I’ve been wanting to write about the Boy Scouts and all the recent controversy surrounding their near and perhaps still inevitable collapse before the gay rights steamroller, but haven’t yet found the time.

Over at Public Discourse, though, Anthony Esolen (who also writes for Touchstone) writes with righteous anger about another Boy Scout controversy – this time in Philadelphia. He uses a conflict between the city fathers and the Boy Scouts as a lead-in to his commentary, which describes how progressive sensibilities have contributed to the destruction of the lives of young men in that city. Esolen’s article is entitled appropriately “The Least of These.” But when I finished reading it, the title that came to my mind is the one I’ve used for this post.

In Matt. 7:9, we read where Jesus asked in his sermon on the mountain, “Or what man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone?” As Esolen’s moving piece shows, the progressives who claim to care so much about the poor and downtrodden and who want the government to act in loco parentis for us all, have truly given these young boys and men a stone instead of the life-giving bread they so desperately need.