Have you heard about the next big thing for the Boy Scouts of America?

My own experience with Scouting was short-lived – I started and finished as a Webelo Scout, never moving on to the “real” Boy Scouts.  Our youngest son spent a little more time with it, but computers and other things captured his interest and time before he had moved very far into his teens.  But I am grateful to the outstanding men and women, most of them people of deep faith in Christ, who were determined to influence boys and young men to become Godly adults in their own time.

So it was with a great feeling of sadness that I heard on TV and read in the local newspaper that a vote will soon be taken that is likely to lead Scouting in an entirely different direction.  Observers say the measure is likely to pass the vote next month, and then each local Scouting organization will be left to decide whether to accept Scouts and volunteers who are acknowledged homosexuals.  The apparent motivation for the change in policy is the loss of sponsorship from UPS and other well-known brands, companies that have, in my view, succumbed to pressure from the homosexual “community.”  Yes, it all about dollars and cents.

I am reminded once again of the illustration involving a frog, a pan of water, and a cook stove.   You know how it goes:  Put the frog in the cool (even lukewarm) pot of water, and it will happily float or swim around; set the pot of water on the cook stove, turn the burner on low, and watch the frog continue happily in its bath.  And, so the story goes, if you increase the heat slowly enough, the frog will never really notice its danger until it’s too late to hop out!  The end result?  Boiled frog.

I fully expect to see at least two of the biggest religious groups involved in Scouting to make some significant changes in the future.  They might even begin their own programs, paralleling activities of traditional “scouting,” but kept “in-house” to avoid the pressure of outside, agenda-driven groups.

Think about it:  A local scout organization might decide to refuse homosexual scouts and volunteers, but any participation in regional, national, or even international scouting events will bring their own youth into contact with people from other scout organizations by which the opposite decision was made on homosexual participation.  And it is also possible that the homosexual-agenda-driven organizations will keep up the pressure, forcing an eventual mandate from Boy Scouts of America that all local scout organizations must accept homosexual scouts and volunteers in order to maintain their affiliation with the national organization.

After all, what’s a few more degrees of heat on a pan that’s already simmering?  At any rate, Scouting will never be the same.