More than 60 percent of BSA national council members passed a resolution that states: No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” The 1,400-member council voted in Grapevine, Texas. The policy change will begin Jan. 1.

“It is with great sadness and deep disappointment that we recognize on this day that the most influential youth program in America has turned a tragic corner,”said John Stemberger, founder of OnMyHonor.Net. “(Allowing) open and avowed homosexuality into Scouting will completely transform it into an unprincipled and risky proposition for parents. It is truly a sad day for Scouting.”

The BSA has trained and mentored boys since 1910 to help create a more conscientious, responsible society. Faith-based organizations run more than 70,000 of the 116,000 local units.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) created a petition in March asking people to urge the BSA to “uphold the values that have defined the organization for over 100 years.”

“Sadly, the Boy Scouts Executive National Council’s decision disregards not only the nearly 19,000 Americans who signed the petition … but also the millions of Americans who have supported the program,” said  ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “Those promoting the agenda to change what the Boy Scouts have always been won’t rest until there is complete acceptance of any sexual preference for both leaders and members.”

Jeff Johnston, CitizenLink gender issues analyst, agrees.

“Gay activists are already talking about how they need to push for scoutmasters who are openly gay,” Johnston explained. “Beyond that, I’m sure that they’ll start pushing for the transgender agenda which says that girls who think they’re boys should be able to be members of the Boys Scouts.”

Despite Thursday’s vote, it’s time to prepare for the future, Stemberger said.

“I am pleased to announce that OnMyHonor.Net along with other likeminded organizations, parents and BSA members, are announcing a coalition meeting that will take place next month in Louisville, Kentucky,” he added. “There we will discuss the creation of a new character development organization for boys.”

Though the meeting will be private, Stemberger is encouraging people to email him with ideas or comments at Contact@OnMyHonor.Net.

“Your voice is very important to us and will be represented there,” he explained. “We will host and facilitate a national coalition meeting of former BSA parents and other youth leaders who wish to return to truly timeless values that once made the BSA great.” 

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Read the BSA’s statement about the policy change.

Read “Research Pertinent to the Boy Scouts of America Policy Change Debate.”

Learn more about OnMyHonor.net.

Rep. Bill Johnson filed the D-Day Landing Prayer Act Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill was also reintroduced in the Senate.

If the legislation is passed, a plaque containing President Franklin Roosevelt’s prayer, “Let Our Hearts Be Stout,” will be placed on the official memorial. Roosevelt prayed these words on the morning of D-Day, when Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy.

“He had a tremendous weight on his shoulders the morning of June 6, 1944,” Johnson said. “As he sent 73,000 U.S. soldiers into enemy territory, he turned to God to find comfort and peace.”

Johnson first introduced the bill last year, during the 112th Congress. Although the House passed the legislation, the Senate did not vote on it.  

“I am reintroducing this legislation, and this time we cannot allow it to end up on the Senate’s cutting room floor,” Johnson added. “FDR’s prayer is an important part of our nation’s history, and it deserves its rightful place in our memoriam.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Learn more about the D-Day Landing Prayer Act, H.R. 2175.

Learn more about D-Day.

CitizenLink is proud to work with the Family Policy Institute of Washington and other family policy organizations across the country to stand for marriage, life and religious freedom. Learn more about the one in your state.

If we needed any more evidence that parental notification legislation is long overdue in Washington State, we just got it.

In a story making news this week, last August a twelve-year-old girl was raped and impregnated by a thirty-one year-old man who took her to a Washington State Planned Parenthood and forced her to have an abortion. According to reports, she told Planned Parenthood that the father was a fourteen-year old boy in an effort to protect the identity of her rapist; presumably at the recommendation of her rapist.

It wasn’t until six-weeks later that she told her parents what really happened, which led to an eventual guilty plea and prison sentence for the offender.

This is a tragic story, no doubt.  However, the fact that her parents eventually became involved makes it a better ending than others.

In thirty-eight states, parental notification or consent is required before a minor has an abortion.  That means that Washington is one of the few states in which it is legal for Planned Parenthood to perform an abortion on a child without involving any adults in her life.

But what if the facts were slightly different?  What if she was being trafficked for sex and had already been separated from her support system? What if, as commonly happens, the pimp told the girl he will harm her or her entire family if she speaks. So she says nothing. And what if her pimp routinely took her to Planned Parenthood clinics for abortions where he knew they would perform the abortion without asking questions and return her back to his “care”.

In cases like these, which are actually quite common, the only adults who become aware of what’s going on—the rapist, the pimp, and the abortionist—are perfectly happy to keep it to themselves. 

It is remarkable that Planned Parenthood is willing to turn a blind eye.  It is not intuitive to simply give a 12-year-old an abortion and send her on her merry way by ignoring red flags the size of football fields. That’s a human problem.

The legal problem is that the law allows it.

Despite the obvious opportunities to intervene in situations like these, our laws and abortion clinics are aiding and abetting the victimization of girls…in the name of women’s rights no less.  

During the legislative session, Gov. Jay Inslee said he was opposed to a parental notification bill, saying it “goes backwards to ideological debates that we should be well beyond in the state of Washington.”  I doubt this girl’s parents share his sentiments. 

Our refusal to create reasonable safeguards to help victims of rape is even less excusable as we become more and more aware of the prevalence of human trafficking for sexual purposes in Washington State. 

Paradoxically, just this week Gov. Inslee signed into a law a measure that will impose a $5,000 fine for those using online ads to help sell the sexual services of a minor.  Last year, then-Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law a measure penalizing websites on which sex ads featuring minors appeared if they failed to make a reasonable effort to verify the minors’ age.

The latter suggests that those who are in a position to have knowledge about the sexual exploitation of a minor should be held responsible to make sure that they are not aiding and abetting it.

It seems beyond reasonable to apply that same standard to the abortion industry as well.

Or should we simply continue sending twelve-year old girls back to their rapists after their abortions?

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Learn more about the Family Policy Institute of Washington.

A Republican lawmaker on Thursday introduced a bill to Congress that would make it illegal for abortionists nationwide to perform abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, when preborn babies can feel pain.

Rep. Trent Franks said he will amend the D.C. Pain-Capable Unborn Protection Act to help protect women and preborn babies across the country from atrocities like the Kermit Gosnell case. Gosnell, 72, was found guilty last week of three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of babies who were born alive. He was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a pregnant woman.

“The case of Kermit Gosnell shocked the sensibilities of millions of Americans,” Franks said. “However, the crushing fact is that abortions on babies just like the ones killed by Kermit Gosnell have been happening hundreds of times per day, every single day, for the past 40 years. Indeed, let us not forget that, had Kermit Gosnell dismembered these babies before they had traveled down the birth canal only moments earlier, he would have, in many places nationwide, been performing an entirely legal procedure. If America truly understands that horrifying reality, hearts and laws will change.”

A 2011 Grand Jury report found that the Philadelphia abortionist regularly delivered live babies in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy and then murdered them by “severing their spinal cords with scissors.”

Franks introduced the D.C. legislation late last month. Abortions are legal up to the moment of birth in the District.  He re-introduced it today before the Committee on the Judiciary.

The Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List praises the Arizona lawmaker for expanding the bill into a federal late-term abortion ban.

“We urge all members of Congress to support this effort to protect unborn children and their mothers from the horrific pain of abortion,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Compassion must lead us to draw a firm line to protect women and babies across the country from practices that are devastating to them and searing to our consciences.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Learn more about the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, H.R. 1797.

Read witness testimony in Thursday’s hearing.

Watch “CitizenLink Report: Verdict Brings Scrutiny of Abortion Industry.”

View “Quick Guide: Articles on Abortion.”

Watch 3801 Lancaster, a documentary following Gosnell’s case and trial.
Warning: Contains graphic images.

The Christian-owned business filed its lawsuit against the Obama administration in September 2012. Two-months later, a two-judge panel of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the store’s request for temporary reprieve from the mandate as litigation in the case proceeds.

In March, however, that same court granted Hobby Lobby’s petition to be heard in front of a full court — also called an “en banc” hearing. Thus, a nine-judge panel — instead of the usual three-judge panel — heard today’s arguments.

“We are grateful the court granted Hobby Lobby’s petition,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, representing the store. “Full court review is reserved only for the most serious legal questions.”

The government required non-religious employers to comply with the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate beginning in August 2012. Religious organizations have a so-called safe harbor until August of this year to begin complying.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Hobby Lobby CEO David Green explained. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Read the complaint in Hobby Lobby vs. Sebelius.

View the Hobby Lobby Fact Sheet.

Read the Becket Fund’s HHS Mandate Information Central.

CitizenLink is proud to work with the Florida Family Policy Council and other family policy organizations across the country to stand for marriage, life and religious freedom. Learn more about the one in your state.

Following the vote today by the Boy Scouts of America’s voting delegates to pass the resolution allowing “open and avowed homosexuality” in the Boy Scouts, John Stemberger, Founder of OnMyHonor.Net, a coalition of members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) including parents, Scoutmasters, Eagle Scouts and other Scouting leaders who affirm Scouting’s timeless values, made the following statement:

“It is with great sadness and deep disappointment that we recognize on this day that the most influential youth program in America has turned a tragic corner. The vote today to allow open and avowed homosexuality into Scouting will completely transform it into an unprincipled and risky proposition for parents. It is truly a sad day for Scouting.

The Boy Scouts of America has a logo that bears the phrase ‘Timeless Values.’   Today, the BSA can no longer use this phrase in good faith.  It has demonstrated by its actions that the organization’s values are not timeless, and instead they are governed by changing tides of polls, politics and public opinion.

The saddest part of today’s decision is what the organization is teaching our children and young people in the program.  

The BSA is teaching our kids that when your values become unpopular, just change them.

The BSA is teaching our kids that when your convictions are challenged, just cave to peer pressure.

The BSA is teaching our kids that public opinion polls are more important than principles.

Today, the BSA is teaching our kids that you should not stand up for what is right instead you should stand up for what is popular.

The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law.”

BSA is teaching our kids through its new mission that we don’t make ethical and moral choices through the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law but we make them like an unprincipled politician does, by putting your finger in the air and seeing which way the wind is blowing or by looking at the latest polling results. 

What kind of a message are we sending to young people about being brave when its top adult leaders don’t even have the courage to stand up to the pressure of a militant lobby when the bullies in Washington DC, Hollywood or even some of their own renegade councils start pressuring and harassing them? 

Each and every one of the thousands of Scouting families that have supported and followed our movement must now make a very difficult decision.  We respect the right for each parent and family to decide whether they will continue their membership in the Boy Scouts of American or not. 

Many, like me and my family, cannot continue to support an organization more concerned with the intolerant demands of activists while compromising the safety and security of the young people they swore to serve.  In July of last year, the BSA said after a two year study from 2010 to 2012, the eleven member task force unanimously concluded that their existing policy on this issue was “the absolute best policy for the Boy Scouts of American.”  Suddenly, less than a year later, that is abruptly reversed. 

We hoped to keep sex and politics out of Scouting. Now we grieve for those young boys who will not have the wonderful traditions and experiences that so many of us have had in Scouting.

Despite this setback, we will look to the future. I am pleased to announce that OnMyHonor.Net along with other likeminded organizations, parents and BSA members, are announcing a coalition meeting that will take place next month in Louisville, Kentucky. There we will discuss the creation of a new character development organization for boys. While the meeting will be private, your voice is very important to us and will be represented there.  We will host and facilitate a national coalition meeting of former BSA parents and other youth leaders who wish to return to truly timeless values that once made the BSA great.  We welcome your comments as we develop our plans. Please share your thoughts with us at Contact@OnMyHonor.Net

We grieve today, not because we are faced with leaving Scouting, but because the Boy Scouts of America has left us. Its leadership has turned its back on 103 years of abiding by a mission to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices.  Instead, it is embarking on a pathway of social experimentation that we believe will place at risk the very youth the organization is entrusted to serve, while rendering as hollow the tenets of the Scout Oath.  Many of us find that unacceptable, and we have a desire to explore how we might serve families and young people at the highest standard originally intended by Scouting’s founder, Robert Baden-Powell.” 

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Learn more about the Florida Family Policy Council.

“Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus into heaven three days after He was crucified …”

Well, nice try. At least the paper recognized its error and corrected it, but the matter points out a conundrum in American culture. On the one hand, our politically correct elites are forever bustling about in the task of sanitizing society from infections brought on by the Bible, whether from a cross in public view or the Ten Commandments in a town square.

Were these people to stumble upon the treasury of Bible content that has penetrated our language, even occasionally into the pages of The New York Times itself, brows would furrow and lawsuits would fly. But they don’t because they believe everything old came to us from Shakespeare.

Think for a moment of some of the slogans, aphorisms and even cliches that are so familiar to us:

• A house divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 12:25). (Note to the Times: Jesus lived before Abraham Lincoln.)

• The handwriting on the wall (Daniel 5).

• Living off the fat of the land (Genesis 45:18).

• A prophet is without honor in his own country (John 4:43 and Matthew 13:57).

• My brother’s keeper (Genesis 4:9).

• Apple of your eye (Psalm 17:8).

• Inherit the wind (Proverbs 11:29).

• A drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:15).

• The blind leading the blind (Luke 6:39-40).

• The skin of your teeth (Job 19:20).

• In God we trust (Psalm 20:7).

• To put out a fleece (Judges 6:36).

I wonder how many reporters know the source of terms like “Armageddon,” “raising Cain,” or “robbing Peter to pay Paul”? I wonder how many feminists know who it was who gave us the very name “woman” (Genesis 1:26), or that one of Elvis Presley’s greatest hits was a rock-star’s commentary on three Bible passages (“Hard-Hearted Woman”: Genesis 3, Judges 16 and parts of 1 and 2 Kings).

Let me confess to a mischievous thought here. It has crossed my mind that I should tip off a reporter to one of those highly visible symbols that looks like it’s straight out of the Bible, and about which no one has yet raised a ruckus. You know it well, it is the image of a serpent wound around a staff, the emblem of the American Medical Association and many other physician groups.

Well, it really wouldn’t be nice to unleash a reporter or an atheist group on the AMA the way they hound us about our symbols. The other thing is, it isn’t true. This particular image comes from Greek mythology, but it is the spitting image of Aaron’s snake on a stake in Numbers 21:9.

So the odd thing is this: As the elites search frantically to find ways to be offended, outraged and insulted, they miss much because so many know so little about their subject matter. And these familiar terms and phrases are too deeply rooted in our conversations and our literature to be dug out now, so I’m not worried that they’ll be gone any time soon: They’re a lot like a house built upon a rock in that way.

A final thought: We get a lot of reporters who travel to Colorado to visit us at Focus on the Family, and traveling people replace luggage frequently. I plan to be ready with a suggestion for the next reporter who needs a new roll-aboard: Samsonite.

Tom Minnery is the senior vice president of government and public policy. Do you know someone who’s bravely done the right thing in your community? Send your stories to Citizeneditor@focusonthefamily.com.

Focus on the Family Citizen magazine sets the record straight on the issues that affect your family, your community and your church. You’ll read about local heroes and find practical steps to help you make a difference. If you want a nation that honors faith, family and freedom, Citizen is for you.