On the recordJuly 28, 2010
Well, to follow up on some of the numbers that my friend, Mr. Thompson, was quoting: Total youth served in the hundred years of scouting here in the United States, 114,304,329; adult volunteers, 33,364,261; total number of merit badges, over 117 million. And those merit badges don't just represent little pieces of fabric with stitching on them. They represent a great deal of work, skills attained, knowledge attained, things that will help throughout life in the issues that come in the future. Now, I do feel we need to touch on this briefly because Boy Scouting has been under attack. There have been groups that have been trying to eliminate and have successfully eliminated, like in San Francisco. For years, there have been efforts to restrict scouting from enjoying the parks that other groups might enjoy. There are efforts in Congress on a regular basis to try to hurt the scouting effort. And it all boils down to this one thing about scouting. Despite the oath that scouts take, the Scout Law, scouting has chosen to stay faithful to religious tenets that man represented as the only full face of all the greatest lawgivers in this room. Every one of them has a side profile except the one in the middle who's considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. That's Moses. And one of the laws that Moses said were given to him that he gave was thou shalt not commit adultery. In other words, you shall not have sex, sexual relations, outside the marriage of a man and a woman.
