I see Mistermix has already covered this, but I just want to make sure I understand what the Boy Scouts are proposing. They are fine with gay people in their ranks until they are eagle scouts at 18, and then they kick them out because they become really, really, gay?
Reader Interactions
86Comments
Comments are closed.
RoonieRoo
That is what it sounds like to me. It is as nuts as it sounds.
BD of MN
You can “be” the ghey, you just can’t “teach” the ghey…
Baud
Gay youth are fixable. Gay adults are predators. Or something like that.
muddy
Everyone knows that no one has sex until they are of age, so 18 is where you have to start to worry.
Keith G
It is really stupid and short sighted, but I think that this is is one of those things that if implemented will be going away a lot sooner than later.
Redshift
I suspect the “logic” is that discriminating against kids has more emotional punch than discriminating against gay adults, so they think this will get anti-bigot critics off their backs without getting too much backlash from the bigots.
Baud
@Keith G:
Agreed.
scav
It all makes perfect sense if you’ve a Black Belt in Intellectual Yoga.
state22
Take one thing at a time.
So: don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
One thing I didn’t used to understand about the Boy Scouts organization is how many of the troops are recruited from active church goers and are based in churches. That means that to implement the non-discrimination policy also affects churches and church administrations. It is a big deal.
Also, too, our African-American neighbors didn’t reject the Voting Rights Act even though it didn’t address housing discrimination or employment discrimination.
People can accept positive change and still advocate for additional improvements.
JWL
It’s the same mentality that crafted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
geg6
@Keith G:
Yup, that’s what I think, too. Not to mention that individual councils can do what they want if they wish. They just don’t need to discuss the whole thing with national if they have great leaders who just happen to be gay. Some do that already.
Baud
@state22:
???
cbear
I believe you’re right, John—although there’s probably a loophole for those scouts that earn the Lindsey Graham/Marcus Bachmann Merit Badge. In which case, it’s all good.
Chris
@Baud:
I think that’s as close to a rational piece of reasoning as there is to explain this.
The bigger explanation, I suppose, is that they were trying to find a way to placate the growing gay rights consensus in the country while still showing the bigots that they weren’t giving in ENTIRELY.
Mudge
Or, to paraphrase from “Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead” from the Wizard of Oz, “undeniably and reliably gay”.
Journeywoman
Duh – it’s because adult gays are where pedophiles come from. Haven’t you been paying attention?
Keith
Shorter Boy Scouts: “No tops”
Elizabelle
@state22:
Something I never realized was how Christian the Boy Scouts were (or are).
Explained to me by a Jewish friend, when I asked why his mom sent him away to camp every summer, and why there were so many camps advertised to New Yorkers.
He said he was not welcome in the Boy Scouts. (This would have been the 1960s.)
Had never thought about that. All I remember from Girl Scouts is tye-dying stuff and that it rained every single time we ever went camping.
Citizen Alan
You cannot be a “Boy Scout” after 18, anyway, although there is something I’m not terribly familiar with called “Venturing” that extends up to 21. What this policy says is that they will allow openly gay kids to participate in Scouting activities but will not accept openly gay volunteers working as Scout Masters or in other capacities. Which, yes, is still stupid homophobic bigotry. But I still say it’s a great improvement over the prior status quo. Because the only way homophobia is going to go away is if homophobes actually spend time interacting with gays and finally accept that they’re not “lustful cock monsters” or whatever. Membership in scouting is driven primarily by sectarian religions (I went to church for the first time in a year to see my nephew get his Eagle Scout badge). It can only be a positive if kids raised in those religious environments interact with gay kids socially and can develop friendships rather than paranoid fears. I am confident that after a few years of allowing gay scouts, the leadership of BSA will realize how counterproductive it is to shun kids who have been a credit to the organization once they turn 18.
Gex
This is two things for them:
1) A pathetic attempt to derail the CA bill that will withdraw taxpayer funds from the Scouts.
2) A very effective subtle tactic used to intimate that gays are a danger to children.
They are trying to present both sides at the same time. It will likely alienate both sides at the same time.
Adapt or die, BSA. You can’t keep appeasing the old haters AND recruiting from young allies.
ETA: Upon rereading this, I am fully aware that I shouldn’t call it a pathetic attempt. This is the sort of bullshit that Americans consider a reasonable compromise. IOW, they’ll probably keep their tax dollars.
Pooh
The classic trying to make everyone happy solution that just pisses everyone off
Gex
And state22: We can let them do whatever they want at whatever pace they want. We can also stop using taxpayer funds to do what they do. That is what they are responding to, so instead of just being happy that they are doing a little bit to fix the problem in response to our pressure, how about we ask them to address the entire problem?
Mustang Bobby
On another point, anti-gay Scout supporters say that a lot of organizations such as the Mormons, the Catholics, and the hard-core evangelical churches that sponsor Scout troops will abandon Scouting if the ban is lifted. Really? Fine. It’s better that the membership falls than let kids be exposed to the entrenched bigotry and homophobia that emanates from organizations such as those religious institutions. I’m pretty sure that some groups that were put off from supporting the Scouts would welcome them once they make it clear that Scouting is for every man and boy, not just the straight ones.
Gustopher
It makes perfect sense. They believe that gays are interested in children. But, you can’t really be a pedophile until you turn 18 and are no longer a child yourself.
Stupid, ignorant, and fucked up, but there’s a logic to it.
Warren Terra
@muddy:
This.
Also note that even if they fix this, the Scouts will remain an anti-Atheist organization; also, I think, formally anti-Polytheist, and more-or-less Christian-specific.
Ben Franklin
“CISPA creates the necessary flexibility for businesses to share security information without fear of legal or regulatory liability,” said Ken Wasch, president of the Software & Information Industry Assn., in a statement. “Specifically, CISPA would protect companies and organizations that share threat and vulnerability information with the government from legal liability and the risk of lawsuits, while also providing a critical exemption from antitrust laws that currently discourage information exchanges between private companies.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-house-passes-cispa-20130417,0,7501025.story
House passes…Senate?….Obama?
We were pretty preoccupied with Boston to notice.
Bob In Portland
Why should anybody be a boy scout when he’s eighteen? He should be a man scout.
Davis X. Machina
@Mustang Bobby: There have always been Scouting analogues for those who find the BSA dangerously liberal.
Royal Rangers.
Reader K
I blame Obama
Mustang Bobby
@Davis X. Machina: “Royal Rangers” sounds gayer than pink shoes just by the name alone.
Gin & Tonic
@Warren Terra: Anti-atheist, yes, but Christian-specific, not necessarily. I worked a while back with some Scout leaders from the Boston-area Vietnamese community, who had troops that were 100% ethnically Vietnamese (Buddhist, I’m pretty sure) and ran their activities in Vietnamese. The BSA is in many cases more accepting of difference than a lot of people who haven’t interacted with it at the local level imagine. National is pretty much fundies and Mormons, but at the local level in more tolerant areas, it’s a lot more diverse.
Unsympathetic
I’m an Eagle Scout, a member of a troop that pumped out Eagles at a rate 10 times higher than any other troop in the county. We knew what worked – motivating kids, involving adults, the whole thing.
This entire conversation is ridiculous and disgraceful.. none of this shit matters a damn. The purpose of scouting is to enjoy the outdoors and maybe have something else to do on a Monday night. Anything else is gravy.
Besides, every kid quits scouts in sophomore year of highschool anyway as it’s more fun to date.
pacem appellant
Still no atheists allowed in the Scouts at any level. To be fair, the LGBT activists have phenomenal outreach, PR, and positive advertising. Atheists can’t even agree on a name or umbrella term, much less get off our godless asses to change the scouts.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Fuck the boy scouts. If they announced tomorrow that being gay was a requirement for membership, they’d still be a racist, religiously bigoted organization of assholes. The entire “movement” is founded on the concept that it’s somehow character-building for a bunch of fat, white, middle-class twits to spend their weekends putting on Native American minstrel shows. That “order of the arrow” crap consists of parodies of some of the most sacred rituals in Native American religious traditions, performed by clueless bigots. It’s like the Nazis organizing a Yeshiva for Hitler Youth. I’ve always wanted to attend a “jamboree” dressed like a Catholic priest and hand out ‘Nilla Wafers for communion. Why not? If they can shit all over my religious traditions for the sake of their “civic organization”, why can’t I do the same for theirs?
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
Exactly what I was saying above. It’s always been that way. Individual councils will take on the values of the places where they are. My older brothers’ scout troops had no religious overtones, way back in the late 50s and early 60s.
The Girl Scouts are just so much better as an organization, though. Totally inclusive, very diverse, and no religious overtones at the national level. Individual troops or councils may be more religious than others, probably based on geography, but no pressure to discriminate from national.
Davis X. Machina
@Gin & Tonic: I remember as a kid 40+ years ago looking at the range of equivalents to the Ad Altare Dei my brothers worked for. There were Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Jewish, because I’d seen those on Scoutns, based on troops locally a couple of other Protestant programs, but also IIRC, Mormon and Buddhist and possibly Moslem.
So theist, yeah.
Todd
OT mostly, but after looking at the Deadspin footage of the Fenway and TD observances, I’m struck at the differences in reactions between 9/12 and now. Then, everything was a little fearful and a lot sappy. Now, things are more robust,responses more “kiss my ass” (Ortiz’ public f-bomb was an example.
I remember being puzzled by the optics of Congress singing that shitty, useless, smarmy “God Bless America” (with many, particularly the women, looking confused as to why they were singing it) when the far better choice would have been “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Shit, if the wingnuts wanted a paen to their petulant sky toddler, the Battle Hymn was by far the more preferable vehicle – filled with resolve. Instead, they chose wimpy, weak, saccharine begging, set to a tune only some candy assed attendee of a prosperity gospel church could love – as if the only way out would be if the sky toddler deemed us worthy.
We all got fucking played then, and I’m pissed.
Todd
@Unsympathetic:
The availability of cars, girls, beer and opportunities for random acts of vandalism does seem to impact whether a kid is willing to stay in the organization.
It didn’t help that most girls 14 and up never seemed impressed by Boy Scout uniforms.
aimai
I think this will turn out to be a better compromise than you all think–logically it works like this: kids won’t be thrown out of scouting because they are gay and as they age up and naturally become leaders in their troops and wish to take over as leaders of their children’s troops they will have a natural constituency right inside of scouting to push for a formal change. The entire rule against having gay parents running a scout troop or gay former scouts returning as scout leaders will simply fall, absurdly, within about five years. It just won’t make sense anymore to a majority of the individual scouting communities. Its much, much, harder to make the case that “Bobby” or “Mark” who you’ve been scouting with for ever shouldn’t bring his husband and run the scouting troop for their child.
Failure of the ban is built into the new rule. I think its going to be like equal marriage: scary for a year then everyone will shrug, even people who thought it was a hill to die on, and everyone will move on.
pacem appellant
@Todd: That is why I made sure to get my Eagle Scout by 16th birthday, which at the time in CA was when one could get a license to drive. I never set foot in the scouts den again after that.
Heywood J.
I honestly did not realize that the Boy Scouts were still a thing. Is it for kids who aren’t allowed to own XBoxes or what?
Jennifer
@Mustang Bobby: The Butt Pirates are even gayer than the Royal Rangers.
Seriously though, when all the anti-gay Scout stuff erupted years ago, the thought I kept returning to was “what are they worried about? That if they let gay kids participate, they’re going to have to introduce a new merit badge for cocksucking?” And then I would laugh out loud at imagining what that badge would look like…two stick figures, one standing, one kneeling….
White Trash Liberal
@Mudge:
As parade emcee I must admit I thoroughly examined him and he is not just merely gay, he’s really most sincerely gay
Todd
@pacem appellant:
I grew up urban, in a working class Catholic neighborhood. We were awash in cars and girls and beer and weed. Everybody had older siblings with cars that we’d all pile into and there were opportunities for occasional unlicensed joyriding.
We were lost to scouting by age 14.
Heywood J.
@Jennifer: You may want to skip the bake sale fundraiser for the Order of the Reach-around….
Chris
@Todd:
That made me laugh.
MikeBoyScout
“They are fine with gay people in their ranks until they are eagle scouts at 18, and then they kick them out”
The reason that “BoyScout” is in my screen name is because my time as a Scout gave me so much.
My Scout leader, a man who was important to me as my father, had two sons. Both became Eagle Scouts.
The oldest of the 2 sons was an active Scout leader, volunteering his time and donating his money, just like his father had, until he came out to his family about 15 years ago. Because of the Scout rules, he left Scouting.
The Troop he was affiliated with and which depended upon his support folded 2 years later.
And while I’ll buy a metric fk ton any and every time of whatever any Scout is selling to raise money, I have not contributed to BSA for many, many years.
BSA is anathema to me.
dewzke
@Todd: http://network.yardbarker.com/all_sports/article_external/david_ortiz_drops_f_bomb_during_boston_marathon_ceremony_video/13444192
Mustang Bobby
@Jennifer: I had a number of friends in Scouting back in the 1960’s when I was of that age (I dropped out after Cub Scouts). One guy told me he learned more about the techniques of gay sex on one canoe trip down the Pine River in Michigan than he did at all the gay bars he went to in Minneapolis in the 70’s.
? Martin
@Baud:
Yep. Since it doesn’t look like they’re getting rid of the ban on atheists and unitarians, that’s pretty much it. They can still lay on the Jesus and fix these kids, but the gay leaders are obviously only there to diddle the yoots.
Waiting for the ‘Wanna fuck girls’ merit badge to arrive soon after this decision.
Schlemizel
@JWL:
Thats it exactly. Designed to win over just enough of the middle ground to buy time for the real thing. Its that moral arc of history bending ever so slowly. We still need to point and laugh but realize its probably the best we can hope for at the moment
Morzer
I am just surprised that the Scouts haven’t demanded that all upstanding young lads wear a Newt Gingrich Chastity Belt to restrain their lustful cock-monster urges.
Peter
Whenever this conversation starts up I’m always struck by how completely different Scouting is in the US as opposed to Canada.
? Martin
@MikeBoyScout: I was barred from a leadership position because I refused to take the pledge – but I still helped out a lot. My son was kicked out when he refused. We stopped participating at that point and the troop similarly folded.
Scouting is in the same kind of bind with LDS as the GOP is with the tea party. Scouts are enormously dependent on LDS, who require their boys to go through scouts. That’s over 1/3 of their enrollment now, most of their leadership, and most of their money. And LDS standards are driving out everyone else. They’re going to be left as an LDS exclusive organization on their current trajectory. If they change, they run the risk of LDS leaving and forming their own organization, and then they’re basically dead – no money, no leadership, and probably half of their enrollment gone (they’ll take non LDS kids out when they shut troops down) – until everyone else comes back, which will happen but will take time.
Girl Scouts never got in that situation, in part because their leadership didn’t give into the demands, and in part because most of these religious groups don’t want strong independent women, they want subservient ones, and girl scouts doesn’t do that prairie muffin shit.
MikeBoyScout
@52 Peter: Quite frankly, Canada (sans TransCanada) is everything the USA could have been, but never quite made it.
Davis X. Machina
@? Martin: Hmn…. that’s interesting, and explanatory.
I haven’t written a recommendation for an Eagle Scout candidate who wasn’t LDS in maybe 12-15 years… whereas 25-30 years ago that wasn’t the case.
? Martin
@aimai:
But scouts has been chock full of gay scouts for ages. They just stayed in the closet. So there’s really no shortage of gay eagle scouts out there to run troops (I personally know three gay eagle scouts). The problem is that when you come back to run the troop it’s a lot harder to sneak that by, and most scouts nearing the point of eagle (and certainly after) have a moral objection to hiding their orientation.
So this doesn’t really change very much at all.
currants
@muddy: “Everyone knows that no one has sex until they are of age, so 18 is where you have to start to worry.”
Bingo!
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: Girl Scouts is a 100% secular organization.
What pisses me off about the LDS response is that it’s more of the passive-aggressive shit. They are the nicest people to your face and will never argue with you, but will then hate the fuck out of you. I mean, the Westboro people are scum, but they’re not duplicitous about their scumminess like the LDS.
This is all in an effort to placate them after the Prop 8 thing. Can’t completely allow in the LGBTs because then they TOTALLY lose face.
Redshift
@Todd: But the Battle Hymn of the Republic is an anti-Confederate Union song, so it would probably never occur to wingnut leaders that it might be appropriate. And if it did occur to them, they’d surely know that a good portion of the wingnut base would go apeshit.
Pro-American songs and sloganeering are super, as long as they don’t offend people who revere those who rebelled against America.
Morzer
@Redshift:
I’d love to see the Democrats mandate that Congress sing John Brown’s Body at the start of the day’s business. Now that would twist a few wingnut tails good and proper.
“They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on….”
Bobby Thomson
@? Martin: There is no ban on Unitarians. No, really. Just not believing. Buddhists, Unitarians, Moslems, Sikhs, all can join. The ban is only on atheists.
Stuck in Brownbackistan
I’m a long-time BSA volunteer, and there are layers upon layers of stuff going on here.
The (overpaid) National professionals in Irving, Texas know they are on the wrong side of history with this, but they’ve spent the last 25 years selling “timeless values” to parents of a certain stripe. The volunteers who currently make the program go at the ground level are heavily of that generation, and there are rumblings that a whole lot of them will walk (taking their boys with them) if the BSA makes a change they can’t live with.
So, with the professionals being worried about their salaries in the short term, they’ve reached a position that won’t make clueless suburban moms worry about those “scary gay adults turning their boys gay” out in the woods.
The proposal that was floated two months ago was a “local option” thing for each unit, and I suspect the BSA will get there in another five years. But the current National leadership has failed, yet again, to live up to the “Brave” point of the Scout Law.
I’ve put 10 years into the BSA. My son is turning 18, and my commitment will be reduced. It’s been worthwhile, but I’m tired of having to make excuses in my head for some of the Neanderthals I deal with on a regular basis.
OmerosPeanut
Because it’s legal once they turn 18. The Scouts can pretend there is no GAY SEX going on in the under-18 crowd.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
This. Besides, have you ever read the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic? They sound like they were written with some chemical assistance, and not the kind of thing that people would want to be heard singing today.
Chris
@Suzanne:
Always wondered about that. Much as the regular conservatives spewing bile every day are assholes, the LDS repressed-anger thing just CAN’T be emotionally healthy.
Schlemizel
@pacem appellant:
This will come as a great shock to my atheist son who enjoyed the hell out of his scouting experience.
The truth is local troops can, and often do, ignore the national rules. The troop my son joined was run out of a church but the troop made no requirement for religion of any kind. The ‘prayers’ they offered were so generic there was no mention of any kind of god. At large scout gatherings I saw a range from “you really have to be X to be one of us” to the laid back operations.
Schlemizel
@pacem appellant:
You could never have set foot in a scout den to begin with unless you meant Cub and 16 would be way too old for that anyway. Boy Scouts has never had ‘dens’
pacem appellant
@Schlemizel: True, were were pretty laid back as far as troops went. But no atheists were technically allowed about the troop level. C.f. Darryl Lambert.
@Schlemizel: My bad. I meant hall. The church meeting hall where we met felt very den-ish and even though I’m an Eagle Scout, I was never keen on staying up on all the scout lingo since leaving all that behind.
Violet
This is a really dumb decision by the Boy Scouts, but at least it’s a step forward. At some point they’ll change the rules to allow gay adults to be troop leaders. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
patroclus
@? Martin: Well, I’m a gay Eagle Scout, but Scouting was much different back in the 1970’s when I was in it. We had plenty of gay Scouts (albeit somewhat closeted) and even leaders who everyone suspected were gay although it wasn’t really much of an issue. There were no outright bans in our (small) council because they wanted to recruit as many Scouts and leaders as possible – there were plenty of non-religious Scouts and leaders although they wouldn’t have self-described as atheist at the time. My troop was sponsored by a liberal church and there were plenty of non-church sponsors as well – no Mormons whatsoever. I went to Philmont multiple times and Jamborees and am a member of OA and don’t remember any right-wingers of today’s variety although there were certainly oddballs and cranks. It was then much like Canada’s Scouts now.
It’s changed a lot since then. The national organization moved to the Dallas area and absorbed all the right-wingerism there and the focus shifted merely from outdoors activity for city Scouts into a conservative indoctrination group at the national level with varying changes locally. There are still good councils and troops but it will vary from place to place. I have no desire whatsoever to ever get involved again until they change their bigotry and discriminatory policy.
The BSA’s announced change is kind of like various liberal denominations handled the gay pastor issue over the last few decades. At first, there could be no gay pastors; then they could be gay but effectively celibate, then they could be gay/lesbian but only if married (stated as a committed monogamous relationship); now, they can be gay/lesbian with no restrictions. In my church, this fight took 2-3 decades to go through the various steps and was VERY controversial; causing numerous schisms. I suspect the same sort of thing to happen with the Scouts unless they take the full-blown non-bigotry stance right now.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Yup, just like The Ass Pirates of the Caribbean.
/Robot Chicken
Villago Delenda Est
@Gex:
Naturally.
Because they are projecting.
Everything about gay adults “recruiting” kids into the “gay lifestyle” is a projection of Christianist proselytization . It’s how they do it to expand their flock, so they assume the gays do the same thing.
Yutsano
@OmerosPeanut: I am shocked, SHOCKED, that there is teh ghey sex going on in this Scout troop! That seems to be the stance they’re going for here. Oi.
OmerosPeanut
@Yutsano: See, what they should do is only allow unmarried gay scout leaders because no one has sex before marriage.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Suzanne:
Maybe superficially passive, but sneakily aggressive. The LDS quietly dominated the BSA. It took some digging to find their fingerprints on the financing of the opposition to Prop. 8. They don’t go out and wave placards, they plan and they spend.
? Martin
@Bobby Thomson:
Oh, yes there is. In order to pass the religious component, you need to earn your church’s religion award. BSA does not recognize UUA’s award – hasn’t since 1998. So UU scouts cannot complete that component through their church – they need to complete it through a different church. We had that problem with my son. We tried, and he earned his UUA Religion in Life award, but they wouldn’t promote him without an award from a church they recognized.
If you have to attend a different church to be promoted in Boy Scouts, you most certainly are being banned.
Lisa
Maybe it is because 18 is when you become officially fabulous.
NotMax
So now that Morse code is passé, will there be a merit badge for learning kerchief code?
@Elizabelle
Hardly a universal occurrence. Belonged to s troop which met in a synagogue in the NYC area during that decade. Not that I was particularly interested in anything Scout-wise.
Took a 25 minute bus ride to the meetings, and back, at night. Or hitchhiked and saved the bus fare. That’ll give an idea of how long ago it was.
The troop, in retrospect, was there so parents could get the dang kids out of the house one night a week and several weekends a year.
patroclus
The BSA only began their horrific discriminatory policies in 1978 – up until then, they were welcoming of all. The problem was that overall membership peaked in 1971, but they then introduced a new Handbook and new advancement procedures (to modernize in roughly the same way that the British did in 1967) and this resulted in a drop in membership. So, in the late 70’s they adopted a “back to basics” approach, which, perversely, resulted in a right-wing direction. Until then, they, like the World Scout movement, had been tolerant of various attitudes towards the “duty to God” requirement and had no official position on gays at all. They moved the national headquarters to Irving in 1979 and all of this had the effect of drastic conservative move.
They issued the first anti-gay statement in 1978 and began to get serious about it and the religious requirement in the years that followed; culminating in various exclusionary activities in the 1990’s (and litigated in the landmark Dale case which reaffirmed their right to discriminate against gays (and atheists) openly). Since then, it’s been all downhill, with continuing declining membership (-22% since 1999) and ever more entrenched positions. Only in 2010 did they begin to walk back their horrific bigoted positions – after lots of pressure from donors.
It’s good that they’re finally considering what they’ve wrought but they’ve got a long way to go. And the pending proposal is only a baby step.
Chris
@patroclus:
Are there any mainstream institutions that weren’t taken over by conservatives and radicalized into political tools during the seventies?
Think tanks. Businesses. National governments. Religious organizations ranging from the SBC to the Vatican. And, apparently, the Boy Scouts of America.
state22
@Baud:
I am a major beneficiary of every Civil Rights law and advancement from Brown v. Board to Voting Rights to Fair Housing to Title IX to Employment Non-Discrimination to Lilly Ledbetter.
So, while I think that Jim Crow and every other kind of discrimination hurts me – personally – as an American, I don’t pretend that I suffered from each kind of discrimination in the same way that others did. On a daily basis, some prejudices and practices have/are hurting others more than me, some me more than others. Pretending that Jeb Bush Jr. shares the same challenges to success as a non-English-speaking orphan brown child born in the Colonias is as stupid as saying that Baron Trump shares the same challenges as Honey Boo Boo’s cousins.
I think that pretending to a false color-blindness or other-blindness, not recognizing unequal burdens does not allow us to properly celebrate progress.
Yep. Congratulations, you’ve found me out. I don’t think that all of us agitated and bled and died equally for the Voting Rights laws that today benefit all of us equally. Ditto for other Civil Rights laws, like the 19th Amendment. If you’re going to argue that “our neighbors” the women didn’t unequally agitate, bleed, and die to get the vote – I’m thinking you need both factual learning and a sharp empathy lesson. And, teh gays, more of the same…….
Stuck in Brownbackistan
@? Martin:
Wow, that’s horrible. If your son’s troop was doing that, then they were Doing It Wrong. Requiring that a boy earn a religious award can be found nowhere in the advancement guidelines. I’m sure it’s way too late to help, but that should be pushed up through the District/Council/National levels.
For good or bad, the BSA is not the Army, where rules and regs are followed without (much) question. It’s more like a franchise operation being sold to local churches, community groups, etc. And sometimes those who execute the program at the local level can get far, far away from the plan.
Kay
There was a gay Scout leader they booted in Ohio named Jennifer Tyrell.
Really sad story. She did a great job, the parents knew she was gay, and one parent complained so they got rid of her.
There was a side-story I would have like to have seen pursued, where there had been corruption in handling funds (IMO may have inspired ‘the outing’) but it got national attention and that angle disappeared.
Anyway, such a nasty and mean-spirited act.
state22
@Elizabelle:
Girl Scouts share a foundational history and a similar Oath with Boy Scouts – but they are operationally distinct.
I can’t think of a better way of living than:
The Girl Scout Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
The Girl Scout Law
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.
see here.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The deeper historical irony here is that Baden Powell’s success when he founded the Boy Scouts in Edwardian Great Britain was based in large part on the pathetic performance of the British Army during the Boer Wars and justifiable concerns on the part of the British elites that the scrawny, malnourished youth coming out of the industrial slums of London, Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol would be no match for the German Army should things get hot in Europe some day. And as anybody who’s every read a fair sampling of World War I memoirs know, the British Army’s officer corps of that era was gayer than the day is long.