I had no idea that the Boy Scouts had any kind of pedophile problem at all, let alone that they had a file on at least 5,000 suspected pedophiles in the Scouts. It appears from this story that the Scouts handled their pedophiles in much the same way as the Catholic Church - they told no one and tried to make the problem go away, where of course it didn't, and simply continued in someone else's backyard. I don't see how anyone could entrust their child to the Scouts in the future, particularly considering the Boy Scouts are still in court trying to protect their pedophilia files from public scrutiny. I'd rather they were in court protecting the young boys in their charge.
And let's not forget that the Boy Scouts are notoriously homophobic. They see gays as immoral. Yep, no gay scouts or scoutmasters need apply. Straight pedophiles, however...
There's been significant discussion of whether the Boy Scouts' bigoted ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters is based in part on the Mormons having taken over the Boy Scouts. From About.com:
Many readers are surely aware of the fact that there continue to be legal and social problems due to the Boy Scouts' discrimination and bigotry against atheists and gays. What readers may not realize is just how much of this may be ultimately due to the efforts of the Mormon church. Mormons control a significant percentage of all Boy Scout troops; if policies change to treat gays and atheists equally, the Mormons will walk - taking all of their money with them.It's difficult to believe that the Mormons aren't behind the Scouts' aggressively homophobic bigotry. After all, an aggressive antagonism, political and even violent, has long been a mainstay of the Mormon faith against those it considers less worthy (be they innocent men, women and children, blacks, or gays). They've even been aggressively baptizing the dead of other religions, against the wishes of living relatives, for decades. They particularly made news with their zeal to convert dead Jewish Holocaust victims to Mormons (their defense? the dead didn't put a fight (seriously)). Heck, they even converted President Obama's deceased mother right before the election, without his knowledge.
As MSNBC reports, Mormon involvement in Scouting has even reached the point where Brigham Young University is offering a new major in Scouting:
The Boy Scouts are the official boys’ youth group of the LDS, and more than one in nine Scouts are Mormons. Critics say the church exerts disproportionate influence through membership on the national advisory council and vigorous fund-raising. (In New York, LDS leaders recently launched a fund-raising campaign with pamphlets carrying an endorsement from the church’s current prophet.)
And let's not even get started on Mitt Romney's famous proclamation that he wouldn't put a Muslim in the cabinet. But please don't bash his religion. He, and his faith, are much more interested in bashing you and yours.
