By Baptist Message Staff ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM)—The Boy Scouts of America have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization and as a result will not be liable for keeping their pledge to hold churches harmless against sexual abuse lawsuits that may be filed in the future for actions in the past. Consequently, churches need to file a “placeholder claim” with the courts by Nov. 16 in order to have protection against any claims arising from any relationship with the Boy Scouts of America – whether having chartered a troop or merely hosted one and regardless if that troop is still active or not. “For people who don’t notify the court that they have a claim by the deadline of Nov. 16, there may not be any coverage,” Jaime Jordan told Baptist Press. Jordan’s firm, Guenther, Jordan & Price serves as general counsel to the Southern Baptist Convention. “I advise churches, if they have now or have ever had a Boy Scout troop, that they should contact legal counsel to see if they need to file a prospective claim before Nov. 16,” Jordan urged. COURT: District of Delaware CASE NO.: 20-10343 PHONE: (866) 907-2721 WEBSITE: www.OfficialBSAclaims BAR DATE: Nov. 16, 2020 (5 p.m. Eastern) … [Read more...]

By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (LBM) – While U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Webster’s Dictionary were assailing Judge Amy Coney Barrett and Americans’ sensibilities about the notion of “sexual preference,” they ignored the results of one of the largest research efforts ever about homosexual behavior. The international study (published a year ago), led by researchers from Harvard and MIT, looked at the genomes of nearly 500,000 people in the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden and concluded that any genetic influence on homosexual behavior was minimal and hardly deterministic. Of particular interest, they concluded that between 8 - 25 percent of homosexual behavior had a small but inconsistent influence from five genetic variants, and conceded that these also related to behaviors “such as smoking, cannabis use, risk-taking, and the personality trait ‘openness to experience’” as well as “sexual behavior, attraction, identity, and fantasies.” Likewise, some of these indicators also were “genetically correlated with several psychiatric or mental health traits” such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The researchers concluded that in aggregate these genetic … [Read more...]