I was a Boy Scout growing up.  My troop met in a Methodist Church in my hometown and I distinctly remember our weekly meetings at the church in a Sunday School room.  We met at the church parking lot before campouts. We showed up in uniform at the church every year for Scout Sunday.  I spent a lot of time at that Methodist church (even though I didn’t attend there) and when the time came, I held my Eagle Scout Court of Honor in the chapel of the church.

Now, years later, I’m the Den Leader for my son’s Webelos Den.  We meet at a local Presbyterian church in town. We hold our activities there, including our yearly Blue and Gold banquet and our Pack meetings. My son was just awarded the Cub Scout Arrow of Light in the church’s gym.

I suppose my story is not much different than most other Scouts in America. For Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, the physical location of a church is inextricably intertwined with Scouting.  Churches are the quintessential meeting spaces for Scout troops. That’s because every Scout unit must be chartered by a local organization and seventy percent of all chartering organizations are churches. Churches are chartering organizations because they believe in the good of Scouting for boys.

So what happens to these churches if the Boy Scouts changes its membership policy to allow those who advocate or engage in homosexual behavior to become Scouts and leaders?  Most of the churches that charter Scout troops have a sincere religious belief against homosexual behavior. So if the membership policy changes, these churches will be on the horns of a dilemma. Do they prohibit the Scout troops from meeting in their church buildings, or do they ignore their sincere religious beliefs? This is a very real dilemma for churches that are committed to allowing their facilities to be used only in ways consistent with their faith.

Forcing churches to stop hosting Scout troops is a big step in the process of sidelining churches.  And we’ve seen enough attempts to render the Church irrelevant in the community. Churches used to be integral partners in the communities but now they are pushed out of the community by unconstitutional zoning codes.  Attempts are made to tax churches as if they are just another business or, in one case, to tax it completely out of existence despite its outreach efforts to the poor. Some have even proposed forcing church facilities to be used for same-sex wedding ceremonies.

Now is the time for the Boy Scouts to hear the Church’s voice on this issue. Take a moment and sign the petition to encourage the Scouts to retain their current membership policy. Forward the link to the petition to all the members of your congregation and encourage them to sign it as well.

The Boy Scouts will listen to America’s churches. The current leadership of the Boy Scouts likely had a similar experience as I did and remember fondly the church that hosted their Scout troop. Sign the petition today. Let’s continue the history of Scouting in America’s churches for the next generation of Scouts who will be tomorrow’s leaders.

By Joseph LaRue, Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel

Recently the City Council of Phoenix, AZ, passed the “Bathroom Bill,” which, among other things, will allow men to enter and use women’s restrooms and locker rooms. The Mayor and five Council members who voted in favor of this change said it was necessary to protect the miniscule segment of men who are confused about their sexuality and think that they are women. But in passing the Bathroom Bill, the Mayor and City Council abdicated its duty to protect Phoenix’s children and women. Instead, it provided voyeurs and other sexual predators easy access to the places where children and women are most vulnerable. The City Council thus violated its public trust and placed children, adolescents, and women who use a public restroom in Phoenix at risk.

Supporters of the Bathroom Bill are saying that no man who believes he is a woman will bother girls or women while using the restroom. Their claim misses the point. Most girls and women will be unnerved by seeing any man in their restroom, whether he intends them harm or not. The Bathroom Bill allows any man – including voyeurs and other sexual predators –  to enter women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas. It is not limited to the small percentage of men who think they are women. Sadly, there is nothing anyone can do to stop them. In fact, merely asking someone if they are aware it is the “wrong” bathroom can potentially invoke punishment and leave the person asking the question with a criminal record. That’s right, now it’s a criminal violation to discriminate against men who think they should use the women’s restroom.

While the City Council exempted churches and religious organizations from having to open their women’s restrooms to men, churches need to be concerned.  We all need to be concerned.  Letting men into public bathrooms used by young girls and women is an invasion of privacy and a threat to the safety of all citizens. Instead of protecting women and children, the city’s elected officials adopted a bill that will compromise their safety. It is appalling that these elected officials have decided to put women and young girls in danger.

One shining ray of encouragement coming from this otherwise bleak situation concerns how the leaders of local Hispanic churches took a bold stand for the children, women, and families in Phoenix. They overwhelmingly opposed the Bathroom Bill and courageously explained its danger, along with what the Bible says about human sexuality, to the City Council. They implored the Council to make decisions in accordance with God’s Word and protect the children, women and families of Phoenix.  These pastors and other leaders served as a stirring example of what it means to shepherd and protect God’s church and boldly proclaim His truth.

May all pastors and church leaders do likewise.

In a recent blog post, Dr. Al Mohler recounted a conversation he had with a woman who spoke to him after he had addressed a large crowd, and asked him the question, “Why won’t the abortion issue just go away?”  As we reach the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps that is a question that a lot of our fellow citizens ask.  Every year that passes seems to heighten the fact that the mounting statistics are literally and unalterably horrifying.  The death toll now surpasses 55 million babies aborted since the 1973 decision.  There is no varnishing the fact that we stand today in a country where there are millions less of us than there normally would be. In 2011, Planned Parenthood reported over 333,000 abortions.  That averages to one abortion every 94 seconds.  In the time it takes you to read this blog post, two or three babies have been killed by abortion.

So on this 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision are we at times tempted to echo the woman who questioned Dr. Mohler and wonder why this issue won’t just go away?  Do we grow weary in the battle at times?  In times like this, when we mark milestones in the abortion battle, it is good to step back and realize just why this issue will never go away for Christians and why America’s pastors must never stop proclaiming God’s truth about abortion.  Because no matter what society does or says, and no matter how the death toll mounts, God’s truth never changes and He hates abortion.

Psalm 119:160 says of God, “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”  Isaiah 40:8 proclaims that “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”  The Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 1:23 speaks of the “living and abiding word of God” and then echoes Isaiah that “the word of the Lord remains forever.”  Scripture proclaims that God’s Word stands forever.  Put another way, it never, ever, ever changes.  And when God says in Proverbs 6:16-17 that he hates hands that shed innocent blood, His hatred doesn’t somehow go away after we reach a threshold of innocent blood that has been spilled. No, God’s Word stands forever.  He will forever hate hands that shed innocent blood.

But we must also remember that our God forgives and heals.  The Psalmist declares that God “forgives all your iniquity.” In 1 Chronicles 16:34, David proclaimed that God’s “steadfast love endures forever.”  That’s also a message today’s pastors must proclaim.  Because for every one of the over 55 million babies that have been aborted since 1973, there also stands a woman broken by the pain and hurt of abortion who is in desperate need of a forgiveness and love that only God can extend and that He promises to provide to those who ask.

On this day that we mark forty years of abortion on demand, and mourn the loss of over 55 million of our fellow citizens, we must remember why this issue will never just “go away” until abortion is once again recognized as illegal and punishable as murder in our criminal laws.  It’s because God’s truth never changes.  His truth has not changed in forty years and will remain the same forever.

On this blog, we frequently talk about how biblical truth is under assault.  That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom was created, though.  Because we must protect the proclamation of God’s unchanging truth to a culture that doesn’t want to hear it.  If America’s churches and pastors are to remain faithful in this day, we must stand together for biblical truth no matter how our society tends to ignore it or try to change it.  Pastors must proclaim that God’s truth does not and will not change.  Abortion is just as wrong today as it was 40 years ago.  And it will be wrong forever.

And forever is a lot longer than forty years.

By now many of you have probably heard that Atlanta pastor Louie Giglio has removed himself from giving the prayer at President Obama’s inauguration after a firestorm of criticism erupted over his inclusion in the ceremony.  The firestorm was over a sermon Pastor Giglio gave over a decade ago where he discussed the biblical view of homosexual behavior.  In a direct way, he confronted the view that homosexual behavior was simply an “alternative lifestyle.”  Pastor Giglio stated that: “If you look at the counsel of the word of God, Old Testament, New Testament, you come quickly to the conclusion that homosexuality is not an alternative lifestyle.  Homosexuality is not just a sexual preference.  Homosexuality is not gay.  But homosexuality is sin.”  You can hear his comments in this video.

After these comments came to light, groups advocating homosexual behavior demanded that Giglio withdraw from the inauguration, which he did, claiming that he did not want his presence to detract from the work he has been doing recently to end human trafficking.

The blogosphere erupted with commentary on the issue.  Russell Moore posted on his blog:

When it is now impossible for one who holds to the catholic Christian view of marriage and the gospel to pray at a public event, we now have a de facto established state church.  Just as the pre-constitutional Anglican and congregational churches required a license to preach in order to exclude Baptists, the new state church requires a “license” of embracing sexual liberation in all its forms.

Al Mohler posted wrote on his blog:

The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House have now declared historic, biblical Christianity to be out of bounds, casting it off the inaugural program as an embarrassment. By its newly articulated standard, any preacher who holds to the faith of the church for the last 2,000 years is persona non grata.

We now see the new Moral McCarthyism in its undisguised and unvarnished reality. If you are a Christian, get ready for the question you will now undoubtedly face: “Do you now or have you ever believed that homosexuality is a sin?” There is nowhere to hide.

Pastor Giglio’s withdrawal from the inauguration ceremony may seem like a small thing.  But small things are often symbols of where we are as a culture.  And this is no small thing.  Mohler and Moore (and otherslike them) are right.  What the Giglio withdrawal shows us is that biblical truth has been blacklisted.  Giglio’s comments in his 1990′s sermon were not hateful, spiteful, or intolerant.  Rather, they were a simple and clear exposition of biblical truth.  But the advocates of homosexual behavior don’t want to hear that truth.  We have now reached a point in our culture where the simple proclamation of Scripture carries public ridicule and censorship.

The Apostle Paul warned about this progression in Romans 1.  He says in Romans 1:18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”  They suppress the truth because God has made it evident to them that the behavior they approve of and engage in is sinful and violates His law.  And what better way to suppress the truth than to suppress the truth-tellers.

Pastor Giglio faced public ridicule and scorn for simply proclaiming God’s truth.  His example stands as a warning call to all pastors.  The end-goal of the homosexual legal agenda is the silencing of all dissent; the suppression of the truth-tellers in our culture.  Now is not the time to shrink away from biblical truth.  Rather, when it is under attack, pastors as the men of God must run to the battle lines to proclaim even more strongly and winsomely the power of the Gospel.

Alliance Defending Freedom stands with you as you faithfully stand for biblical truth in today’s culture.  If you find your right to proclaim the truth of Scripture is threatened, please contact us so our attorneys can help.  Together, we are as our name proclaims –  an Alliance Defending Freedom.

For years we have been warning that same-sex “marriage” is not the end goal of the radical homosexual legal agenda.  Instead, the end goal of that movement is the silencing of all dissent.  Numerous examples abound in other countries where we see the inevitable consequence of approving same-sex “marriage.”  In his latest column on Townhall.com, Alliance Defending Freedom President and General Counsel Alan Sears tells how France is now seeking to censor speech in opposition to efforts to redefine marriage or gender.

When a society’s laws recognizing marriage as the union of one man and one woman are changed to honor the unions of same-sex couples, it’s not just the law that changes—it’s also the society itself that changes. A top-down metamorphosis begins in which every aspect of public law changes to match the new definition of marriage.

Today, this is playing out in France with great clarity.

There, Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem is pressing Twitter to help control the speech of the people by censoring messages that run counter to the position of the French government.

In particular, Belkacem wants Twitter to censor messages that run counter to the government’s decision to grant special rights and an elevated status to people who engage in homosexual behavior and persons who are of one gender but claim to be of another.

Belkacem praises the French government for making it illegal to discriminate based on these and other things and calls on Twitter to share the convictions of the government:

It is the honor of France to have gradually included in the penal code punishment of incitement to hatred or violence against a person or group of persons because of their origin, membership or non-membership in an ethnic group, nation, or of their sexual orientation or gender identity…Twitter [needs] to find solutions so that messages sent from our territory, our language, and destination of our citizens do not bear a clear violation of the principles we have set.

Notice—now that France has added “gender identity” to its national non-discrimination policy, unapproved communiqués on the subject of homosexual behavior are punishable by law. Now that France has embraced and attempted to redefine morality on homosexual behavior, speech against such behavior is literally banned.

And Minister Belkacem approves of this. She said as much when she wrote that French officials support “freedom of expression” but not freedom of expression “with impunity.”

There are so many lessons here for Americans who think that such things can never happen in this country. Believing the falsehood that all advocates of homosexual behavior want is to be left alone, one need only read their own words and examine the legal landscape, where dissenters and people of faith are being persecuted by “human rights commissions” and other government authorities who have no tolerance for a different point of view from their own.

Alan is correct.  What we see happening in France is bound to happen here should our society recognize and approve of same-sex “marriage.”  And those who  think that the First Amendment will stand as a shield against such efforts must remember that the Constitution has never deterred the left from pursuing its agenda.  If you have any doubts about that, ask JuleaWard, Elaine Huguenin, Ake Green, and countless others who have had their religious freedom threatened simply because they chose to speak up and live their faith in the public square.

The churches of America must speak up on this issue before it is too late and before the inevitable consequences of recognizing same-sex “marriage” fall on the church.  If churches do not speak up now, then they may not have the opportunity later.  Visit the marriage resource page of our website for information about the efforts to legally protect marriage.  And if you are a pastor, consider preaching a sermon on marriage and why it is important to protect it from radical efforts to redefine this most basic human institution.