The governor of
Texas argues in a new book that attacks on the Boy Scouts
are the latest front in a ''culture war'' and the moral
struggle for the country's future.
Gov. Rick Perry
was scheduled to be in New York City on Wednesday to
launch a book tour promoting On My Honor: Why the
American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For.
Perry said his
support of the Boy Scouts is ''intensely personal'' in a
telephone interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday.
''Scouting teaches young men the responsibilities of
freedom; it teaches them how to be leaders. It
instills character; it instills courage,'' he said.
The book extols
the virtues of the Boy Scouts and its impact on Perry as
he was growing up in rural Paint Creek. ''Life revolved
around school, church, and -- for most boys -- the Boy
Scouts,'' Perry wrote. He eventually achieved the
Scouts' highest honor, Eagle Scout, as would his son,
Griffin, years later. Perry often wears his Eagle Scout
lapel pin.
The book also
traces a 30-year history of litigation involving the Scouts
-- most of which they won -- which Perry considers an attack
on traditional values and faith in God.
Perry, a
Republican, targets the American Civil Liberties Union as
the primary force behind a leftist push to accept
homosexuality and challenge the Scouts' duty to God.
''The ACLU and its allies seemed determined to force
the Boy Scouts to bend to their version of what is right and
wrong,'' he writes.
If intimidation
and the threat of lawsuits succeed, Perry writes, ''the
culture war will be lost before we know it. If that happens,
we will find ourselves living in a world where moral
relativism reigns and individualism runs amok.''
Several officials
with the ACLU said they are aware of Perry's book but
have not read it. ''Our issues aren't with the Boy Scouts
per se, but they are with issues of tolerance in
general,'' said Lisa Graybill of the ACLU of Texas.
On homosexuality,
Perry says he is tolerant of gays he knows: ''I believe
in valuing their lives like any other, as our God in Heaven
does,'' and is open to the idea that sexual preference
may be genetic. But he says any discussion of sex --
heterosexual or homosexual -- has no place in
scouting.
''Most Americans
have a live-and-let-live view about homosexuality,''
Perry writes. ''Scouting's leaders have the same tolerant
view, but they do not believe that someone whose
personal agenda is to make an open issue of his sexual
orientation should be a Scout leader. Scouting is not
about sex, but about building character.... The Boy Scouts
is not the proper intersection for a debate over
sexual preference.''
Perry wrote the
book last year with Eric Bearse, his former
communications director who left the governor's office to
start his own consulting firm. The two have worked
together since Bearse joined Perry's campaign for
lieutenant governor in 1998.
On My Honor is published by Stroud & Hall
of Macon, Ga., which specializes in books from a
conservative viewpoint. Stroud & Hall would not
release how many of the books are in print. All net
proceeds go to the Boy Scouts of America. (Jim Vertuno, AP)
