Eagledad

>>Speaking for myself, the answer would be 'no'. Did you suddenly think you are clairvoyant? >So what I ACTUALLY 'meant' was that I hope I live long enough to see the day when gays, transgenders, and others who are the object of prejudice based in fear and ignorance can be ACCEPTED in society, at least to the extent that they have rights equal to the rest of us.

Any scout in our troop can organize a trip outside of the troop program. There are no age, rank or leadership reqirements or restrictions except G2SS and camp restriction to be part of the crew. The only requirements the troop committee ask are a written plan and a roster including adults. They can plan as many trips as they want. Just tell GO! Barry

You are confusing instinct and behavior. Humans have the ability to reason and choose to not follow instinct. The whole idea of a values youth program is teaching boys how to make moral and ethical choices. Read the BSA vision statement. Gods morality is consistent for all time. That's why it is the perfect reference for humans to behave in peace and equality, if they ever decide to choose so. Even an atheist understands one set of rules for everyone that never changes establishes a peaceful world. Barry

I understand this is emotional discussion for you Scoutfish, but you are still missing the point. Well get back to that in a moment. First I must say I disagree with just about everything you said. I don't think man or animals are born counter to their instincts, which are survival and expanding the population. A little study of human physiology shows that physical homosexual attraction makes no sense to our human instincts. So homosexuality must be emotional, and if it is emotional, it can be controlled by choice. This thing about the SM kissing his wife is silly. I understand some here reaching for anything to debate the point, but I was disappointed to see Acco jump in, he usually stays away from such things. Kissing a spouse, family member or even close friends as a form of greeting or departure is a tender shows of affection or respect. It is as acceptable in our coulture as hugs, shaking hands, and giving high fives. Just think how popular someone would be if they restricted such actions of families before and after campouts. And you miss thar point completely. Also, to say an adult should keep there personal life out of scouting takes away the important part of the relationship we develop as role models. The whole idea of SM Confrenses and BORs is to get to know the scout better. Is it not supposed to be a two way street? If you have any hope of developing respect and connecting with your scouts, you have to open up. Ironically, suggesting that everyone in the BSA reframe hugs kisses, shaking hands so gays can participate does point how some folks are so willing to take away the freedoms of many to pacify the few. Isn't that really all political correctness does. But as I said earlier SF, you are missing the point. All you, Acco, Pack really want is the freedom for a SM to give that affectionate kiss goodby to their partner of the same sex without the fear of being kicked out of scouting. Right? You speed so much time turning phrases, disqualifying everyone else who disagrees and searching for loop holes, you miss the main point that what you really want is for a SM to be able to openly and in public kiss their partner of the same sex goodby. And you can't have that because it is considered immoral. But that's all you really want. So why not just disagree and leave it at that? I admit your rant on morality didnt make sense to me. I'm sure the was a point in there somewhere. Barry

>>The $64,000 question is why do these units exist, and others can't pull it off. Weak-kneed leaders is my answer. SMs are so afraid of losing boys if they ask them to wear the uniform or show up and participate.

>>A SM telling the scouts that he has the habit of kissing his wife before he leaves for work is different from that same SM telling scouts he kisses his husband. Why?

>>then why would a transgendered SM be affored an opportunity to talk about their experience?

>>>>But I would rather let them speak for themselves rather than rely on me to do it for them.

Well Mr. Boyce does kind of touch on something I was wondering about the other day. Packsaddle gave an example of the complicated life of transgender folks. I think at some point Pack said he hoped to live long enough for such people to be seen as normal and even that the BSA would accept them as normal. Not his words so much, but that is what I think he meant. After I read that, I wondered does that mean all people are normal now and there is no such thing as mental illness? What does it take anymore to be considered mentally ill if transgender is considered normal? Hopefully pedophilia is still a sickness, but what about those who desire animals or corpse. They arent hurting anyone really. Transgender is normal? Ive said before that the acceptance of homosexuality in a culture is not a problem in of itself, it is indicative of a culture that has morally lost itself. Morality has become what one feels at the moment. Not just in ones sexual desires, but also in the integrity of our day to day decisions and intentions. We are lost. Personally I feel for these folks in todays world because many people need professional help and wont get it because when it comes down to it, politics wont allow it. Yep, weve come to a place where its becoming politically incorrect to consider even a person who wants to physically change their gender ill. Packsaddle hopes one day that a transgender person might be SM. I hope one day they will get the help they need to feel satisfied to be who they are. Barry

Wow, that was well said BP. I must admit, I don't really understand what stosh is trying to say, but the replies are really good. Barry

>>Mommy and Daddy are screaming at me the next time they see me because their prescious little angel almost starved to death. Before everybody jumps down my throat, I've tried all the classic approaches, educating the parents etc......many troop operate like weblos 3 and it just doesn't work.

Haven't had this with a scout, but we did with an adult volunteer that was asked to leave. When the SM of the troop this adult joined after us called me, I told him anything he wanted to know. It wasn't a long discussion because the SM already saw the problem, he was just verifying it. The SM of the troop after him also called. The SM of the troop after us didn't ask the adult to leave, but it was coming. I do think safety is important and its good to learn the history of troubled folks, or if there is even a troubled history. I am not sure of the fear of imformation here, but scouting is hard enough without mistory clouding the job. Barry

>>And yes, there is indeed some irony in "respecting the beliefs of others", while not actually allowing the chartered organizations to freely choose leaders according to those beliefs (some of the COs are fine with homosexuality).

>>And I'd be stunning, too! Now if, say, Eagledad (sorry, I feel like picking on you for this...no special reason) suddenly found himself single and attracted to me. Would he be gay? Should we be allowed to marry? Or do we just 'live in sin'?

>>Healthy is not limited to nor does it define heterosexual. Look at all the child abuse, spouse abuse, cheating, fornicating and lustfull heterosexual men and women. Look at the preists who had their jollies with the young men. All were Hetero no?

>>Sheesh, how many times do I have to write this....there ARE gay scout leaders. There always have been.

There is some misinformation and confusion here. The Judeao-Christian movement that was the basis for setting the moral standards of western civilization defined marriage as the covenant union of a man and woman. It's not about law, it's about a committed relationship that is the source of a healthy moral family. Key words there are healthy family. Marriage laws were created by the government mainly to protect children, not to make money. Back in the day it was to prevent family members from making families with family members and so on. I really don't think they thought that Billy would want to play mommy and Bob play the daddy. We have advanced? LOL Gay activist don't care about marriage, it's of no advantage to the cause, they are pushing to repel the laws to sway future generations into using mans morality to make moral decisions instead of Gods morality. But it is a big step toward defining text in the bible as hate speech. One that's done, freedom of religion in The United States is gone. It's already happening in Canada. Oh by the way, I learned this from an gay activist way back before the Supreme Court decision with the Boy Scouts. Going after the BSA was part of their attack against religious doctrine. The decision was a big setback for them, but hitting the marriage act was already in action anyways. I remember the activist saying they could really care less about Scouts or religions, it's all about the gay movement and anything that professed homosexuality as anything less than moral was a target. Oh, I read where Europe views attacking the marriage laws as stupid and purely political because just like in the US, gays have equal rights to non gays. Barry

I think its much more complicated than that. My kids did the best with teachers that cared. And I could certainly tell the difference between the few that cared, and the ones that didnt. All our kid's teachers knew my wife and I by name and they knew we watched grade trends because we called them now and then. We found not all teachers want that much of the parents participation. I personally blame the system that doesnt reward good teachers and sorts out the bad ones. Could that improved? Not without a dramatic change in the union. Do parents make a difference, you bet. Even as scouters we know a scout will get more out of the program if the parents are part of the team. But how many teachers even encourage that. Well you have to admit the other parts of the system like litigation beats them up pretty good. While I know its frustrating for teachers dealing with uncaring parents, I know that the school system beats them down even more. My older Eagle son is in his third year of teaching High School English. In his first year, he taught in a school that was 40% Hispanic, 30% Black or African American, 10% Asian, and the rest every other culture. He came home scared for his life everyday and almost quit teaching that year. Now he teaches in a school that is 80% Hispanic, 10% Black and 10% everybody else and he loves his job. The difference between the two schools is the Black culture. He said they as a culture are angry, lazy and hold no respect for any kind of authority. Not only do they not want to do school work, they get mad at the teacher trying to make them do it. The school he teaches at now is considered one of the most difficult in the state. But he said he enjoys working with the Hispanics because they do respect authority. AT least enough that he doesnt fear for his life. The point Im trying to make here is the Hispanic and Black community (culture?) dont have respect for education. They see it mostly as something they have to burden with because of the law. But they (parents and students) dont see themselves needing or using education because they dont view their future needing it. My son says out of his five classes of thirty students, he would have at most six parents visit on parents day for each class. So that leaves the white and Asian communities. And that is interesting, Asian communities are known for their strict discipline of education and my son agrees that the first generation children from Asian immigrants are very strict and very disciplined. The parents are part of the teachers team to the point of pushing the teacher. But he said the second generation is less disciplined with the 3rd equal to whites. And that is doing the work to get the passing grades, but not excelling to be the top of the class. The 2nd and 3rd generation have figured out just how much than can get away with. The parents are also not as involved. There are a lot of things that will have to change, but the top of my list are a reduction of litigation threats to the schools and teachers, and a noticeable accountability of good and bad teachers. Then, I think we can start going after the parents. Barry

Stay the same. Barry

>>Never had to skip lunch. But we had heard stories from the older scouts.

This is a very good question that most of us deal with at one time or another. There are a lot of factors involved in a troop program, but the vision of scouting is to develop men who make ethical and moral decisions based from the Scout Law. Sounds simple but Im not sure that simplicity alone motivates boys to action. We also need to keep in mind that for a person to change his habits, he must personally make that choice. Otherwise they will continue to make the bad choice, which sounds like your problem here. And this is frustrating for adults because what we naturally want to make the choice for them by just ordering them to do the chore. Which takes us back to if they dont personally choose to change their habit or attitude toward the task, they will repeat it leaving the adults or PLC to continue making the choice for the scouts. Rarely anything good comes from that vicious cycle. So we must learn and develop the skill of giving satisfaction to success and annoyance to failure. The troop needs to develop the program around rewarding right choices, and more importantly annoyances for wrong choices. No matter how big or small the task or decisions, the troop must provide constant conditions that tell success from failure. I know nothing about your troop program accept that the scouts dont feel part of a team and they dont feel motivated to succeed. What you have to do is change those two things. I remember when our young troop struggle with scouts that were in no hurry to help break camp. By accident, our troop got in the habit of stopping by a store somewhere on the way home for a junk food hit. We also always told the parents a time to pick up their sons back at the church. We, the SPL and adults, decided to let the lazy scouts be lazy. It because obvious at some point while just standing there and waiting that the troop was going to leave very late. When a scout ask the SPL about it, he explained parents would be waiting, so we would skip the junk food stop. I cant tell you how much that changed the atmosphere of breaking camp for years after that. It also changed how the adults approached the troop program. Once they started the habit of success, they seem to like and try to keep that success. While the junk food stop was the initial signal of success, the performance of completing the task on time quickly replaced that junk food motivation. Success of meeting the expectation of being on time was the vision of success and the scouts learned to work as a team to reach that success. I am a big believer in schedules as great teachers of making good choices. Our PLC had schedules for everything because shedules are clear indicators of success and failures. A schedule should be tight enough to force a patrol to work as a team and also clear enough for the scouts to see when they succeeded and failed. For example, our troop on campouts typically assembles for daily activities around 8:30. That means the patrol had to work as a team to get up, cook breakfast (we cooked all meals accept lunch), do KP and clean camp, and then assemble as a patrol by 8:30. If they failed, they missed the activity. Is your schedule allowing the scouts too much time? Will they know when they have failed? Will they be annoyed by failure? What satisfaction will they get if the succeed? Scouting is not as easy, especially a boy run program where the scouts are themselves supposed to learn from their choices. Good scouting takes practice and we adults need to always learn from our choices to get better at helping scouts grow from their choices. I blathered on a little long. Let us know how you deal with the problem. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

No Cherry Picking, I just didn't want to include the full text of both post. I read all your stuff again and I'm still unclear what Hondo has to do with EDGE and how that encourges youth leaders to step up. Isn't Hondo representative of no training. Or are you saying we should teach the scout to swim then throw him in to see if he sinks? Isn't that kind of a pseudo Hondo/EDGE approach? Barry

OK, I can see how this can become a confusing discussion. >> Your "Hondo" approach is pure leadership, literally sink or swim! If you don't know, you had better figure it out and figure it out quickly! These are leadership skills! I always use the Hondo approach first and if it doesn't work out in the best interest of the boy, I will supplement it with a wee bit of guiding suggestions, but I do every little with the management methods, including EDGE.> I'm a firm believer that most boys fail because they weren't ready/prepared in the first place. Boys will step up naturally if they feel themselves prepared and knowledgeable.

Still sounds personal and local to me. I do know of Eagles hired off the street because of their Eagle, but it was because of the person hiring, not HR. I am sure HR is also personal and local, but my experience with them is that they basically sort out applications and resumes to whittle the list down to the few most qualified. I have a lot of personal experience there. I dont know the Eagle ever helped at the HR sorting level, but once the application got down to the one on one interview, it makes a difference. We just have to agree to disagree. If it is a local thing, then Im glad I live where I live. Barry

>>The Eagle still does not have the pull it once did 20 or more years ago nationwide, that is the sad truth.