I’m an Eagle Scout but have absolutely no respect for them and hope that they A
That’s great, but ceremonial deism really pisses me and some others off.
I was never a Scout, but I say they can F O.
It looks like they got to TokyoBayer … once you are an Eagle Scout, you can never leave, apparently.
You keep saying this, I keep mentioning that the national organization holds all the cards, and you can’t give me a single reason the national organization can’t force the bigots to stop using the Boy Scouts trademarks. The only possible reason is that they don’t want the bigots gone that badly.
So what’s the greater good, here? Teaching kids that being out in the woods is more important than accepting other human beings?
If that’ true, the BSA is being craven in the name of catering to people who are leaving anyway.
Again, humans aren’t patties. What Wendy’s does is and should be profit-driven, whereas what the BSA does should be driven by morality.
If you don’t hold to your morality when it’s difficult, you don’t have morality. You have public opinion polling. The BSA holds itself out as being better than that.
(bolding mine)Got a cite for this?
It’s worse than that. BSA has for years held a very publicly stated set of morals–among them bigotry against LGBT and atheists and girls. They held on to that fiercely, giving in on one bigotry or another when it was finally impossible to defend it. But at each stage, they strongly defend the bigotry they have left.
You want children to learn about the pleasures of the outdoors? Why do you need an organization with principles other than “teach children about the pleasures of the outdoors in a safe and nurturing environment”? No outdoors-focused organization is need to teach children about reverence and obedience &c.
It was my understanding that the GSA was more about ‘girly’ things like service to the community or as arquvan said, becoming a debutante and if you were a girl more interested in hiking, woodcraft, and camping like the BSA is, you’d join the Camp Fire Girls. Looking the organization up on Wiki, I see that they’ve gone co-ed as well, and are now just “Camp Fire.”
You misunderstand the point of the Boy Scouts. It’s not primarily to teach children about the pleasures of the outdoors. It’s to take advantage of boys’ love of the outdoors and outdoor activities to teach them character, leadership, and important life skills.
This is what I remember of Boy Scouts (minus the skiing; none of that here in Florida). I joined a dying troop on a whim at age 13 or so, I think there were four scouts total, two older than me and one my age. By the time I aged out of the program I think I was a First Class scout, but I was never motivated by rank. I think I was also SPL for a time. I learned a lot of useful skills, had lots of fun, and helped to train a whole new “generation” of kids in scouting, which I will always be proud of.
Despite not being Christian, and despite our troop being heavily tied to a Methodist church, I never felt pressured to join their religion. I think I did sit through three or four services in all my years of scouting, but it was a very respectful thing. The services were non-denominational but still Christian. Nobody looked down on me or made me feel uncomfortable for not fully participating. I learned some about their religion and in turn I taught some of the practices from mine - I believe the whole troop came to one of my services.
We didn’t have exposure to kids with nonstandard sexual orientation, but I didn’t have exposure to that at all back then. I don’t believe homosexuality ever came up as a dogmatic thing - BSA generally kept out of politics and hot topics. I think some of the newly recruited scouts made gay jokes (“that’s gay!”) but they always came across as dumb (“so what?” “chicken butt”). Such banter was in vogue at the time - IMO, much better than “get raped” as a form of gloating from my younger days - but us older kids and the adults didn’t find it funny and lightly encouraged them to cut that shit out.
Actually, now that I think about it, we did have a discussion early on that “morally straight” had nothing to do with sexual orientation. And the part about being “reverent”, that doesn’t mean revere God, that means respect other people’s beliefs.
We occasionally camped with a girl. I don’t remember if she was a venture scout or someone’s sister or one of the leaders’ kids. Nobody cared, but she would bring her own tent and cook her own food like the adults (we had to budget and cook for just the boys). She was generally better than us at camping.
Anyways, yeah, just some MPSIMS.
~Max
DADT was the law of the land less than 10 years ago. Anti-gay marriage laws were legal 5 years ago. It is STILL legal for churches to discriminate against those who don’t ascribe to their views. What you say was “impossible” to defend had hundreds of millions of defenders.
The BSA hasn’t showered themselves in Liberal glory, but their customer base has always been right of center, and a huge block of them have to be dragged kicking and screaming into modern times, which is not something the BSA has the power to do. (e.g. the Mormons)
It’s not exactly simple to strip away the God bits when 75% of your membership is sponsored by churches. Church leadership can get a bit testy when you declare religion unimportant or incompatible with Scouting.
*I’m not sure what the ‘bigotry against girls’ thing is, they’ve had girls in various scouting activities for years, and the recent decision to open membership to girls was viewed (correctly, IMO) as a power play to poach membership from the Girl Scouts.
I guess we should tell that to the folks, some of them in this thread and past threads about the Boy Scouts, who seem to be primarily interested in the organization for its giving kids the opportunity to do outdoor stuff.
Well, okay, then, then it’s clear that it’s a conservative, religious organization that has been covering up sexual abuse and its idea of good character, good leadership, etc., is something I disagree with. It makes it even easier for me to say that the Boy Scouts can go fuck itself.
Here’s the mission statement of the BSA:
If you go down the page, you find near the bottom that BSA Districts are tasked with “Promotion of the BSA camping and outdoor program.”
The reason that the “outdoor stuff” is emphasized is because that’s the fun part. What kid would voluntarily join an organization that wasn’t any fun?
As BSA puts it:
BSA is not a conservative, religious organization.
Duplicate post
I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, so I don’t know what all that was for.
It is clearly a religious organization. Its oath requires swearing to a “duty to God.” Its “law” requires reverence. It explicitly excludes atheists from the organization.
It has a “Religious Relationships Task Force,” whose chairman wrote in 2014:
In 2018, its National Executive Board adopted a resolution titled “Reaffirming Duty to God” BSA reaffirms Duty to God aspect of all programs through resolution adopted at 2018 National Annual Meeting - Aaron On Scouting
It is explicitly a religious organization.
The funny thing about all the God stuff in the BSA is that it doesn’t seem like it really matters if it’s there or not. It’s like a question at the door “Do you believe in God? Yes? Great, welcome in.” and then it doesn’t come up again. Every now and then there might be mention of God, but it’s not like there are Bible teachings and stuff. The BSA could totally strike all the religious stuff from the BSA and it seems like the only difference to the scouts would be a few less words in the oath. It doesn’t seem like it’s worth having it there for all the controversy it brings.
I haven’t been excluded yet. Should I be worried?
Regarding the “religious” aspects, such as the oath to “…do my duty to God…” I am reminded of the mathematician Paul Erdős:
I am tempted to say, in a similar spirit: You don’t have to be religious or even believe in God, you just have to do your duty to God.
In a similar vein, I have told Scouts (and my own son) that “God” can mean whatever they want it to mean.
Just trying to be helpful. 
I concede that this is nominally the case, but it is also explicitly non-sectarian. To be honest, the religious stuff is still in there to placate the religious people. With many of them having now left, I wouldn’t be surprised if this changes as the number of people in the U.S. who are religious continues to decline.
Nevertheless, as a non-religious person I still don’t particularly have a problem with the last point of the Scout Law (“A Scout is Reverent.”) As Boy’s Life explains, “A Scout is reverent. He is faithful in his religious duties and respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion…”
The first part of the point (“faithful in his religious duties”) is my own business. If questioned, I would say it was between me and God, which is true enough. Again, I can define “God” however I want.
The second part of this point is being politely respectful of the religious beliefs of others. I fully agree with this (so long as their beliefs don’t conflict with mine*).
*For example, they are free to believe in what they want – they are not free to try to convert me, or make me follow their beliefs.
How about teaching the kids about teamwork, doing good for your community, and the various other “good values” espoused? Remember, if the organization ceases to exist, then it also ceases to be in a position to teach anything at all, including the value of acceptance of other human beings. At that point, the BSA isn’t a moral exemplar; it’s simply another failed organization that used to do something or other, but that is dead and gone and irrelevant.
Define “morality.” Sixty years ago, a person who espoused the idea that LGBTQ deserved equal treatment and the same rights was not seen as “moral” but as “crazy” or “ludicrous” or “stupid,” and this was not controversial. We can debate moral universalism if you’d like, but I’m note sure why you point to the Scouts specifically instead of society generally.