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| The Family Research Council is blaming a 2013 decision to allow gays to participate in the Boys Scouts for sexual abuse which began decades before the decision was made. |
Anti-LGBTQ hate group the Family Research Council never wastes an opportunity to blame the LGBTQ community for calamities and troubles. And it doesn't matter whether or not we had anything to do with said calamities and troubles.
A perfect example is the fall of the Boy Scouts. The organization had to declare bankruptcy last year because it faces thousands of child sexual abuse allegations going back decades.
According to an April 25, 2019 CNN article:
The Boy Scouts of America believed more than 7,800 of its former leaders were involved in sexually abusing children over the course of 72 years, according to newly exposed court testimony – about 2,800 more leaders than previously known publicly. The Boy Scouts identified more than 12,000 alleged victims in that time period, from 1944 through 2016, according to the testimony, which was publicized Tuesday by attorney Jeff Anderson, who specializes in representing sexual abuse victims. The numbers, Anderson said, come from what the BSA calls its volunteer screening database – a list of volunteers and others that the Boy Scouts removed and banned from its organization over accusations of policy violations, including allegations of sexual abuse. That 7,800 includes scout leaders and masters across the country accused of sexually assaulting “children under their charge,” Anderson said Tuesday at a news conference in New York.
Because of this, the group is working on an $850 million settlement agreement with lawyers representing over 60,000 victims of child sexual abuse.
But guess who FRC is blaming for this scandal? It's a relatively easy guess when one reads the group's Washington Update:
After 100 years of teaching future presidents, explorers, and civil rights leaders to follow their moral compass, it's been sobering to watch the Boy Scouts lose their own bearings. And yet, the unhappy ending for one of America's proudest traditions was easy to predict once the organization started chasing the approval of critics it could never win. Now, eight years into this experiment in moral compromise, the country is watching one of the saddest "I-told-you-so" moments of a generation. Disgraced, bankrupt, unpopular, and on the edge of extinction, the Scouts' leadership is showing the world where cowardly conformity leads -- and it isn't where the culture promised.For those who knew the Scouts in their heyday, the demise has been quick and painful. Since 2013, when the organization waved its first white flag on sexual orientation, the group that counted Martin Luther King, Jr., Buzz Aldrin, and George W. Bush as members has become barely recognizable. Ravaged by sexual abuse lawsuits and bleeding members, the road of moral surrender has not been kind to the 1910 institution. After years of successfully fighting to live by its moral code, BSA leaders gave into the lie that compromise would be their salvation. Nearly a decade later, the sad truth is: there's almost nothing left to save."It's a shell of what it once was," Regent University professor Rob Schwarzwalder said mournfully. "At its peak, scouting in the United States had more than seven million members. Today, it's about a tenth of that." It's a dramatic decline, the former FRC senior vice president admitted on "Washington Watch," but a predictable one. Once the scouts walked away from 100 years of values, it was only a matter of time until the capitulation caught up with them. "They no longer are even able to define what they mean by things like honor and morality," Rob pointed out. Once headquarters opened the tent flap to LGBT members and scout leaders, their fate was sealed.
FRC and Schwarzwelder is referring to the 2013 decision of the Boys Scouts to allow gays to openly participate. Before 2013, gays banned from the Boy Scouts and the organization even won a Supreme Court case to that effect in 2000.
The Family Research Council have made the false connection between pedophilia and the LGBTQ community numerous times in the past. And no matter how many times the lie is refuted, the organization continues to repeat it.
But this time is flagrantly sloppy.
How can a 2013 decision be blamed for incidents which began decades before the decision was made? Or basically, how can anyone in their right mind blame a 2013 decision to allow gays to openly serve in the Boy Scouts for a sexual abuse scandal taking place between the years of 1944 and 2016?
You can't, but it's obvious that FRC is hoping that in this day and age of media oversaturation and the unfortunate overstating of headlines (and the understating of nuances and details), it can get away with its latest scapegoating of LGBTQ people.
No matter how basically tacky and dishonest the attempt may be.
