Liberalizing socially conservative organizations is a great way to shrink them to irrelevance. Just ask the vanishing Protestant Mainline. But the goal here was never to help the Boy Scouts of America but rather to send scouts the same cultural signal the sexual revolutionaries send to the rest of America: Join . . . or else.

To no one’s surprise, this happened:

The Boy Scouts of America voted Monday [July 27] to lift a long-established ban on gay adults as employees and volunteers within the organization.

The BSA’s full executive board voted 45 to 12 in favor of the change, effective immediately. The vote came after the National Executive Committee unanimously approved a resolution earlier this month stating that “no adult applicant for registration as an employee or non-unit-serving volunteer, who otherwise meets the requirements of the Boy Scouts of America, may be denied registration on the basis of sexual orientation.”

The Scouts, however, included a necessary exemption for church-sponsored troops — allowing them to set their own policies. This displeased the lords of political correctness. Here’s the Human Rights Campaign’s Chad Griffin:

Including an exemption for troops sponsored by religious organizations undermines and diminishes the historic nature of today’s decision. Discrimination should have no place in the Boy Scouts, period.

Yet if the church-sponsored troops pull out of scouting, the BSA would collapse. In many jurisdictions — including scouting’s most healthy and vibrant — church-sponsored groups dominate.

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