That makes a lot of sense; somebody’s probably going to ask you for a cite, so I may as well do it: cite, please.
One other thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that the president of our country is the honorary leader of the BSA (as cited in this press release). A few people object to this, saying that the president is giving tacit approval to the discriminatory policies in question.
I listed all the badges in an above post.
Former Eagle Scout sadly checking in…We are told that when the rank of Eagle Scout is attained that we are an Eagle forever.
I was proud of and worked hard for the achievement. Nearly all of my family was involved in scouting.
Upon Nationals decision to exclude gays, I felt compelled to return my Eagle Scout Medal along with my regretful resignation. I’m straight, but intolerance was not taught when I was a member.
That makes a lot of SENSE??? CITE yourself, please, you narrowminded bigoted speck of shit. Good lord. " Yes, it makes sense to paint an entire religion with the brush of bigotry, and not back it up at all. Sure does make sense to me !" Obviously you lack sense.
You say, a FEW people object to the President being the honorary leader?? Man, am I glad I don’t hang out with your klan…er…circle of friends. OOps, did I just paint you with a broad brush? Golly. Sorry about that. Hurts, huh? Go troll your hateful crap somewhere else, you chose the wrong forum to spew to.
Cartooniverse
From the August 6, 2001 issue of Newsweek, pages 48 and 49:
It’s called sarcasm.
Let’s wipe away some hearsay bullshit. Two VERY fact based questions:
How many members are there right now on the National Board of the BSA?
Of them, how many are LDS?
Facts. Gimme facts.
Thank you.
I was not painting an entire religion with a broad brush of bigotry, I was only speaking of the church’s official position which is anti-homosexual.
Please, calm down; you’ve misinterpreted me. I meant no disrespect to individual Mormons or their chucrh. What made sense to me was the reasoning that, given the BSA feared it would lose one-sixth of its membership if it took a particular stance, that it would not take that stance.
Yes, for the very simple reason that I don’t have a cite proving that a lot of people do, but I did find a cite saying that a few people do. If you have a cite saying that a lot of people do, I would love to hear about it; it would do a lot for my faith in the American people.
Oh, stop already. Don’t tell me to calm down. I read your posting at least twice, I can interpret context and innuendo as well as the next Doper.
Your answer I’ve just quoted REALLY smacks of " Hey, some of my BEST friends are Jews, honest!! I wasn’t slamming THEM, man ! I was just slamming the UAHC****** and all that it stands for, that’s all! "
As I’ve asked already, we can only truly understand the ALLEDGED connection once we find out with total factual basis how many Members of the BSA Board are LDS, percentage-wise. THEN this will all really start to come together.
Cartooniverse
****** Union of American Hebrew Congregations. A body of Reformed Jewish congregations in America
There’s nothing much I can say here…My post did not convey my thought process at all; I never meant to say or imply that all Mormons are against gay rights. In fact, this is an appropriate place to say that stereotyping on the basis of religion, church membership, or philosophy is always wrong. This is my whole defense from here on out; take it as you will. For my part, I will be more careful in the future to spell out what I’m thinking and relate it to the context of the discussion at hand.
I’d seriously like to know what other things, according to the administration of the BSA, violate their “morally straight” rule. Do they ban scouts and leaders who engage in premarital sex? Do they allow scouts or scoutmasters who smoke, drink alcohol, or curse? If it was found out that a scout was arrested once for a minor offense, would he be kicked out of his troop? Other than being gay, what other things would immediately disqualify someone from being a good “role model” or “morally straight,” as defined by the BSA?
It seems clear to me that their policy selectively discriminates against gays, pure and simple. As a former scout, I am appalled.
Now, when somebody says “Catholics oppose birth control”, most people who aren’t trying to pick a fight understand that to mean “I know that not every Catholic opposes birth control, but it is the official position of the church, and many of its followers do, in fact, adhere to that position.”
Now, I don’t pretend to know the “official” Mormon position on homosexuality, but here’s a few things I picked up:
Number one
From This one
From Here
This seems as close to an “official” position as I’m going to find for the moment. What I took from it was that there’s some divide on the issue, but the official position remains anti-gay.
And so on. While I even found affirmation.org–I believe it’s called–a group for gay Mormons, it seems pretty clear that the Church LDS has its share of anti-homosexual rhetoric. Make of that what you will, but it does make sense that the Boy Scout leaders would choose not to piss off an influential group. It’s still the wrong thing to do, but at least it gives some insight into the decision-making thought process.
Cartooniverse, are you being deliberately ingenuous? YES, the official LDS position is that homosexuality is sinful. Obviously, there are individual Mormons who don’t go along with this, but that doesn’t alter the church’s stance, anymore than individual Catholics on the Pill make the official RC anti-birth control doctrine irrelevant. Of course, that has no bearing on whether the LDS anti-gay position has anything to do with the BSA.
Oh, and Space Ghost of Whatever, fuck you. I’m not going to bother debating with you because it’s obvious that your anti-gay position is based on irrational prejudice, and thus is not amenable to logical analysis. You’re a straight-up bigot, and you can go straight to hell. NOBODY gets to tell me that my instinct to love is less worthy than others because I love my own gender.
And, yes, in at least one, admittedly anecdotal, instance the BSA has discriminated against minorities. In 1973, I quit the Scouts when the scoutmaster said I couldn’t let my best friend, Thomas, join the troop because his presence would make the other Scouts uncomfortable. Thomas was black.
I remember several years ago (1994) when W. Mitt Romney was running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy, watching a debate between the two. Romney, who is a Mormon, was questioned about his involvement on the Boy Scouts’ national board, and he replied that he was opposed to their policy of discriminating against homosexuals. He is the only Mormon I know of being on the board, but I have no idea of who else is on it.
According to this article, Romney is now in charge of the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee, which is not allowing the Boy Scouts to volunteer at the Olympics, as they had in Atlanta. Apparently, they aren’t really giving any information on why, and Romney isn’t returning phone calls to the Boy Scouts.
Oh, and otto, as a Boy Scout leader in the Boston Minuteman Council (not the Minuteman Council, as the article stated, which merged with the Greater Boston Council several years ago) and someone who is concerned with gay rights, thanks for the info. I hadn’t heard that before.
Unlike SuaSponte, I have no problem supporting the organization, which has been part of my life for 12 years now, despite my feelings on the wrongness of their stance on gays. And on this point, I encourage people to express their disgust with the organization. If “Boy Scout bashing” is the way to get it to change its stance, I fully support it.
I’ve not seen anything in print, on TV, or on the radio regarding attacks on the boys themselves. I was referring to two experiences, neither of which were on the news and both which happened to my son, one I witnessed. The first was an extremely busy school day, a football game right after school so I took his scout shirt with me to watch the game because he needed to leave directly from the game to get to a scout service project. In my ‘perfection’ as a mother I brought his shirt but no pants. So he did the service project activity in his scout shirt and dirty football pants. Then we had to run to school to get his backpack and school clothes, leave his football gear in the locker room and pick up his horn so he could do his school work before time to leave for a mid-week youth activity night. While in the locker room the coach asked about his progress and was generally complimentary to discover he is a scout. As he trotted out of the school still in his scout shirt carrying his horn, he passed his band leader. When he got in the car he told me thought the bandleader had just called him a “homo”. I said surely not, he’s a teacher. The next day the man kept him after class and pointed out that it was inappropriate for him to have worn a scout shirt to school (after school at about 6:30pm) because Boy Scouts are “homophobes”.
Another time I took a group of three Boy Scouts to NASA’s Space Center Houston in uniform. Long story short, several young men who were apparently homosexual couples appeared to be following us around. They were calling the boys names, using profanities and making obscene gestures and tossing cigarette butts our direction as we waited in line for IMAX and tram tours. When a cigarette butt landed in my hair, I took it to security. He agreed to watch and follow us around and suggested I have the boys remove their scout shirts and spend the rest the day in their undershirts. The harassment stopped. I don’t know if the young men dishing out the harassment were homosexual for sure. But because of the nature of the remarks, gestures and profanities, the boys concluded their harassers where homosexuals.
Please express disgust towards the policy and the National Board of directors if you must. Treating individual scouts or troops as above when they are in public, does not teach them respect and tolerance towards homosexuals.
I do not condone, nor did I intend to imply that I did, any disrespect for the many wonderful people involved in the Boy Scouts, including myself. I meant “Boy Scout bashing” to refer only to harsh criticism of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. I have many friends to this day that I have met through the Boy Scouts, including the new Scoutmaster of my troop, whose birthday party I am going to later today as a matter of fact.
Sorry you felt the way you did, bare, but I respect your decision. I’m still proud to say that I’m an Eagle Scout and support the BSA. Abby has a good point, as pointed out in a Washington Times news article about the DNC convention last year (and not reported on by the Wash. Post, or NY Times), the six Scout’s in an honor guard to open one of the days events were resoundedly booed by an extremely vocal section of the delegates.