Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has warned of an exodus if the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) drops its ban on gay scouts and leaders.

The BSA's national board will consider ending the ban and allowing local chapters to decide the issue at its regularly scheduled meeting, which begins Monday.

(Related: Boy Scouts mull ending gay ban.)

Santorum called on the BSA not to drop its ban in an op-ed titled Stop the War on Scouts.

The vote “is a challenge to the Scouts' very nature and is another example of the left attempting to remove God from all areas of public life,” Santorum wrote.

A change in the policy would prompt an exodus as faith-based individuals and church hosts exit the organization to “pursue alternative ways to continue to invest in the development of their young men's character, leaving the Scouts hollowed out at its core.”

“Scouting prepares boys and teenagers to be virtuous men in a world that desperately needs men who are brave enough to stand up for those principles, to live by the moral code of the Scout Oath and Law and hold themselves to that standard – whether at the schoolyard or in the boardroom. Scouting may not survive this transformation of American society, but for the sake of the average boy in America, I hope the board of the Scouts doesn't have its fingerprints on the murder weapon,” Santorum concluded.

(Related: Father of gay scout Ryan Andresen prays for Boy Scouts policy change.)