The Boy Scouts of America voted last Thursday to lift a ban against homosexual boys joining its organization. The vote was made by 60 percent of the 1,400 members of the national council of the bsa at its annual meeting in Grapevine, Texas, and the new policy will officially be effected Jan. 1, 2014.

In February 2013, the bsa leadership had postponed voting on the matter to allow for debates and surveys of public opinion among its membership.

The decision to allow homosexual scouts will be received with mixed feelings. While the Mormon Church (the biggest sponsor of bsa troops), the National Jewish Committee on Scouting, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Metropolitan Community Church have all endorsed the bsa’s vote, many other churches and organizations are unhappy and will remain firmly opposed to the decision. Many will pull out their funding of the Boy Scouts.

This outcome really should not have surprised anyone. There has been an accelerating trend for many decades, especially since the 1940s, of moral degeneration.

Look at marriage, for example. This sacred, age-old institution has always been a heterosexual union by definition and by law. Yet now, homosexuals have forced their definition of marriage on society in the exact way they accuse society of imposing its definition of marriage on them.

For the 103 years since its founding, the Boy Scouts of America has enforced basic biblical values among its members. Its mission is to build upstanding character in young people and to help them make ethical and moral choices in life. It has used the Bible to define morality. That is why the organization has in the past expelled homosexual members whose orientation contradicted its core, biblical values.

One such Scout member was James Dale, whose openness about his homosexual orientation resulted in his expulsion in 1990. He was plainly informed that the Boy Scouts “specifically forbid membership to homosexuals.”

A legal battle then ensued about the constitutionality of Dale’s expulsion from the Boy Scouts—an expulsion resulting from his disagreement with the core values of the private organization founded in 1910, 60 years before Dale was born.

In 2000, bsa won the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale case when the Supreme Court ruled that the organization had the right to forbid membership to homosexuals. “[F]reedom of association,” the ruling said, “plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.”

But the court ruling did not pacify the homophilia movement. While one side did not desire association, the other resiliently fought for association.

In Thursday’s vote, the pro-homosexual side’s resilience paid off—at least partially. While homosexual youth will no longer be denied association with the Boy Scouts of America, homosexual adult leaders of the organization will. But trends indicate that this too will probably soon change.

The vote last Thursday and the immoral trend it exposes is, as Dr. Richard Land said, a “catastrophe” for Boy Scouts. Considering the safety and security issues this decision will cause young boys at campouts, he said, this “goes beyond the realm of the rational.” Dr. Land added: “If homosexuals want to have a different organization, then let them form one and not let them try to destroy a [103-year]-old one and take away its core values.”

Following the vote, John Stemberger, founder of OnMyHonor.net, said:

It is with great sadness and deep disappointment that we recognize on this day that the most influential youth program in America has turned a tragic corner. The vote today to allow open and avowed homosexuality into scouting will completely transform it into an unprincipled and risky proposition for parents. It is truly a sad day for scouting.

The Family Research Council had this to say about the vote:

Sadly, the Boy Scouts’ legacy of producing great leaders has become yet another casualty of moral compromise. Unfortunately, Boy Scout delegates capitulated to strong-arm tactics and abandoned the timeless values that have served the organization well for more than 100 years.

In his book The Missing Dimension in Sex, Herbert W. Armstrong drew parallels between today’s world and the world during the days of biblical Noah and Lot. He wrote, “Since it is a basic truism that a solid family structure is the foundational bulwark of any stable and permanent society, [the moral decline of today] means only one thing—civilization as we know it is on the way down—and out—unless [God] soon intervenes and saves today’s sick society.”

The vote to allow homosexual boy scouts shows how much we need God’s intervention to straighten out our morally decrepit world. For more, request your free copies of The Missing Dimension in Sex and Why Marriage! Soon Obsolete?