Outliers

I was talking with some friends who brought up the possibility that the church might sever its ties to scouting.  They talked as if there were an organized push to attack the church.  Personally, I think they have been reading too many posts by uber-conservative friends who share articles employing scare-tactics to push an agenda.  There is not some big anti-religious force behind the so-called gay agenda.  I know many people who have gay orientations and none of them have any designs to attack religion.  I did make an attempt to redirect their fears in a more healthy direction.  I think their fears are largely unfounded.

But there is a kernel of truth in their fears.  There are those who are trying to attack religion, and the LDS church in particular.  Once things settle down and normalize, there will be a few people, outliers from the main body of opinion, who will unite with those who attack faith and try to do the precise things that my friends fear, and which mainline opinion says will not happen.  In particular, will the gay marriage ruling be used to attack the church?  Of course it will be.  It's only a matter of time before some outlier from normal mainline opinion tries to use the ruling as grounds to attack the church legally.  Most judges would dismiss such attacks as frivolous, because they are.  But there will be a judge somewhere that rules against the church and the issue will escalate.  My hope is that we will have a reasonable enough legal establishment to prevent such attacks from progressing far.

Some day that may change, though.  But I don't think that day is imminent.