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Secretary of State Rex TillersonMichael Wuertenberg / World Economic Forum

December 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – President-elect Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, pushed as former Boy Scouts of America national president for the Scouts to accept openly homosexual boy members—a capitulation that led millions of Americans to abandon or question their support of the youth organization.

The BSA’s embrace of homosexuality was viewed by social conservatives as contradicting the organization’s historic Scout Oath for boys to be “morally straight” and “do my duty to God,” and honor the Scout Law to be “reverent.”

The pro-homosexual shift outraged social conservatives and led to the formation of a number of new alternatives to the Scouts, such as Trail Life USA, which is “unapologetically” Christian in its core values.

Tillerson, an Eagle Scout, served as National President of the Scouts from 2010-2012, but reportedly pushed for the pro-homosexual policy while serving on the BSA’s national executive board in 2013, when the Irving, Texas-based organization—in a national vote of its councils—approved the policy allowing openly homosexual members.

The new policy, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2014, reads: “No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” A subsequent policy change last year allowed openly homosexual adult men to be Scoutmasters, while allowing local Scout Councils to opt out and set standards according to their moral beliefs.

Tillerson is quoted in the BSA’s Scouting magazine as responding to the vote allowing homosexual Scouts as follows:

Regardless of where you were on this decision, it’s also very normal for people to feel like there are winners or losers. I’m here to tell you that’s not true. … There are neither winners nor losers. What’s left after we made the decision to change is the mission, and the mission has not changed.

Conservative writer and former Boy Scout Timothy Birdnow, in an article today titled, “Tillerson’s Assault on the Scout,” responded to the Exxon executive’s remarks:

So resistance to change is tied not to a moral absolute, but rather to a lack of understanding, and there are no ‘winners or losers.’  The boys lost, but Tillerson fails to see it.

How is opening an organization that involves young boys in close proximity to open homosexuals in the former's best interest?  Will Tillerson next seek to recruit hookers for them?  These are boys in their early teenage years, after all, and as such, one must question their self-identification as homosexual.  If they do fall into that category, the purpose of an organization like the Boy Scouts is to lead boys away from such things.

The Boy Scouts’ shift toward homosexual advocacy was especially bitter for American pro-family advocates since the Scouts—in the 2000 BSA vs. Dale case–had already won their right through the U.S. Supreme Court not to hire adult homosexuals, based on their First Amendment freedom to live by their own moral code.

The BSA has had a problem with sexual predators as homosexual Scoutmasters—exposed through a lawsuit that forced the release of a portion of the BSA’s so-called “perversion files.”

Exxon goes “gay”

Tillerson's corporation, Exxon-Mobil, initially resisted adopting broad homosexuality- and transgender-affirming policies advocated by LGBT activists. This led liberal “gay” groups like Human Rights Campaign to target Exxon-Mobil for protests.

Thus Exxon became a part of the corporate “culture wars” as conservatives would go out of their way to buy the politically incorrect company’s gas, while homosexual activists and their liberal allies would consciously avoid Exxon stations.

However, Exxon now has an 85 percent ranking on HRC’s 2017 “Corporate Equality Index,” the organization’s self-serving guide for scoring major corporations on LGBTQ issues and philanthropy. That score is up from 25 percent in 2013.

Human Rights Campaign charged that Exxon-Mobil shifted its homosexual-related policies only to become eligible for federal contracts–after President Obama issued an executive order mandating that the federal government only do business with contractors that have explicit pro-LGBTQ nondiscrimination policies.