AFA's Bryan Fischer Falsely Claims LDS Church Went Soft On Gays In Boy Scouts Because They Secretly Want To Legalize Polygamy

Ever since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints broke ranks with other socially-conservative denominations and announced their acceptance of the Boy Scouts' decision to accept gay Scouts, I've been wondering when the other shoe was going to drop and we would get criticism from those organizations.

Well, the other shoe has now dropped. On May 28th, 2013, Right Wing Watch reported that Bryan Fischer, who was hired in 2009 by the American Family Association (AFA) to serve as their director of issue analysis for government and public policy, is claiming that the LDS Church has gone soft on the homosexual agenda because as the homosexual agenda advances, the next domino to fall is going to be the ban against polygamy, and that because the homosexual agenda may be the secret to restoring polygamy to America, this would vindicate Mormon doctrine on plural marriage from the very beginning. He admits he has no evidence supporting his claim, though. See an accompanying story on HuffPo. Here's a video clip of Fischer making his rather spurious claim on his Focal Point radio show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnrIx5ehmdM



A brief review of the American Family Association website revealed no criticism of the LDS Church by name, so Fischer may be speaking strictly for himself rather than for the AFA. However, Fischer's misinformation still needs to be rebutted. In 1890, the LDS Church issued a revelation indefinitely suspending the solemnization of plural marriages by the Church; this was canonized as Official Declaration 1 and appended to the Doctrine & Covenants. Furthermore, Church officials ask members during worthiness interviews to certify that they do not affiliate with any apostate groups, which also means any religious organizations practicing plural marriages. In addition, any Mormon found to be practicing plural marriage is subjected to a disciplinary council and subsequently excommunicated. Finally, since the 12th Article of Faith states "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law", the Church will not reinstitute plural marriage so long as it is contrary to the law of the land. Don't forget that it was the Savior Himself who said "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's".

Furthermore, the LDS Church has made it abundantly clear that although they will accept Scouts with a homosexual orientation, they will not accept any sexual behavior outside of legal heterosexual marriage, period. In the letter from the First Presidency distributed to all American congregations which announced the Church's decision on the Scouts, the Church reiterated its firm commitment to upholding these standards and to protecting and strengthening boys and young men.

It should also be noted that Bryan Fischer has a reputation for making fanciful and emotional statements at times as he gets carried away in his passion to defend traditional cultural values. This tendency attracted the unwelcome attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which expanded its reach in 2010 to designate his American Family Association and other pro-family groups as "anti-gay hate groups". However, many suspect the SPLC widened their reach in order to attract more donations; their chief trial counsel Morris Dees makes over $300,000 per year and lives in a palatial trophy home in Montgomery, Alabama. The SPLC also has a flagrant left-wing political bias, as indicated by the sidebar on their Hatewatch blog which exclusively lists links from hard-left progressive websites.

In the final analysis, I have no desire to pick a fight with the American Family Association, since they line up with us on so many other important cultural and social issues. In fact, as President Boyd K. Packer said back in 1993, feminists and intellectuals within LDS ranks pose a greater threat to the safety and security of the LDS Church than occasionally-misguided allies such as the AFA. But when someone puts out misinformation about our Church, we must rebut it, even if the source is well-intentioned. I hope the AFA will re-direct itself back to confronting the real enemy -- Satan.

Boy Scouts To Submit Proposal Accepting Openly-Gay Scouts But Rejecting Openly-Gay Adult Leaders; LDS Church To "Study" Proposal

When the Boy Scouts of America first announced its intent to re-visit their ban against openly-gay Scouts and adult leaders in January 2013, many suggested each Scout troop be allowed to craft its own policy. While commendable, it would result in a hodgepodge of confusion. One Scout troop which bans gays could be flanked by one that doesn't.

In order to minimize this confusion, the Boy Scouts have now crafted a proposal which will result in a uniform policy across the board but address the concerns of social conservatives who do not want openly-gay adult leaders involved in Scouting. On May 20th, the National Executive Committee will submit a proposed resolution to its approximately 1,400 voting members that would remove the restriction denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual orientation alone and would maintain the current membership policy for all adult leaders of the Boy Scouts of America. The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting. Here's the specific language of the resolution, which, if adopted, would take effect on January 1st, 2014:

Youth membership in the Boy Scouts of America is open to all youth who meet the specific membership requirements to join the Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Varsity Scout, Sea Scout, and Venturing programs. Membership in any program of the Boy Scouts of America requires the youth member to (a) subscribe to and abide by the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law, (b) subscribe to and abide by the precepts of the Declaration of Religious Principle (duty to God), and (c) demonstrate behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others and is consistent at all times with the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law. No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.

There are about 2.7 million youth members of the Boy Scouts and about 1 million adult leaders. About 70 percent of units are chartered by faith-based organizations. Because 34 percent of Boy Scout troops nationwide are co-sponsored by the LDS Church as of October 2012 according to prominent LDS blogger Joanna Brooks, the reaction of the Church is of interest. More recent figures from BSA indicate that 37,000 troops and 420,000 youth members are sponsored by the LDS Church. In the Boy Scouts' Great Salt Lake Council — one of the largest in the country with 5,500 troops and 73,400 youth — 99 percent of the troops are sponsored by the LDS Church. LDS Church spokesman Michael Purdy issued a statement saying, "Church leaders will take the time needed to fully review the language and study the implications of this new proposal. We note that BSA will make a final decision on this matter at their National Annual Meeting next month."

Update April 27th: On April 25th, the LDS Church delivered their answer. They expressed satisfaction at what they call a good-faith effort to address a complex, challenging issue, and said that the BSA proposal constructively addresses a number of important issues that have been part of the on-going dialogue including consistent standards for all BSA partners, recognition that Scouting exists to serve and benefit youth rather than Scout leaders, a single standard of moral purity for youth in the program, and a renewed emphasis for Scouts to honor their duty to God.

A Southern Baptist Convention spokesman, Roger Oldham, said the SBC would prefer that the Boy Scouts maintain the ban on both gay youth and adults. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, also reacted unfavorably, saying "The policy is incoherent. The proposal says, in essence, that homosexuality is morally acceptable until a boy turns 18 – then, when he comes of age, he's removed from the Scouts." Perkins fears that the proposed change, if adopted, would subject the BSA to crippling lawsuits because it would no longer be able to argue that excluding gays was integral to its basic principles. The Family Research Council has been circulating an online petition urging the BSA to keep the ban. And in Utah, the Boy Scouts' Great Salt Lake Council – one of the largest in the country with 73,400 youth members – said a survey showed that more than 80 percent of its leaders opposed lifting the ban.

Prognosis: There's a good chance the LDS Church could accept the new policy and keep their Scouting units in BSA for the time being. While the LDS Church continues to support its traditional definitions of sexual morality and marriage, and continues to oppose homosexual behavior along with all other forms on sexual behavior outside of marriage, the Church has supported gay nondiscrimination ordinances, particularly in Salt Lake City. Thus they could look upon it as a discrimination issue rather than a morality issue, particularly in concert with continuing the ban against openly-gay adult leaders. Some of the leading gay rights organization have already said that as far as they're concerned, it is only a first step.

Boy Scouts Of America Weighs Ending Nationwide Ban Against Openly-Gay Participants; How Will The LDS Church React?

Update May 23rd: The Boy Scouts announced that they have voted to allow gay Scouts in the organization while continuing to disallow openly-gay adult leaders. The LDS Church has accepted this decision. Updated post HERE.

Update April 20th: The Boy Scouts of America will introduce a compromise proposal on May 20th that will allow openly-gay Scouts, but continue to ban openly-gay adult leaders. Updated post HERE.

On January 28th, 2013, numerous sources are reporting that the Boy Scouts of America organization is considering ending the nationwide ban against participation by openly-gay boys and adult leaders, despite the fact that the litany of past sexual abuse of scouts involved male homosexual leaders with male Scouts. Although there is a clinical difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, the line between the two became quite blurred as a result of these scandals.

The best story, including public reaction, was published by The Blaze, although there are 2100 comments appended to NBC's story. However, because it is a controversial issue, BSA is considering merely removing the national ban and allowing local scouting groups to decide for themselves whether they will admit gay youths and leaders rather than imposing mandatory permission of homosexual participation from the top down by the national organization. Deron Smith, a media representative for the Boy Scouts, said “The chartered organizations that oversee and deliver scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with their organization’s mission, principles or religious beliefs. BSA members and parents would be able to choose a local unit that best meets the needs of their families. Under this proposed policy, the BSA would not require any chartered organization to act in ways inconsistent with that organization's mission, principles, or religious beliefs.". This issue could be resolved soon; the discussion is nearing its final stages, and if approved, the change could be announced as early as the first full week in February, after the BSA's national board holds a regularly scheduled meeting. Update February 6th: BSA decides to defer decision until May 2013.

But one of the reasons for the change is economic. Some organizations have waged economic warfare against BSA to pressure them to change. More recently, amid petition campaigns, shipping giant UPS and drug manufacturer Merck announced that they were halting donations from their charitable foundations to the Boy Scouts as long as the no-gays policy was in force.

Naturally, this leads to questions on how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would react, not only because BSA is the official youth program for boys, but, according to prominent LDS blogger Joanna Brooks, 34 percent of Boy Scout troops nationwide are co-sponsored by the LDS Church as of October 2012. The Salt Lake Tribune is currently reporting that the Church has 420,977 youths in 37,882 Scouting units. This means that if the LDS Church objected to the change, and decided to disaffiliate all their troops from BSA, it could inflict a mortal blow upon BSA. KSL Channel 5 reports that BSA conferred with Mormon leaders, as well as Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist sponsors of Boy Scout troops who also prefer to exclude openly-gay participants, before making this new announcement, but none of them have officially reacted, although the Tribune reports that the LDS Church will make no official statement until the decision is announced after next week’s BSA national board meeting.

But considering that BSA says they have already talked to LDS leaders and BSA is still considering going ahead with the change, this implies that the LDS Church can live with the change and won't object. Consequently, I don't foresee the LDS Church disaffiliating all their Boy Scout troops, since they will retain the freedom to exclude openly-gay participants. Nevertheless, it is disturbing that BSA is caving into public pressure and weakening their standards, considering that there is an alternative organization called Scouting For All that caters to openly-gay participants. Even more disturbing is the seeming obsession that gay rights lobbies have with our youth; they seem fixated on getting youth who are unsure about their sexuality to admit they're gay, come out of the closet and publicly proclaim their homosexuality as the only acceptable choice. First, they inundated our high school and middle school campuses with Gay-Straight Clubs, and now they want a foothold in the Boy Scouts. The gay rights lobbies would have more credibility if they would focus on adults and leave the youth to their parents.

Unofficial LDS Reaction: Discussion has already broken out on Mormon Dialogue and LDS Freedom Forum, where reaction is mixed. KSL Channel 5 also records several comments reflecting Mormon reaction (after the jump):

Although 34 Percent Of Boy Scouts Nationwide Are Mormon, Only Two Percent Of Boy Scout Sexual Abuse Cases Are Connected To Mormons

By now, most readers know that the media has released the contents of numerous files documenting sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts. The primary media source is the Los Angeles Times, which obtained two decades of files, submitted as evidence in a court case, as well as case summaries from an additional 3,100 files opened between 1947 and 2005. Both were provided by Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, a serial litigator who has sued the Boy Scouts more than 100 times. The dossiers, which included biographical data, legal records, Scouting correspondence, boys' accounts of alleged abuse and media reports, represent all surviving files kept by the Scouts as of January 2005.

The Los Angeles Times account also includes a searchable database and a location map. In the Search box beneath the lower left hand corner of the LA Times map, you can type in a city or a state, and all the entries for the requested location will be displayed beneath. KTVX Channel 4 identified three people who were LDS members at the time they offended; Eric Hacking from Orem, Leroy Harvey Richins from Provo, and Gerald Burgie of Ogden, and in a separate story, reported that Burgie is currently in a Texas prison serving a sentence for child porn. I also discovered a fourth offender who was a Mormon; Kenneth Rarick, who was in Fairbanks, AK in 1982. In response to a KTVX query, LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter said, "....the Church has zero tolerance for abuse of any kind and is extremely proactive in its efforts to prevent it and help victims when it does occur."

It is because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses Scouting as the primary youth program for boys that attention has been directed toward the Church as well. So LDS blogger Joanna Brooks decided to research the issue to find out if LDS Boy Scout troops had been more or less susceptible to sexual abuse than other troops. And on October 19th, 2012, she published her findings in Religion Dispatches:

Today, a whopping 34 percent of Boy Scout troops nationwide are co-sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But sources who have scrutinized the BSA’s so-called “perversion files” report that fewer than 2 percent of the cases documented therein are connected with Mormons. It is believed that LDS Church may have handled child abuse cases internally rather than reporting them to BSA officials.

Of course, it is also possible that some cases were never reported at all, but merely swept under the rug. Sexual abuse of youth did not receive the public scrutiny 10-20-30 years ago that it gets today. In 1995, the Mormon Alliance published its own findings, which are available through this portal. Nevertheless, Brooks' analysis still shows that LDS Boy Scout troops had disproportionately fewer incidences of sexual abuse than other troops. And while Brooks is a faithful member of the Church, she hardly has a reputation for being a shill or apologist, so her conclusions can be trusted.

LDS Scoutmasters have a greater incentive than most to control their behavior. In addition to facing criminal justice, LDS Scoutmasters who sexually abuse their charges also face Church discipline -- which in this case, most often means excommunication. Then, after they return, their records are annotated for the rest of their lives, so that they are not placed in positions of unsupervised contact with youths.

Local LDS Young Men President Kenny Thomas Released By Bishop In Herriman, Utah For "Not Supporting Scouting"

The Friends of Scouting program is under fire once again in Utah, and it's cost the local president of a Young Men's group his calling. Kenny Thomas, who had served for four months as president of the Young Men organization in his LDS ward in Herriman, Utah, was released from his calling by his bishop for allegedly "not supporting scouting".

As his ward's Young Men president, Thomas was called upon to organize and lead the annual Friends of Scouting (FOS) fund drive, but Thomas first sent an email to ward members cautioning them that FOS money also helps pay high salaries for Boy Scout executives and doesn’t stay with their local scout units. He says that upset his stake president, who persuaded his bishop to release him. Thomas has also created a Reduce Scouting Costs Facebook page to share his concerns with the public at large. Kenny Thomas is not disaffected with the LDS Church or with the fundamental purpose of the Boy Scouts in any way; he merely is concerned about the value and integrity of the Friends of Scouting program. In an interview, Thomas said “I support Scouting and what it can do for the youth, but am concerned about the administration of the BSA. I think there is a lot of waste, and the salaries are too high. I am not attacking scouting or the Church. I would like to see change in BSA administration. I think that most people understand that.”

David C. Roth, president of the LDS Herriman South Stake and also a member of Thomas' ward, told the Salt Lake Tribune that Thomas was actually released because of his unwillingness to support scouting in general, and not just because of what he did with Friends of Scouting. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decided to adopt the Scouting program as its official program for young boys and an activity arm of the Aaronic Priesthood, and became the first institutional sponsor of Scout troops in the United States in 1913; today it reports that it sponsors more Scouts and Scouting units in the United States than any other organization.

Kenny Thomas' disaffection with Friends of Scouting first surfaced when he saw that his ward was paying far more for “ramshackle” Scout camps than it was for higher-quality girls camps run by the Church. Even though FOS money supposedly helps funds the camps, he questioned whether it was actually percolating down. Upon investigating, he found that FOS money was going to pay high salaries for Scouting executives; this was further confirmed in an August 9th Tribune story. The Tribune reported that four employees of the Great Salt Lake Council received compensation in excess of $100,000 in 2009, and that nationally, the Boy Scouts National Council reported paying 189 employees more than $100,000 each in compensation in 2009, topped by Robert J. Mazzuca, the national chief Scout executive, whose compensation was $1.21 million. The Boy Scouts of America National Council gets some poor ratings on Charity Navigator, primarily because of inflated executive salaries. Charity Navigator has a portal page to numerous local BSA councils for those wanting to check up on them, but for some reason, the Great Salt Lake Council is not listed.