This Salt Lake Tribune article is the typical garbage spewed by that rag of a newspaper.
Still, every once in a while you can find something interesting in the sewage. Here are a few details that may interest M* readers:
That could have dire financial consequences for BSA. The LDS Church is far and away the nation’s largest Scouting sponsor, serving 437,160 boys in 37,933 troops.
In 2013, more than a third (37 percent) of troops were LDS sponsored, accounting for 18 percent of the BSA’s 2.4 million total membership (Mormon troops, while more numerous, tend to be smaller in size).
An LDS Church withdrawal also could ruin the three Scout councils in Utah, which say between 96 percent and 99 percent of their members are in Mormon units.
And importantly:
The policy change approved Monday evening by the BSA’s 80-member National Executive Board to allow “openly gay leaders” to serve in Scout troops “is inconsistent with the doctrines of the church,” the release added, “and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America.”
Although the LDS Church has allowed — and does allow — openly gay Mormons to serve in church assignments, including the Boy Scouts, these members are deemed to be living the faith’s standards. This means they are not acting on their same-sex attractions.
The BSA’s new policy, however, makes no such distinction between “openly gay” and “sexually active gay leaders.” So a gay Scout leader could have a partner or a same-sex spouse — and that troubles the Mormon brass.
While the BSA insists that religiously affiliated troops, including those sponsored by the LDS Church, can continue to ban gay leaders, many observers doubt such an exemption can be legally defended.
Of course the Tribune being the Tribune, the reporters and editors felt it necessary to quote only people opposed to the Church’s position as the story continued. Are Tribune reporters too lazy to actually call people who support the Church or are they simply uninterested in even trying to appear close to objective? I am guessing the latter.
New Post: A few more details on the Church and the Scouts: This Salt Lake Tribune article is the … http://t.co/Zn2qGJHcVO #LDS #Mormon
I wouldn’t rule out laziness. The Church leadership are on their annual vacation break at the moment, so it may have required a bit more than the usual effort to contact someone friendly to the Church.
As if that’s any excuse.
And I’m grateful you waded through the sewage to pull out the interesting bits, so I don’t have to. Deeply indebted, sir.
Have you ever read Craig’s “Enemy at the Gates”?
I once wrote Peggy Stack to offer to give her the names of some people who actually support the Church, and she wrote back a snarky response and of course ignored it. She knows many people who support the Church, from a long list of BYU professors, to politicians, civic leaders and of course a few people in the Mormon blog world. But notice her stories almost uniformly quote people opposed to the Church. Journalistic malpractice at its worst.
Kent, believe it or not I read “Enemy at the Gates” in the 1970s when I was a teenager. I don’t remember much but I remember being captivated by the stories of the attackers and defenders. Is there an LDS church angle?
Peggy Fletcher Stack has loudly complained that people in Church leadership don’t ever agree to be interviewed by her. Frankly, they don’t talk to the media very often.
As I have posted elsewhere, there are 80 voting members on the BSA board that approved the change Monday. The final vote tally was 45-12, with 23 abstentions. So while the vote was almost 80% in favor, there was only a bare majority in terms of the full voting body. My guess is that there were only a 6-7 votes that the Church had to change in order to block this change, and given more time they likely would have been able to do it. The powers that be at BSA likely knew this, so they had a choice to make … let the Church try and possibly win, or not give them the chance. The decided against even giving the Church a chance. This means that the BSA either wanted to push through this “reform” or they don’t want to be seen as being too friendly to the Church. Either way, this doesn’t bode well for the future relationship between the Church and the BSA.
When you consider that this is only the start, and the many ways the national scout organization impacts local, church sponsored, troops. It would not surprise me to see the Church and the BSA part ways.
TheMillennialStar: A few more details on the Church and the Scouts http://t.co/sWkIcZ5L2c #lds #mormon
Geoff,
It’s a Trib-relevant angle, not a Church-relevant angle.
The angle is at the very end of the book, when the few surviving German prisoners are camped in Siberia. Food was so scarce that prisoners sifted through their feces to find any undigested grain.
Dan Peterson, no friend of anti-Mormons, is apparently on surprisingly friendly terms with Peggy Stack Fletcher. I don’t know the whole story, but she may be overcompensating for a perceived impression that, as an LDS member, she might go too easy on the Church.
I remember when I was a teenage beginner writing for my local weekly. I had covered some local event and brought the story to my editor, who literally wore a green eyeshade. He looked at the story and said with a sour smirk: “you only quote people opposed to this thing. Couldn’t you find anybody in favor? Go make some phone calls.” And an hour later I brought him three quotations to add to the story to bring some balance. I wish Peggy had editors like my old editor on the local weekly.
It’s kind of what I wonder, Geoff. Perhaps sometime early in her career, Peggy brought what she thought was a balanced story on the Church to her career, and got a bracing lecture on how her prejudices were coming through and she needed to remember she was supposed to be a thorn in the side of all large institutions.
And she made the mistake of believing this.
I’d be happy to pile on her, if I wasn’t aware of Dan’s more gentle opinion of her.
Er, “to her editor”, not “to her career.”
I am curious about how LDS Ms. Stack actually is at this point. I know the wikipedia article on her says that she was born into the Church, and that she has a long family history in the Church, and that she was one of the founders of Sunstone. Google has failed me on finding more information about her current connections to the Church.
Here’s something from 20 years ago in Sunstone that might be interesting. /threadjack
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/098-48-54.pdf
Maybe the article has been updated since you folks read it, but I’m not understanding the complaints about her taking biased quotes. She quotes at length from the church statement–and statements like that are explicitly meant to be used for quotations by reporters. She also quotes regularly from the statement issued by the very church-friendly Utah councils. You have to click past the jump before you start getting critical quotes, and it’s not like she’s quoting LGBT groups–she’s giving softball criticisms from Mormons.
Adano, what this story and many other stories from the Trib are missing is very simple.
Something like this:
“BYU Prof. John Doe said, however, that the Church’s position on the BSA is consistent with previous Church policy.
“The Church has always said that same-sex attraction is not a sin but that same-sex activity is a sin,” Doe said. “The problem with the new BSA policy is that it creates the environment where the Church may be forced into eventually admitting gay Scout leaders who are sexually active and open about that sexual activity. This would directly contradict Church policy.”
This is journalism 101, Adano. If you can’t see it, this is not the place to have a lengthy debate about it. Take it to another blog. Thanks.
The Trib story could have also quoted from this post, which clearly provides another view on the Church’s relationship with the Scouts.
http://www.johnmitsima.com/morally-straight/
“This week the BSA executive committee approved by a better than 3-to-1 margin the allowance of openly gay adult leaders in Scouting. Actually, though, that was not the actual wording of the resolution that passed. Here is the actual wording:
“No adult applicant for registration as an employee or non-unit-serving volunteer, who otherwise meets the requirements of the Boy Scouts of America, may be denied registration on the basis of sexual orientation.”
In other words, is now possible for Caitlyn Jenner to openly serve in Scouting, as either a volunteer or as a paid employee. Think about that.
It is doubtful that Lord Baden-Powell had this in mind when he came up with the Scout Oath in 1911, which includes the promise, made by a scout, to keep himself “physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
Sadly, if the Church continues on with the BSA, they will be sued, probably by someone in Utah too. Or, a group will be formed to “agitate for change” and we will see marches on Temple Square a-al OW and the like. I hope they just get out of it quickly and move on.
I can imagine the Church will look at a few options. First will be to expand the Duty to God program, to use internationally, as well as here. Another option would be to create a new program with the Catholics and Baptists, use the Trailblazer program, etc.
This will end up hurting BSA more than any of the churches involved. Robert Gates was awful as Secretary of Defense, and now is working on the destruction of BSA, as well. He took the heat off of BSA for lawsuits, but placed it on the churches, instead. They will have no choice but to leave the program.
” Robert Gates was awful as Secretary of Defense, and now is working on the destruction of BSA, as well. He took the heat off of BSA for lawsuits, but placed it on the churches, instead.”
Rame, I don’t disagree with you, but I am wondering if there is ANY BSA leader (outside of the LDS leadership) who would have made a different decision. The entire world is moving in the wrong direction on many social issues, and it is very difficult for one person alone to stem the tide when faced with endless lawsuits, protests, pressure from business sponsors, etc. So I cannot drum up any animus toward Gates: he is a small cog in the malfunctioning machinery but is not the cause of the malfunction, if you know what I mean.
Stack, I have noticed, tends to outsource a lot of her R&D to the liberal side of the ‘Nacle. If something shows up on a few liberal blogs, it makes it to the Tribune, and she tends to quote a lot of the same people from those blogs in articles – way more often than any topic or anyone from the more conservative/orthodox blogs.
I note that the delightful Sunstone article where Peggy declares herself a believer is from 1995, a time shortly after the September Six had occurred.
We are at a point in time some twenty years later, during which time various important things have occurred. I’m not sure any of us should be held to professions of belief or disbelief that we made two decades ago.
Meg, you are absolutely correct. It was just the most recent thing I could find (going six pages deep in a google search, who does that!?) which addressed her personal beliefs.
I believe the Church attorneys have outlined the likely legal issues that will arise because of the BSA and Church stands. To make a long story short, the Church forsees multiple protracted legal battles with the potential for large legal and financial losses.
Beyond the legal battles, there is still an issue with the new policy.
Although this may not be as much of an issue in Utah, in most other states, LDS troops go to scout camps with many non-LDS troops. If I recall correctly, where I was growing up less then 10% of the troops at the camp that we attended every year were LDS initially. Eventually the stake began to coordinate all of the units in the stake to go to camp the same week, and I think that for that week we were around 30-40%.
Even if LDS troops can have a say in their scout leaders, they cannot influence the leadership of the other troops or staff that the boys will be interacting with. In districts and councils where LDS units are in the minority, there is bound to be friction with other units where different policies are in place for leadership or with commissioners who disagree with the Church’s policy regarding leadership. It is pretty clear based on the path that has been followed by the BSA so far and from those that have already shown that they are satisfied only with an all or nothing resolution that this will happen.
Even in Utah, I understand that the scout camps are run by the local counsels, whose employment policies will mirror the national BSA. It’s not honest to say that this change doesn’t impact LDS troops. None of them operate in a vacuum, between BSA employees, BSA publications written and approved by BSA employees, further BSA policies enacted by BSA employees and the same national board that just acted decisively against the Church’s interests.
Consider that Robert Gates worked for the CIA for 26 years and eventually became its director. He is a man whose trade included intrigue and deception by its very nature. That the CIA so readily turned to torture in recent years indicates a culture at odds with the better angels of our nature. In such a culture any compromise will likely be followed by further compromises.
A scout is trustworthy. I don’t trust Mr. Gates.
Meg and Ivan, isn’t it obvious by now that professions of belief mean nothing at all on the left? It might mean they believe. It might mean they are Clintonizing as John Dehlin explains in his article on how to get a Temple Recommend without believing. John held a temple recommend for years after he became an agnostic and no longer believed in the church. It just means nothing at all one way or the other. A liberal Mormon can say “I believe in God” and mean only “I believe ‘God’ is the goodness of humankind” or they might say “I believe in the Church” and merely mean “I believe its a good church that sometimes teaches good things helpful to some people some of the time.” It’s a word game that in any other context they would consider dishonest.
Bruce –
Good points all. I’m not sure how that responds to me, though, since my single comment above related to the discussion on Peggy Stack’s professionalism or lack thereof, not about her faith.