You might have seen that Bob Gates, the former defense secretary who now leads the Boy Scouts of America, this week told the organization that they’re going to have to accept gay Scoutmasters. You might have assumed that this was an example of a weak-kneed Republican establishment figure Growing In Office, i.e., going wobbly in the face of progressive attacks. In fact, Allahpundit points out, Gates was simply being realistic:

If you glance at the headlines, you might think this was a by now familiar I’ve-searched-my-conscience statement of moral “evolution” by a political figure. Nope. Gates isn’t trying to persuade here. He’s warning BSA officials in fairly dire terms: The courts are coming for us. We either change our policy now, “voluntarily,” and hopefully retain some modicum of control over our membership standards or we continue to resist, watch Scouting troops break away in protest or be shut down as punishment by the national organization, and have some judge somewhere ultimate decide that the BSA’s “duty to God” is incompatible with modern antidiscrimination law. Just because the Scouts won the first fight on this subject in court doesn’t mean they’ll win the rematch, especially when gay rights has all the momentum among federal judges. (It has momentum within the BSA too. Two years ago, the organization voted to allow gay Scouts, although the ban on gay Scout leaders remains.) Gates’s solution: Let each troop sponsor set its own standards. If religious sponsors like churches want to maintain the ban on gay Scout leaders, they can. If non-religious sponsors want to allow gay leaders, they can. It’s a federalist-type solution at a moment when the Supreme Court is poised to blow up federalism on gay marriage.

Below, I’ve pasted in video of Gates’s speech. You really need to watch it from the 8:45 point. His tone says it all. Allahpundit’s summary is accurate, but you would do well to listen and watch Gates say it. Note well the role that the Indiana RFRA fallout had in shaking Gates up. Allahpundit is also correct, I think, to doubt Gates’s federalist-type solution. Local chapters that want to adhere to the old standard will just find themselves sued too.

Watch Gates level with his people. This is the kind of conversation that all kinds of churches and socially conservative organizations are going to have to start having right now. (The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod leadership has just put out a very dire letter to its pastors on the topic.) The courts really are coming for you too.