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A bad one comparing outward physical appearance with sexual preferences. Again, it IS a sexual preference, orientation, what have you, and it has no place in scouting. BSA isn't for exploring your sexuality.
It seems like banning gays is making it about sexuality. Like I mentioned before, one of my closest friends in high school was almost an Eagle Scout. Because he went to a school dance with another guy and word got back to his troop leader, he was booted. Not because he discussed his sexuality with his troop and not because he came onto any of the other boys in his troop, but because of something that happened 100% independently of the Boy Scouts.
When that passes for OK and gay boys and men are banned, the Boy Scouts is focusing too much on exploring sexuality themselves.
Is the Boy Scouts for exploring heterosexual sex, then? If not, I fail to see how allowing gay people to join would lead to massive amounts of sex & sexual talk. They're not asking to do demonstrations, for chrissakes, they're just asking not to be excluded from the organization.
It's not about having gay people in the BSA, which there clearly already are. It's about making a bunch of under 18 year old boys the victim of liberal social experimentation and making it all about politics. It's about forcing your private views, onto a private organization. That's what I take issue with.
No one pressing for this cares about the Scouts at all, they don't have a genuine desire for an all inclusive organization, they have a genuine desire to bring a private organization that is in disagreement with them to its knees. Par for the liberal course.
It's not about having gay people in the BSA, which there clearly already are. It's about making a bunch of under 18 year old boys the victim of liberal social experimentation and making it all about politics. It's about forcing your private views, onto a private organization. That's what I take issue with.
No one pressing for this cares about the Scouts at all, they don't have a genuine desire for an all inclusive organization, they have a genuine desire to bring a private organization that is in disagreement with them to its knees. Par for the liberal course.
How do you know this is a "liberal experiment?" Did FOX News tell you that? I hope you realize there are gay Republicans too, and that liberals don't have some grand agenda... if anything, the right has a more clear agenda (of hate and discrimination). Maybe the liberal parents of scouts don't want to be part of THAT experiment any longer?
It's not about having gay people in the BSA, which there clearly already are. It's about making a bunch of under 18 year old boys the victim of liberal social experimentation and making it all about politics. It's about forcing your private views, onto a private organization. That's what I take issue with.
No one pressing for this cares about the Scouts at all, they don't have a genuine desire for an all inclusive organization, they have a genuine desire to bring a private organization that is in disagreement with them to its knees. Par for the liberal course.
I care very much for the Scouts. I really enjoyed being a Scout (even if my swim team made fun of me for it - I had to skip practice on Tuesdays for troop meetings), and I learned an awful lot from scouting. I wish I hadn't felt compelled to leave the Scouts because I was gay. I don't want any other gay boy to have to suffer though that kind of confliction.
This idea has been kicked around for a couple decades now and it always fails for exactly the same reason: The vast majority of scout troops are run by churches. The BSA cannot afford to bite the hand that feeds them and if lawmakers force them to do so anyways, churches will abandon the Boy Scouts in droves. It will break the back of the program. The BSA would undoubtedly survive, but only as a much smaller entity. Well over half of current Boy Scout troops would disappear overnight.
Whether you agree or disagree, that is reality. The BSA simply can't afford to offer up widespread acceptance of gays.
Yup.
The Boy Scouts of America is also currently facing, just like the Catholic Church, hundreds of abuse lawsuits that total hundreds of millions of dollars. By turning this over to the local Scout organizations, the national organization now has some deniability in lawsuits of the future. It will be the local Councils, not the National Council, that will have to face the courts and pay the law suits.
The fact is American society is changing. Increasingly more churches are allowing same sex marriages, and increasingly more singles are adopting children, whether they are gay or straight. Parents want their kids to be engaged in activities like scouting, but the also want their children to be protected. With this decision, the National Council has turned over this policing of the camp counselors entirely onto the regional Councils, as it should be. The regional Councils are much better able to screen and vet counselors.
There are other, similar organizations like the Scouts; the Future Farmers of America is no longer a youth organization dedicated to just farm kids, as an example. The FFA is busy creating new programs that are designed for city and suburban kids, and they have their own form of camping and activities that have just as much appeal as scouting. The Boys and Girls Clubs are also doing the same.
The Boy Scouts of America needed to change to survive. They saw the handwriting on the wall.
"If the Boy Scouts drop the organization’s present position on homosexuality, not only will millions of parents withdraw their sons from the organization, and thousands of pastors will drop their churches’ sponsorship of Scout troops, they will be absolutely right to do so. For it will only be a matter of time before the Boy Scouts of America will pronounce itself in favor of same-sex marriage; will adopt instructional materials, mandatory in all troops, on the compulsory acceptance, by all members and leaders, of homosexual relations as normal and normative; and will move to silence all dissent from the new orthodoxy by boys, parents, troop leaders, and sponsoring organizations. The Scouts, in short, will rapidly become, from the top down, a national pro-gay organization, local control be damned.
That is the true choice the leaders of the BSA face next week. Be what the Scouts have always been, since the birth of the organization. Or rapidly become what the advocates of the 'gay identity' demand, with all its attendant intolerance of dissent. There is no middle way, between standing upright and falling prostrate before new gods.
Oh, and next to go, of course, will be the proscription of atheism, though everyone swears it is not up for discussion now. That too will last about five minutes. You heard it here first."
I care very much for the Scouts. I really enjoyed being a Scout (even if my swim team made fun of me for it - I had to skip practice on Tuesdays for troop meetings), and I learned an awful lot from scouting. I wish I hadn't felt compelled to leave the Scouts because I was gay. I don't want any other gay boy to have to suffer though that kind of confliction.
Well I'm sorry you felt that confliction growing up, as I said it's all how it's being politicized. If I had my way, I would look at things on a case by case basis and not reject people simply for being gay and see how they were as scouts. My concern are people who join just so they can say "hey look at me, I'm gay, in scouts and am probablly pissing a lot of people off." You can't tell me there wouldn't be people who join just for that reason.
Well I'm sorry you felt that confliction growing up, as I said it's all how it's being politicized. If I had my way, I would look at things on a case by case basis and not reject people simply for being gay and see how they were as scouts. My concern are people who join just so they can say "hey look at me, I'm gay, in scouts and am probablly pissing a lot of people off." You can't tell me there wouldn't be people who join just for that reason.
Your concern seems really, really strange to me. Us gays and liberals don't want the Scouts to be open to gays so we can flood the Scouts en-mass with gay kids wanting to experiment sexually while playing princess and baking cookies just because we can. And this isn't some outside assault on the Scouts. The push is coming from within the scouting community. It's former scouts who happen to be gay, gay parents of scouts who want to be involved, and tolerant scout leaders like Steven Spielberg (who is an Eagle Scout), etc who initially pushed for this change - hell, even Mitt Romney back in 1994 when he was on the Boy Scouts national board was pushing for allowing gays.
We just want kids who happen to be gay and who happen to be interested in scouting to be able to participate - and be able to participate without having to feel shamed or unwanted. Also, if a Scout happens to have two dads or two mom's who are qualified, willing, and able to be a scoutmaster, we'd like to seem them be able to take up that leadership role.
Following this reasoning, perhaps we ought to have gay-only schools? What about drinking fountains?
That wouldn't bother me a bit.
On the BSA issue, why would someone (or a group of someones) want to be around those who don't want to associate with or be around them? It's just a matter of forcing an agenda of acceptance in an attempt to "normalize" behavior and choices that are held in distain by most of society. Why don't gays just form their own group and then they're free to promote whatever beliefs or behaviors they wish within that group.
Let's use the Amish as an example. (For the record, a group I have no problems with nor negative views of.) They choose to live a different lifestyle and behave in ways that most find different. They have their own communities, associate as they wish with like-minded folk, and interact with society only to the degree they find comfortable. It seems to work fine for all involved. Similar groups can be found across America. The polygamous sects within Mormons, Jewish communities in New York (Kiryas Joel, New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), etc. Let the gay scouts find accomodation in a similar way with their own camps, own adult leaders, own activities.
When I was in Scouts, summer camp involved a group shower house, two-man shared tents, and nights around the campfire. Would you put your 11 or 12 y.o. son into such an environment knowing there are openly gay leaders and older gay boys present, knowing constant supervision is impossible?
I was an Eagle and in OA, and glad to have done it when I did.
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