Boy Scouts board earns merit badge for BS

Some legislators want to require wasteful, time-consuming, and costly sonograms for women who want abortion. In that case, then it's only fair that men be required to have their prostate examined if they want Viagra or other methods of sexual enhancement. You know, Boner pills.

You don't like the idea of same-sex marriage since you believe in its sanctity? Fine, then you should outlaw divorce.

Want no control over guns? Let's start a program to give every gay man, lesbian woman and transgender person a gun.

These were a few of the issues I wanted to start this column with, but sometimes news dictates a new course. And this week, the Boy Scouts did just that.

Is there a Boy Scout merit badge for bulls***? If not there should be, and the first recipients of it should be the National Boy Scouts Board.

And the second should be all the LGBT activists and writers who were gushing all over themselves without having a single shred of concrete information. Here's the down and skinny:

The Boy Scouts leak to NBC News that the National Board is considering lifting its 100-year, controversial ban on gay scouts and scout leaders. Leaking a story like that is a trial balloon. It's good politics to gauge public reaction, which was positive.

But did you notice there were no details? As your parents always told you, the devil was in the details. These details are very sinister. They're all about money and shifting it around.

As the discrimination of the Boy Scouts became more and more controversial, and they continued to slam their heels into the dirt by sticking to an unpopular policy of tossing out cub scouts, boy scouts, mothers of scouts who are lesbians, and even eagle scouts, corporations began to drop their funding.

How serious is that problem? Well, the boy scouts have corporate leaders on its board who fund the scouts and whose companies have non-discrimination policies. Those CEOs have pledged to work to end the ban.

Translation: you don't change the policy, I'm outta here, and my checkbook with me.

Here's the fun part, still sinister. The gushing LGBT activists and writers are claiming victory, but haven't read the small print.

The Board will state that each chapter will be given the right to decide its own policies on ending the ban, or not ending the ban.

So, what's wrong with that?

Seventy percent of chapters of the Boy Scouts of America are sponsored by either the Mormon or Catholic churches. So in reality, they have shifted the battle from their front door to thousands of local communities, a city-by-city battle.

This policy may be a good thing for big progressive cities, but what about the rest of the nation?

And there's this bit: they can do this without ever admitting that it is wrong to discriminate. Now they simply say it's up to the chapters themselves, with no culpability of what they've done, or how their policies have ruined lives.

So the reality is, by the numbers, the head honchos might have changed a minority of chapters nationally and taken the focus from the organization to the individual communities.

But those 70 percent sponsored by the Mormons and Catholic Church, can you see them changing anytime soon?

Do you remember the vast support the Mormons gave to stop marriage equality in California? And do you remember that as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was busy closing their schools in Philadelphia, they had enough money to send $50,000 to New England to fight against equality?

As mother always said, the devil is in the details.

Mark Segal is one of Philadelphia's most awarded opinion writers and has been recognized by the National Newspaper Association, Pennsylvania News-media Association, Suburban Newspapers of America and the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. He can be reached at https://www.facebook.com/MarkSegalPGN or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PhilaGayNews.