American Atheism and the Boy Scouts

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As I searched the news today for someone to pick on, I came across this tidbit from the American Atheists web site: "President-Elect Obama Asked to Turn Down Boy Scouts of America".

Apparently, the Evangelical Atheists who run the American Atheist website had nothing better to do, so they added their name to a letter from the American Humanist Association to President-Elect Obama urging him "to decline the title and role of honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America". As the letter argues:

The BSA has acted vigorously in recent years to expel atheist and agnostic members and employees. This policy expresses the Declaration of Religious Principle, Bylaws of Boy Scouts of America, part. IX, § 1, cl. 1:

The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law." The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members.

The BSA has elected to set itself apart as a private organization that may discriminate in ways contrary to the laws and practices required of local, state, and federal authorities. Accepting the title and role of honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America would thus send the message that institutional discrimination against people who don’t happen to believe in a god is acceptable.

Many presidents of the United States have taken on the title of honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America. However, this tradition was established when discrimination against nontheists was, unfortunately, socially acceptable. Given that nontheists now make up a sizeable minority of the American population-­having more numbers than Mormons, Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews combined-­the BSA is clearly out of touch with the spirit of pluralism, tolerance, and inclusiveness that compose today’s American values. By contrast, in 1993 the Girl Scouts of the United States of America adopted more inclusive policies.

Therefore, please decline the title and role of honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America until such time as the organization reforms its bylaws and practices to be non-discriminatory.

Yours in Unity,
{Signed by a lot of groups which I refuse to name here.}

I stand in awe at the temerity of these people. Not satisfied with removing any modicum of religiosity from government, not stopping with public institutions, not fearing to rush in where angels fear to tread to remove religion from schools, these Evangelical Atheists tackle the BSA, a private institution. These secular sophists sit in sackcloth and ashes, in anguish that the Boy Scouts could possibly offer an oath of duty to God and country. And in the Audacity of Hope, they urge our future president to be as vacuous and intolerant as they are.

In my own audacity, I have to wonder how long the Boy Scouts can endure such attacks: from atheists, from gay activists, from feminists. All they see is a good and decent institution, get offended by it, and in the end, drag it down to their base level or attempt to destroy it all together.

And in my own experience, I'll paraphrase a quote from Dickens' A Christmas Carol:

There are many things from which I might have derived good, I dare say, The Boy Scouts among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of The Boy Scouts, as a good group; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant group. And therefore, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!