The school, I think.
Libertarian, what on earth are you talking about?
I am a Green Party member, and we do not advocate levitating!!!
Youre confusing us with David Blaine, I suppose.
I thought I recalled that when I agreed to be a Cub Scout den leader, I signed some kind of form that had a check box saying that I agreed with certain principles or somesuch. And by signing the form I thought you attested to the truth and accuracy with which you completed it.
This was several years back, tho, and I may easily misremember.
You’re right. My apologies. I had you confused with the Natural Law Party.
levitating is against natural law.
And what’s wrong with coming to a message board and saying that Jane’s a bit of a bitch. She may have every right to invite people as she fits but does this right negate another persons right to criticise her decision?
ouisey is just saying that IHHO the Scouts are wrong and then trying to open it up as a debate topic.
WTF?
Made Eagle Scout before I even thought seriously about the God issue.
The “something higher than ourselves” bit is a complete crock of crap. It tries to conflate higher beings with higher purposes and a hamhanded way that pretty much amounts to nothing more than the old anti-atheist bigotry. O’Reily subscribes to it too.
I think the BSA can do what it pleases. The sad part is that very few troops ever had any idea that the national BSA had so much power or was so dominated by certain denominations. They always thought that “non-denominational” was something more than a joke. I think many people (myself included) thought that the organization was some sort of member controlled democracy. It’s actually more like a military organization. Our fault for being uninformed really, but it’s been a sad dose of reality for many people: it’s like finding out that your grandpa was a Nazi prison guard.
They’ve always been against allowing atheists in, and that makes sense, since they’ve always been a religious organization. Would the navy allow people that refuse to kill into the SEALS? It’s gays that have been the controversy, because the hard-line stance against them is by no means a non-denominational consensus.
—Youre confusing us with David Blaine, I suppose.—
The levitation illusion that he’s popularized has pissed off a lot of magicians, because it’s an old illusion so crashingly easy that it requires no props other than pants and a bunch of idiots to watch. But, as long as he doesn’t receive government funding…
Oh, yes, Wiccans are all Gaia nuts spending their days in the forest making voodoo twig dolls. :rolleyes:
Please keep your Wiccan bashing to yourself.
On the subject of the BSA’s exclusionary policies, I think it is wrong, and pressure should be applied to affect change within the organization. I would hate to see the organization destroyed because of the stubborness of some high level board of directors.
Tell me, what do the boy scouts actually do?
I can only speak for myself, but I actually got quite a bit out of it.
I learned the following things(and this is just a small sample):
How to camp
How to sail
how to cook (sort of)
how to swim
how to make various knots
how to survive in the wilderness(at least for a few days)
how to use a compass
how to organize a project
how to perform first aid and CPR
how to white water raft
how to shoot a a bow and arrow
how to use a knife and ax safely
how to start a fire safely
how to hostel your way across Europe
how to ride a horse
I got to see the following places with the scouts:
Hawaii
The Grand Canyon
Alaska
Europe
There are plenty of other things I’ve learned and seen, but that should give you some idea of why I would hate to see the BSA shut down.
Which is exactly why it should not be shut down. I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that. They may shut themselves down by continuing to exclude people, and causing businesses and organizations like the United Way to cut off funding, but that’s another story.
Though I myself was never a Scout, I can see many good effects of being one. I just think that their organization could stand to improve its basic principles, while keeping its good effects the same. One way to encourage them to abandon their exclusionary policies is to revoke the US government’s charter. I think it would be the right thing to do.
And smiling bandit, I should think you would agree with me that one of the founding principles of America is freedom of religion, yes? And that includes freedom from religion, yes? And further, that as America has grown it has adopted (or tried to adopt, at least) a policy of tolerance and acceptance for all? Would you not agree with these things? In that sense, the BSA is currently an un-American organization, in my view. Just because you “don’t like” something doesn’t mean you can’t accept it as a reality.
I completely agree.
The BSA are like AA in many ways…“Your higher power could be a doorknob…as long as you have a higher power.” Sheesh:rolleyes:
It makes a mockery of organized religion and all non-believer and skeptic’s views. Both groups are strongly supported by the government and the government, for some reason, has been able to get away with this for “How Long?”. I just don’t get it.
The BSA is state-sponsored. Again, that makes all the difference. The KKK has a right to exist and exclude members, but they don’t have a right to federal and state funding. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Well, the thing is, as I said, it’s not a democracy. It’s organized like a quasi-military outfit. The local troops have no say in things. That’s how it was set up, and that’s how it is.
Now, there are a lot of people that care about scouting (like me) who think that the national BSA’s stances violate the very moral standards of decency we thought they taught us (like me) and would like to see the organization change so that all kids can have a chance to join. But it’s the national BSA’s baby, and it’s not really likely they’ll change. If they do, they lose the Mormons entirely: a TERRIBLE financial and organizational blow.
I wonder if they allow somebody who professed a belief in Satanism to stay in 
Just as a point of reference, my father was Scoutmaster of the UN Boy Scout troop over 50 years ago. In recognition of their diverse membership, their version of the Scout Law did not have “A scout is reverent.” They did just fine.
I wonder if the original scouts, in England, have this nonsense. I rather doubt it.
Does a private club like the Boy Scouts have a right to exclude gays, atheists, and anyone else they like? Absolutely.
I think what upsets me about seeing it happen is that the Boy Scouts is a very socially prominent organization that generally attracts good kids and teaches those kids certain values. Most of these values are, IMHO, laudable.
So it’s pretty scary to me that while Scouting teaches the values of self-sufficiency, trustworthiness, honesty, loyalty, etc., that they’re also teaching (either tacitly or explicitly) that atheists and gays are incapable of sharing or living by these values. What a horrible message that sends to a rather large segment of impressionable young kids, who are rather likely to fall for this logic: “Everyone knows being honest is good, and that’s what the Boy Scouts stand for. So…they must be right about gays and non-theists, too.”
It’s perfectly reasonable to complain about the existence of groups that express discriminatory values. When people rant about the KKK, Nazis, Fred Phelps, etc., do we see people immediately jumping in to say, “They’re private groups with a right to say/believe what they want; if you don’t like it, don’t join the group!” 'Course not. It’s not unreasonable to decry a certain viewpoint you don’t share. The Boy Scouts have a right to exclude whomever they want. Fine. What I’m worried about is how those kids who grow up in the BSA will think about and treat the gays and atheists they meet in society at large.
The GSA has a much more reasonable policy on this type of thing. While the Girl Scout Promise and Law mention God, it was decided when I was still an active Scout that saying these parts of the Promise and Law were up to the individual Scout. I was an atheist at the time, and when that decision came down, I felt like a weight was lifted because I’d always rather felt that I was lying every time I said the Promise.
GSA is overwhelmingly a Christian organization, no doubt about that (at least in America). While I was in it, even after the “God is optional” decision, I was pressured to attend church services while at Scout camp, pressured to say grace at meal times, etc. A lot of my fellow Scouts were fundamentalists. It shocked and disturbed many of them that I would not participate in these activities.
I think it was an incredibly valuable learning experience for all of us to interact with one another. We’d inevitably talk about my beliefs, and more than one fundamentalist had their eyes opened when they realized that an atheist was not a Satan worshipper and could share many of their values. And I wasn’t deprived of the opportunity to participate in Scouting with kids I had a lot in common with. We also had some lesbian Scout leaders.
I’d like to think that we came out of GSA with more tolerant attitudes towards those we met in society who were different from us in beliefs and sexual orientation. Unfortunately, BSA’s policy will probably tend to have the opposite effect, at least on some kids. (Certainly, some or many won’t be affected at all.)
I think that’s what most of us are concerned about: not the effect on the BSA, but the effect on society at large.
Well, as for homosexuality, you probably would have found few supporters of gay rights 200 years ago. Then again, the Constitution as written made no provision for women voting, and did protect slavery. Fortunately, this country is now a better place than it was, and the men who wrote the Constitution did make provisions to allow us to reflect that.
As for atheism, well…when they were writing the Constitution, they could have said “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of Christianity]” or “no religious Test [beyond a belief in a Supreme Being] shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”.
But they didn’t do that, and I for one have never held to the “Oh, they meant to say this was a Christian theocracy, but they just forgot” school of Constitutional interpretation.