response 17 of 174:

Sep 28 18:22 UTC 2000

lemmie see... the supremes are totally wrong about the second ammendment but
totally correct about the bsa?  hmmmmmm.....

i had a gay bs leader.  he was sleeping with one of the explorers in my post.
he was discovered and busted.  none of us were traumatized by this.  we met
in a church basement, btw.

response 19 of 174:

Sep 28 19:22 UTC 2000

re resp:15 -- No experience as a scout is needed to become a boy scout
leader, but having been a high ranking scout virtually ensures that they'll
accept you as a leader.  Unless, of course, you're gay.  :)

response 21 of 174:

Sep 28 20:05 UTC 2000

Hm. . .I was a girl scout for all of two days.  The trauma I endured 
had nothing to with whether my troop leaders were gay or not, but the 
songs I had to sing, and those god-awful badges. . .and visions of 
poorly prepared campfood. Blech!

Speaking of Pedophilia (boy, isn't THAT a subject you want to bring up 
on a group outing, and WHAT A SEGUE!), children were married much MUCH 
younger than wer are now (DUH, right), so the notion of sexual 
intercourse with younger children (esp. girls of course) wasn't quite 
as taboo.  Of course, even they had their limits back them, I'm sure.

response 23 of 174:

Sep 28 21:41 UTC 2000

I honestly don't think anyone in the BSA seriously believes that gay men rape
little boys on a regular basis. That's bru. ;}

The BSA is concerned that homosexuality is a Christian sin, and feel that the
morality on which the BSA is founded is intimately related to Christian
morality. Likewise, the BSA would be more willing to tolerate a Pagan scout
leader who was willing to take a Unitarian stance than an atheist scout leader
(although I doubt they'd be pleased with either -- I recall them banning an
atheist boy scout for refusing to pledge under God, as Mary suggests).

Regardless of its name, the BSA is and has always been an ecumenical
organization with some degree of emphasis on Christian values. Homoesuxality
is a sin, according to many Christians. So homosexuals are unwelcome as role
models. Simple.

If I had a child of Boy Scout age, and there were a boy's organization like
BSA whose local leader was a hard-driving alcoholic, I'd be loath to let my
son join the group. I can see the reasoning. Just because *I* don't happen
to think that gay men make poor role models, I can empathize with that
position. The BSA's stance does not requiring thinking anything about
homosexuality or homosexuals beyond "God said it was bad."

As already stated, the Supreme Court ruled that, as a private organization
with an emphasis on moral development, the BSA is free to set moral criteria
for selecting or rejecting leadership. And if you don't agree, you're welcome
to avoid the BSA (as Mary describes). Difference of opinion. Life goes on.

response 25 of 174:

Sep 29 00:31 UTC 2000

  I was listening to NPR the other day while stuck in traffic and they
  had a call-in show devoted to the issue of religion in the schools..
  One of the guests was a preacher from Oklahoma who kept talking about
  how, due to the decision forbidding school-sponsored prayer before
  football games, his "rights" were being taken away..  When pressed
  by the host to name the rights he was talking about, the guest sputtered
  something about how "we've always done this.."

  That may (or more likely, may not) be true, but he was missing the
  point (it seemed to me like he missed the point quite a bit, actually,
  and I would not have chosen this particular person to speak for his
  point of view unless I were setting out to stack the deck, but this
  was NPR, so who knows..)  As public opinion in this country shifts
  (as it IS slowly shifting towards more tolerance of homosexuality..)
  behaviors which have "always been" practiced are being re-examined by
  a public that doesn't necessarily feel the same way about them anymore.

  Some organizations are changing their positions to reflect the new reality
  of public opinion.  Depending on which side of the issue you personally 
  stand on, this is either graceful acceptance of the will of their membership
  or craven catering to political correctness.  Other organizations, including
  the Boy Scouts, are sticking fast to their positions (or at least some of
  them.) 

  The thing is, that though I believe the leadership of most of these
  organizations know on which side of public opinion they stand, the
  rank-and-file of many seem to be feeling completely blindsided by some
  of the changes that have come about.  Many are reacting with the "you're
  taking away our rights" defense, founded upon the "but we've always done
  that" reasoning, not realizing that "we've always done that" isn't a 
  guarantee that the rest of society won't change their minds about whether
  they're "always" going to go along..

 --

  As far as my personal opinions are concerned, I think that the upper
  leadership in the Scouts organization are fighting the wrong battle.
  I think this is actually an issue that is not much of a practical threat
  to Scouting and is also not an issue on which Scouts and their parents
  are solidly behind the leadership.  By taking a very hardline stance on
  the issue, the organization may be costing itself goodwill and prestige
  that it will take years and years to rebuild..

response 27 of 174:

Sep 29 01:12 UTC 2000

The city of new york has an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against
anyone on the basisof race, sex, sexual orientation,or religious beliefs.
What this means is that if you work for the city of new york orusecity
facilities yoiu cannot discriminate.  Therefore, regardlessof whether the
supreme court has saidits legal for the boy scouts to discrminate agailnst
gays, they cannot under thelocal law discrminate in acity facility.  

The city treats homosexual discrimination exactly like racism.  Therefore
if it would not condone a racially exclusive organization organizing
initsschools, it cannot condone a group that is exclusive asto sexual
orientation.

They would get sued otherwise and rightfully be accused of hyporcisy.

response 29 of 174:

Sep 29 01:51 UTC 2000

  re #28:  They do when they choose to (I guess that's what makes them
  so Supreme) but only overrule to the extent that they say.

  What was suggested at the beginning of this article (#0 or #1, I can't
  recall offhand) was that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Scouts 
  "do not discriminate."  Actually, what the Court said was more along
  the lines of "yeah, they discriminate, but that's their prerogative,
  they are not discriminating *illegally*", underscoring the Scouts'
  rights, as a private group, to freely associate (or not) with whomever
  they choose.  Essentially what the Court said is that it would be wrong
  for the government (any government) to compel a private organization
  like the Scouts to accept members or leaders that they didn't want.

  As much as I think the Scouts are being boneheaded about this, I couldn't
  agree more with the Court's decision that the government should keep its
  nose out of who can and can't be a member of private organizations.

  However, athough they're safe from being forced to admit members whom
  they do not consider "morally straight", this still leaves the Scouts
  with a problem.  To a much greater extent than many other private
  organizations, Scouting is dependent on public support for its continued
  existence.  If this were a case about one of those reprehensible country
  clubs which doesn't allow black or Jewish members, the Court's decision
  would be enough to more or less settle the matter because the club would
  not be dependent on public facilities or private charity so it wouldn't
  matter to them what the officials who oversaw the facilities or the 
  private citizens and foundations who donate money thought..  However, in
  many places, Scouting *is* very dependent on the use of public facilities
  and they're very, very dependent on funds from charitable organizations
  like United Way, so even though they're not going to be compelled directly
  by the state to accept members they don't want, they still have to face
  the music when it comes to the other parties they may have alienated by
  making a stand on this issue.

  I personally find it troubling when groups are included or excluded from
  meetings in public or public-owned facilities (schools, parks, libraries,
  community centers, etc..) based on the political characteristics of the
  group.  I think that kicking the Scouts out of NYC school facilities is
  a bad decision and that what schools faced with this issue should do is
  to either allow no outside groups to use their facilities or else offer
  them on the exact same basis to anyone who asks, but that's not the way
  it's done in most places.

  What's going to be particularly hard for the Scouts to get over is that
  in many places, thanks largely to a long history in many communities,
  they've enjoyed preferential treatment unavailable to many other groups
  and now they're going from having very cozy relationships with schools
  and cities all over the country to being an awkward embarrassment to many
  of those same schools and cities.  In a few places people are overreacting
  pretty substantially and treating the Scouts like some sort of pariah
  organization.

  Any disinterested observer who's watched the accusations and allegations
  fly in other recent high-profile discrimination battles could have predicted
  this as an inevitable outcome of the Scout's decision to take a stand but
  I'm not sure that the Scouts really truly understood what they were getting
  into when they chose to fight this battle..  I suspect that most Scouting
  leaders were counting on decades of goodwill and a squeaky-clean image to
  protect them from the inevitable mudslinging -- if so, they were foolishly
  overconfident and overreliant on the relationships they had built over the
  years, especially when the people they're most dependent on, local 
  government officials and corporate leaders, are so averse to divisive
  controversy.  They probably also didn't count on the added backlash that
  springs from public loathing of hypocrisy, real or perceived.  I doubt that
  an organization that didn't spend a lot of time promoting its diversity
  would have faced the same public backlash.  Try imagining people getting
  indignant upon finding that the junior DAR auxiliary doesn't accept
  everyone and you'll understand what I mean..

response 31 of 174:

Sep 29 04:28 UTC 2000

  Would they let ACT-UP meet there?

response 33 of 174:

Sep 29 06:18 UTC 2000

I've been getting that feeling, too.  My brother was a Cub Scout but elected
not to join the Boy Scouts since it was "too much like church youth group".
He enjoyed youth group, but he felt the Scouts should be more about general
life lessons and the practical things they earn badges for.  He wanted to
learn how to be a lifeguard and go camping and use a compass, but without
referring to Bible passages first.  (his quote)  He believes in God but also
believes God has a time and place.  If the Boy Scouts want to take that route,
then they need a slightly different name.  People wouldn't be so shocked if
they were renamed "God's Little Campers" or something.  ;-)

response 35 of 174:

Sep 29 13:52 UTC 2000

If it bears a christian overtone, is it because the unit you see is sponsored
by a church?  Admittedly, I haven't been involved with boy scouts for ten
years, but it is hard to believe they could have changed at the national level
that much.  There have always been religious badges, but they were for every
religion.  Yep, they even had one for lutherans.  

response 37 of 174:

Sep 29 14:52 UTC 2000

When I was a Boy Scout, the emphasis was on dorking around, going camping,
and playing dodge ball. 

Personally, I see a lot more usefulness to the Cub Scouts than to the Boy
Scouts, and it's too bad that this controversy affects the Cubs as well.

And here's a sentence you won't see often: I agree with Richard. The SC's
decision doesn't infringe on local schools (or any public resources)
restricting BSA use of facilities. IF anything, the BSA have positioned
themselves as a pseudo-church, and should be treated as such... meaning no
school grounds in areas with bans on letting churches use schools grounds.

That DOES affect the Boy Scouts more than the Cub Scouts, since (in my
experience) the latter tend to meet in homes, while the former meets in
schools -- at least, that's the way it worked in my neck of the woods when
I was a kid. I think it's because the Cubs tended to be run by Den Mothers,
who (in the little conservative dreamworld) are more comfortable in the home,
and the Boy Scouts tended to be run by fathers, who (in that same dreamworld)
are more comfortable outside the home.

response 39 of 174:

Sep 29 16:22 UTC 2000

First: Whatever. I didn't see this claim, but then, I may have missed it.
Second: For my part, I characterized the BSA as a pseudochurch, which is
different from a "Christian youth group." I'm not sure whose comments you were
responding to, though.
Third: Every Cub Scout troop in my neighborhood when I was growing up was run
by women. Every one. The Webelos troop and all the Boy Scout troops were run
by men. *shrug* I don't know what the national averages are. And if it's a
non-sequitor, why comment on it?
Fourth: That's opinion, not fact. Unless you have IQ tests on file...?
Fifth: That's opinion, too, actually. Do we really want to go into the
hackneyed conversation of, "The Bible wasn't written in English, and all the
translations are faulty in some way"? Also, cite where in the bible it says
that two men (or two women) can't be married... I'm interested in where that
could be found. Sure, we COULD have a biblical discussion on the Sin of
Homosexuality, but that's hackneyed too. In short, one MAY make an argument
that homosexual acts (but not homosexuality itself) violates one of the
Commandments. Of course, if you go back and read your bible carefully, you'll
find that adultery isn't in the final set of Commandments that Moses receives
anyway... those are the dietary laws, mostly. ;}

Sixth deserves a couple of spaces.

OH MY GOD! How can ANYONE be so BLINDERED as to say "There is no religion that
can condone practicing homosexuality"? You want a few? first off, there's a
growing contingent of Christians who believe that homosexuality is not a sin.
Second off, *MY* religion (Wicca) says that not only is there nothing WRONG
with homosexuality, it's perfectly 100% okiedokie acceptable.

So sod off with your fundie bias, dude.

response 41 of 174:

Sep 29 17:42 UTC 2000

Why does religion have to be involved with BSA?
It should be about the kids and having them get involved and some
adult attention.