gregharewood

Hi, I have a Scout here in my British troop who needs to make some international contact in the next week or so in order to make his Chief Scout Gold award - the top award in the Scout section here. I promised to sort him out with a contact in a foreign troop, but all my previous contacts have failed me. Can anyone help? Our original plan was to have him organize a patrol to patrol online gaming session - FPS or Steam or MineCraft or something with voice chat to get to know each other. But frankly, at this stage I can accept just having some conversations to explore options with some

Mr Boyce, you are being ignorant. That's not meant as a personal attack. But you are wilfully ignoring the statistical evidence and other academic and scientific opinion, some of which has been mentioned in this discussion. You also talk about redefining homosexuality - you are even managing to misunderstand the word. Homo means same in Latin - i.e. same sex. There is not, nor has there ever been in the definition any implication of paedophilia, nor any sense of 'perversion'. I suspect you are associating the two simply because you consider them both to be immoral or different to what 'p

@OldGrayEagle I find it a minority of Brits that have negative views of Americans. Please don't take anything I've said negatively. It's hardly surprising that it can be hard to convince some Americans that there is anything worth seeing beyond the border. The benefits of seeing how the rest of the world live can seem a little intangible when in most material (and meteorological) ways at least it is going to appear inferior. But there ARE benefits, and that is really my point - that Scouting should be pushing those things. B-P very clearly expressed a desire that boys get to

Chug, I don't mean to say that Europeans travel for the right reasons, but they DO travel and they do acquire a wider experience as a result, albeit as an accidental side effect. :-)

I think it's futile to argue over whether America is insular or not - simply because to do so ignores the vast variation in culture and people across the country. The wife and I are looking to move back to NorCal at some point - we loved it when I worked there for three years and can't think of anywhere we're rather live. Our friends there were well-traveled, mostly because everyone in the area is very globally minded and I worked for an international company. But I also met some very insular locals. And that insularity can be more pronouced in other States. Only 27% of Americans have pas

WOSM - Bought and paid for by LDS. And that's why in so many discussions about inclusiveness in UK Scout forums, I end up advocating that the Scout Association leave WOSM. It would be a sad day, but we've moved forwards. BSA seems to have taken a surprisingly different route to a great many other Scout Associations on so many issues. When we modernized a few years ago, I think we did look around at the best of what other countries did. How much do you guys compare yourselves critically to Scouts elsewhere?

Barry, I shouldn't have stated 1 in 10 as fact, though I had thought it was most accurate. When I was kid, people quoted 1 in 30 as fact. Are you saying 1 in 3 with some gay experience or tendency? Seems a little high, though I agree that many more than 1 in 10 have a moment, or experiment. Tolerance. Ahha. Yes, I can see your point, when you relate the word to "tolerate", meaning shut up and deal with it without liking it. But I put it to you that progression to using "acceptance" is not a done deal, and language can follow a different path in different places. Sometimes wo

"I believe I would be fine using a tent situation where 8 people bunk together as a full patrol, and you are not segregating male from female, then I would not see a reason to segregate the openly gay people either.. But we have tents of two, and currently do segregate male from female, and Adults from youth. With those rules and with two men tents, I don't see why you would not seperate openly gay also. Just seems like a logical flow of how we operate..." Mostly for the same reason that you don't separate out the black kids ("African Americans") and make them sleep separately. While

Hi Eamon, A bunch of interesting observations - I want to pick up on this one... "I have had some fairly in depth conversations with guys in prison who have been convicted of molesting little boys. They claim they are not gay. " One of the most poisonous issue with homosexuality in the US does seem to be that people still think there is some correlation between being gay and being a paedophile. I'm sure it seems like a natural conclusion to someone who thinks they are both equally disgusting and sinful, but it has no basis in fact and is incredibly corrosive. There seems to

Nice to meet you, moosetracker! I was a counselor in '91, and it wasn't a BSA camp... it was a 10-week regular Summer camp, mostly Jewish. http://www.pineforestcamp.com/ I can see how some men or boys might be uncomfortable in a tent with other gay men or boys, but I haven't come across it myself. Most people seem to deal with it fine, and the kids will usually take their cue from the attitudes of the adults around them. I can't say whether it's a cultural difference that just has be deal with or whether you smooth it over with education. Homophobic is a funny word. It's not

Some of these discussions seem paranoid and old-fashioned.... but to be completely fair, they are the same sort of discussions that I guess we went through before going co-ed in the 90's :-) I can't tell you that you're wrong. I can't tell you that the British model would work for you, because there are other genuine differences.... - We are less militaristic and more pastoral, often with smaller troops, so hopefully we know our individuals better and who will get on with whom - Hazing has never been a big problem at most Clubs, schools or institutions. - We have a different age