Former Republican presidential
candidate Rick Santorum has warned of an exodus if the Boy Scouts of
America (BSA) drops its ban on gay scouts and leaders.
The BSA's national board will consider
ending the ban and allowing local chapters to decide the issue at its
regularly scheduled meeting, which begins Monday.
(Related: Boy
Scouts mull ending gay ban.)
Santorum
called on the BSA not to drop its ban in an op-ed titled Stop
the War on Scouts.
The
vote “is a challenge to the Scouts' very nature and is another
example of the left attempting to remove God from all areas of public
life,” Santorum wrote.
A
change in the policy would prompt an exodus as faith-based
individuals and church hosts exit the organization to “pursue
alternative ways to continue to invest in the development of their
young men's character, leaving the Scouts hollowed out at its core.”
“Scouting
prepares boys and teenagers to be virtuous men in a world that
desperately needs men who are brave enough to stand up for those
principles, to live by the moral code of the Scout Oath and Law and
hold themselves to that standard – whether at the schoolyard or in
the boardroom. Scouting may not survive this transformation of
American society, but for the sake of the average boy in America, I
hope the board of the Scouts doesn't have its fingerprints on the
murder weapon,” Santorum concluded.
(Related:
Father
of gay scout Ryan Andresen prays for Boy Scouts policy change.)