Mormon decision is blow to Boy Scouts
For more than a century, the Mormon church has had a close association with the Boy Scouts of America. For many Mormons, putting on a uniform and joining a troop has become a rite of passage. The church, which covers the cost for congregations, is the biggest sponsor of troops in the nation.
The two organizations have nurtured millions of boys through closely aligned values of faith, leadership and service to one’s community.
That’s why we’re troubled that the church has decided to pull as many as 185,000 older teens from the Irvingbased organization to start its own scouting-like program, a more simplified one more tailored to Mormons ages 14 to 18. (About 300,000 younger boys will remain in Scouts while the new program is being developed.)
Officials insist that the move wasn’t triggered by the Boy Scouts’ wise decision to allow gay troop leaders or transgender males. But it comes just two years after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said it was “deeply troubled” by the troop leader decision and considered pulling out then.
To most observers and a leading Mormon scholar, it’s clear that the policy on gays contributed to the split. The church teaches that homosexuality is a sin.
We respect the Mormon church’s right to instill values in young people in the ways it deems best. But we worry that this sends a bad message all the way around, especially to young Mormon boys. If they are gay, it says they are to be shunned. And if they’re not, it says it’s OK to shun those who are.
Mideast peace likely too imposing for Trump
Donald Trump won the presidency thanks to a series of cocky, what-me-worry promises to solve seemingly intractable problems using his supposedly superior art-ofthe-deal negotiating skills.
Recently, he made another such promise. After meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, he vowed flippantly to bring the century-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians to an end, adding that the problem is “something that, I think, is frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”
By all means, Trump should try his hand at Middle East peacemaking. Perhaps his Chauncey Gardiner-type naivete — and the fact that he is apparently unburdened by any historical or political knowledge of the subject — will give him some bizarre advantages that are not available to more sophisticated students of the conflict.
Any agreement between Palestinians and Israelis must overcome more than 100 years of hatred and mistrust, built on a long history of killings, terror, dispossession, imprisonment and broken promises.
Israel’s most generous offer ever, made in the final days of the Clinton administration, didn’t meet the Palestinian demand for an independent state along the lines that existed before the 1967 war. Palestinian and Israeli leaders must wrestle not only with each other, but with hard-liners on their own side who have already proved their willingness to scuttle any agreement that relies (as any agreement must) on compromise.
Peace is not impossible. But like virtually all the issues that reach the Oval Office, it is not easy either. Is Trump up for it? His glib, uninformed pronouncements are not encouraging.