According to Chuck Norris, President Barack Obama and his administration are working behind the scenes to create a "pro-gay Boy Scouts of America."
On Tuesday, the action star published an article on AmmoLand.com, a shooting sports news site, accusing the Obama administration of paying Scouts' national board member, James Turley (who is the retiring global chairman and CEO of accounting firm Ernst & Young), to effect change in the organization, which has banned gay Scout leaders and Scouts.
Turley recently said that he would "work from within" the board to overturn the policy, but as Norris asked, "Is Turley working on his own initiative, or has the White House prodded him with perks and favors? Is it a coincidence that Turley came out swinging against the BSA's century-old policy to ban gays from leadership and that he has such close affiliations with the pro-gay Obama administration?"
He went on to list Turley's associations with the current president and his administration (Turley has attended state dinners hosted by the president; he was nominated to the president's Export Council, for example) and noted that Turley himself "just came out of the closet in his position against the BSA's position."
Norris noted that the BSA is "as integral a part of American life and culture as hot dogs, baseball and Grandma's apple pie."
This is hardly Norris' first swipe at the Obama administration. In 2010, he wrote a column for World Net Daily criticizing an executive order regarding Interpol, claiming that Obama signed the order so he can hide records on the war on terror from the public.
Norris posted a clarification of his comments on Facebook Wednesday evening: "I was not criticizing the gay community," he wrote. "What I tried to convey in my article is that no private organization operating within the bounds of the law should be forced to change its principles and traditions based on outside pressure.... (The BSA) should be able to continue to live by traditions that have worked and served the organization well for a century."
The issue of gay members and leaders in the Boy Scouts of America came to a head in 2000, when the Supreme Court ruled that since the BSA was a private organization, it could restrict its membership. But in April of this year, a resolution that would permit individual units to accept gays as leaders was presented at the May Scouts national meeting, along with a petition from Change.org with over 275,000 names protesting the removal of a lesbian den mother.
GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) released its own statement commenting on Norris' article, noting: "Chuck Norris should talk to Mitt Romney, who Norris endorsed for President and who has said on the record that all Americans should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts of America regardless of sexual orientation.... Celebrities who support gay Americans are enjoying popular careers while Chuck Norris appears to be a fame-hungry has-been with poor research skills."
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