Right-Wing Activist: Admitting Out Gays to Boy Scouts Will Lead to Abuse

John Stemberger

The founder of a new group that opposes lifting the Boy Scouts of America’s gay ban says allowing openly gay scouts and leaders will lead to “emotional, sexual, psychological, and physical abuse,” yet he has no problem with closeted gays participating in the organization.

Yesterday on The Janet Mefferd Show, a conservative Christian radio program, OnMyHonor.net founder John Stemberger said, “If scouting sends the message, ‘We’re open for gays,’ you’re going to have so much nonsense going on between older boys and younger boys, it’s just going to create a myriad of problems that really is going to result in further scandal, further disgrace to the scouts, not to mention just the tragedy of the emotional, sexual, psychological, and physical abuse that will occur in the program.” Being gay, he told Mefferd, is being promoted as “hip” and “edgy.”

Stemberger, the former executive director of the right-wing Florida Family Policy Council and a onetime political director for the Florida Republican Party, also said, “Currently there are people in scouting who are probably homosexual, there’s no litmus test, there’s no witch hunt to find out who they are; they’re discreet, they’re appropriate, they’re personal, they’re private, they’re not loud and proud, they’re not out there waving the rainbow flag and trying to make a big deal about it and trying to promote gay marriage and all this business.” Allowing “open homosexuality,” he said, would amount to “promoting the gay agenda, that is, promoting politics, and it is just inappropriate.”

He further claimed that the Girl Scouts organization, which has no ban on LGBT participants, “is being run by lesbians and promoting Planned Parenthood, it’s just been really politicized and sexualized in a way that is inappropriate for children.”

OnMyHonor.net, which began operating last month, bills itself as “a coalition of concerned Boy Scouts of America (BSA) members who affirm Scouting’s timeless values and will work to keep open homosexuality out of the Boy Scouts.” The BSA is scheduled to reconsider its gay ban in May.

Right Wing Watch has audio of Stemberger’s interview.