not made a campaign issue of the left-liberal assault on a cherished American institution. He’s also failing to alert voters to what is at risk if pro-gay Al Gore gets to name Supreme Court justices – a serious sin of omission.
Elect Gore, and we’ll have civil unions by judicial fiat. Guaranteed.
“If the Bush people can’t find the guts to denounce what may be happening to Scouts in New York, you have to wonder what they stand for,” says Robert Knight of the Family Research Council.
Nothing official has been announced from the Scouts’ New York board yet, so there may still be time to save the movement. What is said and done in the next days and weeks will determine whether New York was Scouting’s D-Day or its Dunkirk. E-mail: dreher@nypost.com