Yes, as a private organization the Boy Scouts have a right to choose with whom they wish to associate.
And the rest of us citizens have a right to scream at the top of our lungs that they are being intolerant and feeding stereotypes and intolerance.
Parents would get the heebie-jeebies knowing a homosexual was a scout master? Who cares? There are parents that would get the heebie-jeebies knowing that a scout master was black, or Jewish, or Canadian, or who freakin’ knows what.
Does it really matter who the scout master is sexually attracted to? Sex isn’t even going to come up in conversation in the process of building a fucking bird house. What difference does it make?
Here’s a link to the Boston Scout story. I’ll see if I can find the others I referenced as well. The Newsweek story is on the stands now. I read it yesterday and tears came to my eyes at some of the comments and descriptions of actions that anti-gay Scouts and leaders have taken. All I could think was “how can they do this to children?”
And of course as all those who congregate on the Straight Dope Message Board know, the proper response to ignorance is to perpetuate it and enshrine it in law.
I don’t know what “stunt” you’re referring to, but doesn’t it strike you as a little bit unfair to apply your feelings of disgust to millions of people who did not take part in it?
I was a Boy Scout for years. My father worked for various councils for 25 years and I worked at Scout camp one summer. I can promise you that gay scouts were not on the radar screen at any time. The Scouts themselves didn’t formulate the “no gays” rule until after the first round of the Dale case. The idea that gay Scouts and leaders could exist peaceably in the Scouts from 1910 to 1996, then suddenly become a threat to children either physically or morally is ridiculous.
The First Amendment right of association is NOT absolute. The entire record of SCOTUS precedent prior to the BSA case was to treat claims like that of the BSA with skepticism and require them to prove their allegation of harm. BSA was completely unable to offer any evidence that they were or would be harmed by the inclusion of gay leaders or members. Even the minority opinion reflected amazement at the lack of scrutiny the majority gave the BSA arguments in rubber-stamping Scouting bigotry.
You, sir, have never taken the “Family Life” merit badge…
[hijack] In the Spring of 1999 a Gay Pride organization called the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” had a Gay Pride street fair in Easter Sunday in front of th Archdiocse of San Francsico. Some of th “Sisters” wore nun habits while making rather crude/rude/disgusting gestures wiht some of the other “sisters”.
The City Supervisor gave a permit for this event because it was an event that “Celebrated San Francisco’s Diveristy”. I know the RCC protested this, and a Catholic Org. called for a boycott of San Francisco, But I never once heard another Homosexual stand up and say “Hey, maybe this is not right” [/hijack]
Good. Then they can take their troops to their planet, and do whatever the hell they want there. In the meantime, they want to live on our planet, and discriminate against our kids, but still get unfettered, unqualified access to our schools to hold meetings and recruit new members. They are trying to eat their cake and have it, too. Doesn’t sound too upright and moral to me.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Forcing the schools and the city halls to open their doors unqualified to organizations that won’t take gays or atheists is, too.
Run for your lives! It’s the PC goosesteppers! :rolleyes:
If the BSA wants to trot out their “private organization” card then they should be forbidden from meeting (as an organization) in public schools or other federal buildings. JMHO, of course.
You need to calm down. I didn’t go out of my way to insult you(altough I’m sure by now I’ve insulted pretty much everyone on the SDMB), so you don’t need to act like that. You’re hearing hoofbeats and think Zebras instead of horse. I’m sorry you were unable to connect the discussion of sex with the mention of a specific merit badge.
[Ulysses Everatt McGill] Well Pete, I think it should be the one with the capacity of abstract though [/UEM]
Think of the “Family Life” Merit Badge as “HS health class”. So, Sex would be discussed…
But the BSA had another, better option. They could have pacified all of the people who now are opposing the Boy Scouts because of their anti-gay stance, while ignoring the simple-minded, paranoid few. The BSA deliberately chose the simple-minded, paranoid option, and while I have no doubt that many Boy Scouts are clean, reverent, good people, the policy certainly doesn’t say much for the organization as a whole.
The Girl Scouts, an organization of which I am proud to have been a longtime member, gets off without a hitch because they have an open, non-discriminatory policy toward gays and lesbians. And those cookies are good!
I don’t have a problem with the BSA discriminating against homosexuals. It’s their organization, they can do what they want with it.
I will, however, no longer make contributions to my local United Way. I will no longer patronize the fish frys. If the ACLU wishes to sue to get troops kicked out of public schools or government facilities, I will wholeheartedly support them.
Of course, I also happen to live in the only major municipality in the United States that specifically singles out homosexuals for discrimination in its ordinances, so I have to pick my battles.
OK, my credentials - former Life Scout, former Assistant Scoutmaster, alumni member of Alpha Phi Omega, the national fraternity affiliated with BSA. Oh yeah, and I’m straight.
(In a fun little bit of irony, in the early 90’s, BSA threatened to disassociate from APO because we allow gays to join.)
Now, on to the topic at hand.
In the troops I was in, and the troop I helped run, any patch that would tend to cause distress to members of the troop or to others would’ve been ripped off a uniform immediately. Who cares if it isn’t an official patch? The scoutmasters, etc., should have taken active steps to stop the trading of the patch. And don’t gimme any bullshit about free expression by the scouts. First, as the Supreme Court has held, BSA is a private organization. Second, point out to me a scout troop that isn’t run as a benevolent dictatorship, and I’ll eat my hat.
Saying this troop or that troop has lots of minorities says absolutely nothing about whether BSA as a whole has very little minorities. And of course race was relevant to the article - the article was about a patch with a Confederate emblem on it. The whole freaking article was about race.
Warning: hyperbole ahead. Some groups of the KKK now do highway clean-ups. Is it unfair to focus only on the bad stuff the KKK does and push into the background the “good” stuff it does?
Well, the legal issue has already been decided. No one can force the BSA to accept them.
And it is not the personal agendas of a few. A great number of people like me have been forced to re-evaluate their associations with BSA because of their anti-gay policy. Trust me, we don’t like to have to do it, and it is painful.
And one wonders if you realize that the BSA is very likely to lose its United Way funding - which is by far its largest single source of outside funding, as well as the free use of personnel and facilities of various governmental entities, if it persists in its current policies.
Both the United Way and governmental organizations have the same right (and in the case of government, the legal responsibility), to disassociate from discriminatory groups that BSA has to disassociate from gays. What’s sauce for the goose …
This is a moral issue for me - can I continue to support an organization that is explicitly discriminatory, regardless of the good work that it does? No, I cannot, no matter how much it pains me. “To thine own self be true.”
Do you realize how stupid that is? What would you say to me if I said, “I used to be a lot more liberal towards Christians, but then that guy in Buffalo shot that abortion doctor, and I’ve been vaguely disgusted ever since.”? Attributing the conduct of some of a group to all of a group is called stereotyping.
Act like what? Rebutting you? Pointing out the flaws in you argument? Ask you for clarification? I’m sure you would prefer that I just roll over and agree with you, but that just ain’t going to happen.
For the life of me, I have no idea what that means.
Which is why I asked for clarification. I can’t imagine the BSA would have a sexual how-to badge, but if they do, I’d like to know about it.
Fine. In HS health class, I learned that a man’s sperm when introduced to a woman’s egg will form a zygote, which will then (etc. etc.) at which point a baby is born. I’m relatively confident that most adult homosexuals would be capable of imparting this information to formative young minds with letting it slip how they like to have sex. My HS teacher did. And I don’t even know if he was gay or not.
I’ve never seen the point of scouting. In Central MS, it was mostly a bunch of boys getting together and running around shouting obscenities at each other, playing tackle football, and going on camping trips where sleeping was an invite to have tons of practical jokes played on you.
I’d read the manual, look at the behaviour I saw around me, and wonder why 95% where missing the point. That’s why I quit after one year and being just short of Eagle Scout. What the National Leadership doesn’t realise, is that most of the scouts aren’t the “Brave, Clean and Reverent” idea that Baden-Powell came up with. Most of them see the BSA as a big frat party.
Scouts of the SDMB, am I missing something here? How can you be in the organization for only a year and be ‘just short of Eagle Scout’? it’s something my husband worked on for almost a decade.