Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

A Girl Scout troop’s activities will depend a lot on the life experiences of the leaders; that’s probably what she did as a Girl Scout, and figured these were things you also needed to know.

One thing my troop did, in the late 1970s, was go to the Cancer Society and watch a film about Pap smears and breast exams, one that was aimed at adolescent girls. Pretty much everyone I’ve mentioned this to have said, “I was in the Girl Scouts and we never did anything like that.” In this case, that was a very personal issue for our husband-and-wife leaders, because before I met them, they had lost a child to cancer. :frowning:

(I have sent money to St. Jude Hospital as a result, because that was where she got most of her treatment for a type of leukemia that usually strikes adults - IDK any more than that. Thanks to St. Jude, they got 6 extra years with her, and they said that for most of that time, she lived a relatively normal life.)

62

Seriously? It’s only a “no-win” situation if you see it as nothing more than a pragmatic question of maximizing membership. Don’t you think doing the morally right thing should factor into it at all?

63

Yeah, those were … bad. The word “masculinity” is ruined for me forever now.

64

My father did Boy Scouts in the 30s and 40s - made it to Eagle Scout and was very fond of the whole experience - and he hates how religious it has gotten; he says at least in his troop and council no one paid any attention. When my brother looked into becoming a Boy Scout in about 2001 they ultimately decided against it because of how We Are Christian! the local troop was.

65

Anecdote, re: religious scouts.

I joined the cub scouts when I was a young lad. We had just moved to extreme northern Maine from western New York. The town we lived in was about 100% Catholic. It was a very backward town and really weird for we Protestants (in name, anyway). There was Catechism taught in public school ferchrissakes. And yes, every single cub scout meeting I went to started with prayer to our beloved Catholic/Christian god and every single thing we did had something to do with religion. Maybe it was just an extreme exploitation due to the remote/fanatical area but I think I attended for maybe a half a year (I remember having fun at the model car racing derby) but it was just too much for me and my parents. I bailed early.

66

And the people once forced to use seperate water fountains, why the complaints? The fountains were kept clean and the water was cold.

67

The thing about the religiosity of it all is that it’s hyper local. Whether or not you focus on religion is entirely up to the people running the Troop, nobody from the local Council or National is checking to make sure the leaders make kids say the Oath every meeting or pray or force some kind of religiousness on the kids. It’s up to the people running it, just like EVERY social group is as religious or non-religious as the people who run it want it to be.

National BSA has this very bland ceremonial deism aspect, A Scout is “Reverent”, Scouts have a Duty to God and Country, and that’s exactly as far as it goes. When my son was in Cub Scouts he was instructed to say an oath that mentioned God 5 times as often at school than in Scouts.

The local Scout group, the Troop and the Pack, are owned and operated franchises. 70% of those groups are owned and operated by churches. The church provides the space to meet, the church is the legal entity through which the group is organized. As much as I have little to no use for organized religion, in this case, they positively impact the lives of these young men by donating space for them to meet and learn positive life skills.

68

One of the local churches sponsored my dad’s troop for years. Their big contribution was letting them store troop stuff there and use a free room. According to my dad they dropped them like a hot brick after a few years. The local Labor Temple then supported them, but again it was storage space and a room to use.

69

Yeah man, Dylan Roof had it rough.

Shoot up a black church? You’re racist.
Don’t shoot up a black church? Nazi friends question your commitment.

70

I don’t know that I’d call it “pandering to homophobes”, unless you consider pretty much every religious denomination outside of a VERY few liberal Christian ones to be homophobic.

Here’s the thing- each Boy Scout troop or Cub Scout pack is chartered by some kind of local organization. This means that some organization basically gives them a place to meet and serves as their anchor to the community. When I was in Scouts, I don’t have a clue who chartered our Cub Scout pack, but our Boy Scout troop was chartered by the local volunteer fire department.

The catch is that as that link to the community and provider of a certain degree of services to the troop/pack, they retain a little bit of control over how the troop/pack is operated. So for example, a troop chartered by a mosque or synagogue is not going to have a pig BBQ as a fund raiser. Similarly, a lot of Christian churches, and I suspect mosques as well, wouldn’t be fond of gay scout leaders. I’ve even heard of stranger stuff like troops chartered to Evangelical churches being forbidden from membership in the Order of the Arrow because of some kind of weird theological ideas.

That’s where the contention comes in; the BSA itself probably doesn’t care much at all, but as an organization they probably feel like they have a larger duty to the thousands of packs/troops chartered via churches and other religious organizations, and the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of scouts in those packs/troops, than they do to make a social justice point about the role of gay scouts/scout leaders.

It’s not black and white; like **Velocity **points out, they really were damned if they did, damned if they didn’t, so they chose the one that was a better choice for their organization. Bigger fish to fry, and all that.

71

Well, that’s the corner Abrahamic religions have painted themselves into. The fact this process of screwing themselves over occurred over centuries, if not millennia, doesn’t make it righteous or even excusable. Time was, people were practically forced to smile and nod at stuff like that because, if they didn’t, they could be rather forcibly excluded from the town’s social life, up to and including losing their job. Now that that’s no longer true, their bigotry is starting to have real consequences they can’t ignore, and they don’t like that one bit.

Do you think any other franchise operation would allow some of their franchisees to be bigoted? Or would the national leadership, the group which owns the trademarks, show a little bit of spine, a little bit of leadership, a little bit of basic animal survival instinct, and exert itself to keep the brand from being soiled? Is it even theoretically possible for the leaders of a scouting organization to show some leadership?

So only some troops are run by bigots. What does the BSA want, a cookie?

72

I absolutely do. But, it does also appear that being morally right may be hastening the organization’s membership decline, and that’s the “no-win” (or, maybe, “Pyhrric victory” is more appropriate).

73

Ugh. It’s “Pyrrhic victory.” Server time-outs kept me from fixing that before the edit window closed.

74

It’s not a matter of maximizing membership. It’s a matter of continuing to exist as an organization.

And for all that you think that allowing gays is the morally right thing to do (which I happen to agree with), there are conservative religious people and organizations who think the exact opposite. And these religious organizations, especially the LDS church, made up a huge proportion of BSA membership: the Mormon Church had been the largest participant of the Boy Scouts in the United States, making up nearly 20 percent of BSA membership. They also filled many of the leadership roles at the national level. It took years of concerted effort to overcome their objections to allowing gays in the BSA, and the ultimate result is that they all left the organization last year. :frowning:

Exactly.

75

So, the ends justify the means?

76

Oh, please. :rolleyes:

I fail to see the comparison between ceremonial deism and racial discrimination. And I say that as someone who is non-religious.

As Supreme Court Justice Brennan said:

77

What distinction are you claiming between this and pragmatic maximization of membership? It’s lost on me. Your own statement is loaded with that assumption that it’s a good thing that the organization continues to exist, regardless of moral considerations. If an organization with deeply ingrained amoral anti-LGBT bigotry refuses to reform, it’s a good thing if it ceases to exist.

Why would anyone be surprised that a large proportion of the membership of an organization with a history of deeply ingrained amoral anti-LGBT bigotry come from a church with an explicit doctrine of amoral anti-LGBT bigotry? So what?

You seem to be confusing the issue of whether people have a right to hold despicable views, and whether those despicable views are right. I’m not suggesting that the BSA (or the LDS church) are necessary doing anything illegal, and that they should be forcibly shut down. I’m expressing an opinion on their morality, and that it would be a good thing if they cease to exist if they refuse to reform.

78

Huh? That article says

So their net is somewhere from $500M to $9.9B.

79

I truly have no idea what you are talking about.

BSA is a decentralized organization with a national organization at the top, 272 local councils, thousands of individual units (troops, packs, and crews), some 800,000 volunteer leaders, and 2.2 million youth members.

With a large organization made up almost entirely of volunteers, you can’t simply make a unilateral decision at the top, especially with contentious social issues. It was a process.

Also note that our larger society’s attitudes toward gays has evolved significantly in the last few decades.

Yes, I think that BSA is a good organization, and that it should continue to exist.

First off, I completely disagree that the BSA has a “history of deeply ingrained amoral anti-LGBT bigotry.” I have been associated with BSA for over 40 years in multiple states, and have never seen that.

We had a boy in our troop a decade ago who was gay. Great kid – he was voted by the rest of the troop to be the Senior Patrol Leader. He also earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

In any event, you could make the same statement about any organization that has been around for any length of time, up to and including the United States itself. Instead of simply wishing that an organization ceases to exist, would it not be preferable to try to reform it?

After all, BSA did reform.

Again, I completely disagree that the BSA itself has a “history of deeply ingrained amoral anti-LGBT bigotry.”

As for the LDS church, I would say that in the past, their views on LGBT people likely matched that of our larger society. Society’s views has changed since then – their views evidently have not.

And you seem to have this idea that people’s views and opinions are immutable and cannot change.

American’s views on homosexuality have changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Before the 1990s, the majority of the country was of the opinion that gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be illegal, for crying out loud.

Yes, BSA as an organization lagged the country as a whole, which is not surprising, since so much of the membership included religious people and conservatives.

But it has changed, to its credit.

80

Yes, you can. The entity which owns the trademarks on the iconography and the copyrights to the official material can set policy and state that anyone who fails to follow that policy is no longer licensed to use that intellectual property. A Wendy’s in my former hometown was shut down by the corporate office because it didn’t maintain cleanliness standards in precisely that fashion. Are you saying the BSA can’t keep as tight of a leash on its organization as Wendy’s can?