Christian Post reporter Napp Nazworth is reporting that Frank Page, president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee was told by a representative of the BSA that the organization is "wilting under pressure from some of their corporate sponsors . . ."
Apparently, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay activist group, threatened BSA's corporate sponsors that it would downgrade their "non-discrimination ratings" if they continued to give money to BSA, according to NBC News.
Nazworth reports that in 2010, 23 of the top 50 corporate donors to BSA gave at least $10,000 to the Scouts. These include Bank of America, Intel, UPS, U.S. Bank, Verizon and Wells Fargo. Intel, which gave $700,000 to the Scouts in 2010, announced it would stop donating to them unless they changed their policy excluding gays. A month later, Merck did the same. UPS announced last month that it would no longer give to the Scouts because of the ban.
"BSA's national board includes two corporate CEOs -- Randall Stephenson of AT&T and James Turley of Ernst & Young -- who have said they will try to end the ban on gay scouts, volunteers and leaders. Stephenson is supposed to be the board's next chairman," Nazworth reports.
However, the decision to reverse the ban just because pro-homosexual groups are upset isn't as easy as it looks.
“It’s an extremely complex issue,” one BSA official told MSNBC, explaining that if they reverse the ban, they stand to lose financial support from organizations that support it.
This could be even more problematic considering how the Scouts operate. Even though the national organization sets broad policies, nearly 300 local councils govern the day-to-day activity of over 116,000 local troops. According to the BSA website, 69.6 percent of these local troops are chartered to faith-based organizations, 22.7 percent are chartered to civic organizations such as Rotary, Kiwanis and chambers of commerce, and 7.9 percent are chartered to educational organizations such as PTAs and private schools.
The policy change now under discussion “would allow the religious, civic or educational organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting to determine how to address this issue,” said BSA spokesman, Deron Smith.
“The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members or parents. 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,” he said.
Should this reversal come, it will merely transfer the battle from the national to the local level, with the nation's most beloved boys' club distracted from their mission of instilling high moral standards upon their members by what could be constant pressure by gay activist groups.
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