Grapevine, TX – Following the vote today by the Boy Scouts of America’s voting delegates to pass the resolution allowing “open and avowed homosexuality” in the Boy Scouts, John Stemberger, Founder of OnMyHonor.Net, a coalition of members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) including parents, Scoutmasters, Eagle Scouts and other Scouting leaders who affirm Scouting’s timeless values, made the following statement:

“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 Boy Scouts of America has a logo that bears the phrase ‘Timeless Values.’ Today, the BSA can no longer use this phrase in good faith. It has demonstrated by its actions that the organization’s values are not timeless, and instead they are governed by changing tides of polls, politics and public opinion.

KEEP READING: What's Next? [On My Honor]

They have also vowed to start work on their own "character development organization" to rival the Boy Scouts. Have at it, I say.

"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.

"The delegates succumbed to a concerted and manipulative effort by the national BSA leadership despite the BSA's own survey showing 61 percent of its members in opposition to changing the policy.

"The Boy Scouts has for decades been a force for moral integrity and leadership in the United States. BSA councils, Scouting parents, and leaders of the faith-based organizations that charter over two-thirds of the packs and troops, must now decide how to respond to this moral compromise. Many will separate from the organization so that they can continue to foster character among boys and respect the right of parents to discuss issues of sexuality with their sons.

"It is clear that the current BSA leadership will bend with the winds of popular culture, and the whims of liberal special interest groups. There is little doubt that God will soon be ushered out of scouting. Now is the time for new leadership. In the meantime, we will stand with those BSA Councils who will now act to protect boys from a new policy that only creates moral confusion and disrespects the views of the vast majority of Scouting parents"

—FRC president Tony Perkins, via emailed press release

New leadership? Want to take a vote on it, Tony?

But here, let him tell you instead:

**UPDATE: According to a report I just got, it wasn't even close. 68%–31% are the numbers I'm hearing! (*now confirmed)

**Of course there is still the ban on adults, which MUST GO. The work is not done. But still—YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

**UPDATE: The Boy Scouts os America official statement:

"For 103 years, the Boy Scouts of America has been a part of the fabric of this nation, with a focus on working together to deliver the nation's foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training.

"Based on growing input from within the Scouting family, the BSA leadership chose to conduct an additional review of the organization's long-standing membership policy and its impact on Scouting's mission. This review created an outpouring of feedback from the Scouting family and the American public, from both those who agree with the current policy and those who support a change.

"Today, following this review, the most comprehensive listening exercise in Scouting's history the approximate 1,400 voting members of the Boy Scouts of America's National Council approved a resolution to remove the restriction denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual orientation alone. The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting. A change to the current membership policy for adult leaders was not under consideration; thus, the policy for adults remains in place. The BSA thanks all the national voting members who participated in this process and vote.

"This policy change is effective Jan. 1, 2014, allowing the Boy Scouts of America the transition time needed to communicate and implement this policy to its approximately 116,000 Scouting units.

"The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive, and unresolved societal issue. As the National Executive Committee just completed a lengthy review process, there are no plans for further review on this matter.

"While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting. Going forward, our Scouting family will continue to focus on reaching and serving youth in order to help them grow into good, strong citizens. America's youth need Scouting, and by focusing on the goals that unite us, we can continue to accomplish incredible things for young people and the communities we serve."

With marriage, the fight tends to be prospective. You fight for the right to someday marry, both for yourself and future generations. It is exciting, but is an unknown to all of us until we obtain the freedom.

With hate crimes or nondiscrimination laws, the fight can feel theoretical. You hope you will never have to use them, but you fight because you know they are necessary. You want them there, but you're better off if you never need to implement the protections.

With some of the other policy debates, the whole thing can get so bogged down in legalese, procedural hangups, and bureaucracy layers that it doesn't even feel like a debate about human beings. When fighting for things like immigration or economic justice, it can be sadly easy to lose site of the human toll attached.

But all of us remember being children. And for all of us LGBT people? That typically means that we remember what it feels like to feel shunned, cast out, scared, and vulnerable.

We also remember what it feels like to live in a society that only seems to reinforce these shuns, out-castings, fears, and vulnerabilities. We remember those verbal slights that we overheard, dealt out by both peers and adult caretakers. We look back on the times when we studied our cherished loved one's reactions to situations that seem somehow relatable to us, even if we don't fully understand why. We think back on the days when we pondered the bits and pieces of political conversations that we should've been far too carefree to pay any mind. Or to all those moments when we internalized negativity without ever realizing we were doing so. It's all in our consciousness because it very much shaped our consciousness.

Right now, as I write this, young people across America are hearing bits and pieces of an adult debate surrounding an institution with which they have some degree of familiarity. They know that it has to do with people like that funny Mitch and Cam from Modern Family. They think they heard their neighbor say something about marching against adults who will abuse kids if they are allowed to ties knots while wearing khaki. They saw something in the paper about Boy Scouts needing "saving," whatever that means. And some of them know that there is some kind of vote happening today, and that if it goes in Mitch and Cam's direction, then some of their friends' parents have told them they can't be in the Boy Scouts anymore. It's all very confusing.

Then there is that bright young boy, barely twelve-years-old. He knows exactly what's going on; he's been quietly following every word for reasons that even he doesn't understand. This kid doesn't yet know who he is, but he does know a few things for sure. He knows that he feels some sort of empathetic connection with people who seem up against hardships. He knows his take on girls is a little different from his friends who think they have cooties. He knows he really enjoys Mitch and Cam, but that he wishes The New Normal had been given another chance to show its stuff. He knows he loves the outdoors, playing baseball both in real life and on XBox, drawing pictures of cars, playing pop hits on his guitar, occasionally teasing his sister, and cooking with his mom. He's a good kid, they all say.

Oh, and he knows he loves his Boy Scout troop. He knows he doesn't want to ever be told he has to leave that troop for any reason beyond his control.

Today, the Boy Scouts of America will make a choice. There are some kids who won't come to understand what it means until many years after today's vote. But right now, smack dab in the middle of an all-too-confusing process of figuring out while aboard this wacky ride we call childhood, are some kids who do, in fact, have some sort of heightened understanding of what's going on today. These are the kids who have so
much to lose, and the kids whose chances at a better ride comes at the expense of no one. They will someday reflect on this, a pivotal moment in their lives that carries an emotional weight many times greater than their linear years. They are absorbing this day, destined to become lodged in the memory bank that will fund their journeys from here on out.

When pushing so hard for this policy change, I haven't really been thinking about what Tony Perkins or John Stemberger or Eric Teetsel or Sen. Ted Cruz say. Instead, I've been imagining my younger self and how I would have processed what is happening right now. Because I do know what I saw and heard. I know what I understood and what I never could. I remember what it felt like. What it feels like.

If I can take out even one of those bumps for even one of these young children, then I will consider my day successful. But on this particular day, the Boy Scouts have the power to remove countless bumps for countless children both now and to come. What a gift! What an opportunity! What a chance to do better by so many of their fellow human beings, here on a first step toward the full inclusion that will eventually remedy all of these negative experiences.

Please don't blow it, grown adults who should know better.

Well guess who is now promoting and defending this clip? That would be none other than the New Jersey Family Policy Council, the organization leading the fight to stop marriage equality in the Garden State:

SOURCE: NJFPC's Facebook page

I love when they attempt to "explain" the supposed nuance. Even better if/when they think this is my first time at the rodeo, believing I'm just going to accept their "explanation" as fact without making a larger point in this debate. I truly love being underestimated.

Bottom line: NJFPC did just sneer at gay people. Harshly. And their posting of this video is, in fact, a direct attempt to connect LGBT people to adulterers and alcoholics. There is no further explanation needed. They posted it to they organizational wall, and then they have proceeded to defend it. So now I will be sure that every last member of the NJ state legislature is aware of this harsh disregard for the Garden State's vast LGBT population.

As I said in my initial comment: "An astoundingly silly thing for the state's leading "family" group to promote. They would have been wise to listen to me.

"It’s not accurate to say the times have relegated the defense of marriage to the geriatric ward. And there’s no such thing as being on the “right” or “wrong” side of history. There’s only being on the right or wrong side of truth."

—Ryan Anderson and Andrew Walker, both of the anti-gay Heritage Foundation, writing for Citizen, the magazine of the anti-gay Focus on Family

It's one of those things that anti-LGBT people tells themselves in order to feel good about their work, both here in the now and (especially) in a commemorative future. But it's bogus.

I have my version of truth, which says that the civil laws of this church/state-separated nation must support the freedom of same-sex couples to marry. Anderson and Walker have their version of truth, which positions their personal (and largely faith-based) objections above the rights of taxpayers like me. Whether either of our truths are right on the money, here in the mortal realm or in some eternal future, is one facet os this conversation, perhaps. But in a history that will inevitably play out, there will be one of us who is viewed, by virtue of public support and policy reality, as having been on the right side. That is just a fact—then, now, and always through the relatively short trajectory of this experiment we call America.

We fight out these ideas in a public space, and a winning position prevails. In most cases, the minority population prevails and history records that progress as a really good thing. I am more than confident in how the history books will record my work. Walker and Anderson have every right to disagree, but they mustn't kid themselves—one of us will, in recorded fact, be right.

*UPDATE: And of course the anti-gay National Org. for Marriage loves Anderson and Walker's take:

One of the great lines from their article: "There’s no such thing as being on the “right” or “wrong” side of history. There’s only being on the right or wrong side of truth."

Amen! [NOM Blog]

Because of course they would. When trying to turn a contrived alternate script into reality, the co-writers must stick together.

[US Conference of Catholic Bishops (with link to the Spanish bulletin)]

Because why should English be the only language that is bastardized with code words that mask the discriminatory reality behind nice-sounding terms like "tradition" and "values"?