Lisabob

I am not a fan of geezer rock. There should be an upper age limit on live performances for rock stars, I'm thinking age 60? Half the appeal of rock stars is that they're young and have a lot of hair - and not in their ears, either. The commercial with the guys from KISS grossed me out almost as much as the thought of a wardrobe malfunction involving Pete Townsend does. Just ick. Commercials, now I liked the doritos one with the bark collar, and the budweiser clydesdales (sappy, but its just part of super bowl to me). The green police made me laugh, esp at the end when they pulled over the other cops. But I couldn't tell you what it was for?? Had to explain the Stevie Wonder thing to my son, but my husband and I thought it was funny. The bud light and go daddy ones were just dumb. And not even funny-dumb.

That is a pretty good article. I think it portrays the issues, views, and conundrums of both sides of the debate pretty well. Should be mandatory reading prior to anyone's first post in the Issues&Politics forum, I think!

Just a friendly reminder that the BSA is not a Christian organization. I am happy for you, Balloo, that you find guidance in the bible, but you should not expect all other BSA members to share that outlook.

Scoutfish, I am sorry but you are incorrect. Public schools, by their very definition, are government entities. If you do not believe that, start doing some research. As for this statement: "Some were founded by very religious and some were athiest" Please point to the American colony/colonies founded by atheists. I used the Mass. Bay colony as an example of religiously-oriented founders who, none the less, often argued about separation of church and state because I wanted to make the point that even before the present Constitution was drafted in 1787, notable Americans were talking in clear terms about "separation of church and state." If you want to limit the discussion to people who were in Philadelphia in 1787 when the present Constitution was being drafted, fine, but do you think they were intellectually divorced from their forebears? In fact, many of the "founders" that you are talking about would have been extremely well-versed in this same discussion because they, themselves, had participated in these discussions in their state (and previously, colonial) governments. The specific words "separation of church and state" are not in the 1st amendment, it is true. But there is plentiful historical evidence that this phrase and its meaning were well known to political leaders in the 1780s and earlier in our history.

Scoutfish, your statement that: "Nobody ever intended for religion to be banned from government." is factually incorrect. One can go right back to the mid 1600s and study the history of the Massachusetts Bay colony (a group of intensely religious, Christian, Protestant, individuals, who left Britain because they disagreed with the King's religious pronouncements and the Church of England) and read the history of the religious and political leaders of that colony. These folks WERE founders of the American colonies and yet, many of them believed that governments ought to stay out of religion. The idea of "separation of church and state" actually pre-dates the first amendment in American history. A fun read on the topic is "The Wordy Shipmates," but there are other, more scholarly works on this matter as well. This is not to mention what many of our "founding fathers" in the sense of "guys who helped to declare independence from Britain and/or helped draft the Constitution we have now" had to say on the topic. Sorry. Study history more before you make such claims. With regard to your question, in another post, **I** have a problem with public schools chartering scouting units. The government is not allowed to discriminate on religious bases. I believe that the BSA does exactly that. I have come to my own terms with the BSA, hope to advocate for change from within, and ultimately believe that it does more good than not, but it is still a discriminatory organization (and yes, the Supreme Court seems to have opened the door for it to continue doing so). As such, I do not believe that government entities like schools have a legal, constitutional ability to sponsor BSA units. I would most like to see the BSA drop its discriminatory practices, so that schools and other gov't orgs could, once again, sponsor scouting groups. In the interim though, the BSA cannot have things both ways. If the BSA wants to retain its existing membership standards then the BSA cannot realistically expect government sponsorship. That might be a minority viewpoint, but it is by no means a lone view point within the scouting movement.

No, Ed, but it does appear in the writings of many of our founders, going all the way back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. Prohibitions against gratuitous wire tapping or the police reading your mail just for fun don't appear in the Constitution either, but governments still cannot have laws that allow for those behaviors.

Perhaps I have read into what Vol wrote, Beavah. I based my interpretation on my recollection of past posts where I think that Vol has espoused the view that the "establishment clause" does not really mean "separation of church and state" in the way that is commonly accepted in Con Law discussions. And I also am aware that this is a common thread among many conservative Christian circles, when discussions of religious freedom and the first amendment arise. So I thought (and still think) that's what he was talking about. I do not dispute that the BSA has a right to hold a religious position. Regarding your posts, I was talking about government entities, like schools, police depts, etc. The free exercise clause doesn't grant those entities a right to exercise any sort of religious belief.

I would encourage you to see whether there are other cub packs in your area. One way to do this would be to call your council, ask to speak with your District Executive, tell them where you live, and ask them for contact information for several packs. What you are describing is not common, in my experience. Due to the volunteer nature of scouting, I think it is fairly common for there to be some ups and downs, but most cub packs that I am familiar with - even the struggling ones - have better programs than this. If you look for a new pack, a couple of things to ask about: 1) How often do dens meet, and what have they done in their last 3 or 4 den meetings? 2) How often does the pack meet as a whole, and what is a typical pack meeting like? 3) Does the pack actually have separate dens for each rank (Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Webelos) or do they have some or all of the dens meeting together (a sign of lack of leadership in some cases) 4) Who are the Cubmaster and Committee Chair, and are they going to be around next year? 5) Does the pack do any camping at all? 6) Does the pack participate in cub scout day camp or cub scout resident camp in the summers? 7) Where do most of the boys in the pack come from? For example, in many towns it is common for each pack to recruit primarily from their "own" elementary school, based on neighborhoods. There might be a couple of packs within just a few miles of each other, if you live in a larger town. You might be able to pick a pack where your son's neighborhood friends are also involved. 8) Since your son is already a Webelos - ask about the pack's relationship with local boy scout troops. Look for a pack where boys routinely do cross over to boy scouting, and where there is some positive interaction between the two levels. Good luck! I hope your son has a better experience, soon. And when you do find a good spot, please do look for ways to help out, too.

Baloney, Beavah. Look at any Con Law book. It is certainly not something I am making up and it is not novel. The free exercise clause is NOT about government entities being able to practice religion. The recent 1st amendment case about corporate free speech/campaign finance is quite different, as I am sure you are aware, from a scenario in which government might be construed as a practicing religious entity. Further, that case involves the question of whether corporations - not government - should be treated as legal individuals (and while I disagree with the outcome, the S. Court ruled that corporations are "people" in the eyes of the law). I believe that what Vol is referring to is a belief, in some conservative Christian circles, that the "establishment clause" is a fiction made up by liberals, intent upon restricting individual religious freedoms. While I disagree with this approach and also don't believe that the Supreme Court's rulings are consistent with this approach, Vol's approach is none the less quite different from what you appear to be suggesting.

vol, the free exercise clause applies to individuals and means that individuals have the right to hold any religious belief that they wish to hold. That, however, has nothing to do with whether or not government entities can sponsor religious organizations.

You, scoutfish, are lucky. You don't need to make a big deal about your sexuality because society has given you the "thumbs up." Nor, presumably, do others (who may not even know you) make a big deal about your (presumed) sexuality. You are probably not denied basic services or dignities or rights (marriage, access to health care via your significant other's insurance plan, custodial rights, etc) on the basis of your sexual identity. You are probably not called derogatory names on the basis of your sexual identity. You are able to participate as an ADL in your son's cub scout experience expressly BECAUSE OF your sexuality, yet you don't have to defend yourself in order to do that. You don't need to worry about whether your son's friends' parents will allow their children to play with your son after school, based on your sexual identity. You have probably never had to worry about being assaulted or worse, killed, because of your sexual identity. Yup, you can live your life without having your sexuality define who you are in the eyes of other people. You are lucky.

Ahem, could I request that you all continue the argument about legalities either in the LDS thread or here, but not both? I really can't see a point in duplicating that discussion in both threads. (Shoulda known it would devolve to this...so much for asking a simple question)

That's a pretty funny story and sort of sad, too. Here are some of my (quasi-random, haven't finished coffee yet this morning) recollections on how we made our B&Gs work better. After having some similar types of experiences to yours, our pack opted to provide the main course and just have the families bring sides. That way we could be sure that there would be enough of something, at least. Like some others, we assigned sides by den, giving Tiger families the easiest things we could think of (often, paper products instead of actually cooking). We seated people by den and called people up by den. We expected the Den Leaders to help enforce this. We had servers. We also came to the realization that trying to do anything while people were being served or eating would not work. One year we had a Friends of Scouting presentation during the serving time. I was so embarrassed, because no one ever pretended to listen to the poor fellow. Do presentations and awards at the beginning or the end, instead. We sometimes did ours as a break between dinner and dessert. We moved to having a "Macho Man Cake Bake" and using the cakes for desserts, rather than the pack buying dessert. (We gave the kids a theme and declared that everything used to decorate the cake had to be edible) Every cub was invited to bake a cake with the help of an adult man in his life (dad, grandpa, neighbor, who ever, just not mom). The first year I was sure that we'd get three cakes for a pack of 40 boys but they LOVED the idea and practically every boy brought a cake. The tradition grew from there. Part of the fun was that we displayed all the cakes all night, and the kids spent quite a lot of time looking and talking about whose was whose, and plotting for what cake they wanted a piece of. It really was a blast. We ended up removing the "hired entertainment" and other side shows from our B&G in my last year with the pack. Not that magicians and acrobats aren't fun, but our B&Gs were getting ridiculously long and expensive. So we switched to simpler stuff, and the kids still had a really good time. That also put the focus of the night back on our kids, where (personally) I felt it really belonged. You don't need a pony ride at every birthday party!

Merlyn, I understand that the list comes from the BSA and so you can only be as specific as the list, itself, when it comes to parks & playgrounds as charter orgs. Too bad the list isn't more detailed in that category though - it seems quite odd. So I wonder, Merlyn, what your group's perspective is on VFDs as charter orgs? Is this a group of units that you believe to have been wrongly, even illegally, sponsored by gov't institutions? Ed - it is quite common for statistical indicators to lag a couple of years behind. Collecting, organizing, and publishing data is time consuming work. #s for 2008 cannot really be fully collected before year-end, meaning that they can't be published until sometime in 2009 at best. That assumes an efficient organization, and we all know the BSA isn't the most efficient bureaucracy on earth, especially when it comes to data management. Don't blame this one on Merlyn.

~rolling my eyes~ Beavah, let us not get overly pedantic here. I have not spent a whole lot of time investigating how the data was collected and it could be that there are various selection bias issues, I truly do not know. Nor am I going to spend time, today, ferreting this out. But it isn't just the "young" part - it is the "young + inexperienced" part that leads people to hypothesize a particularly important connection between young drivers and distractions from additional passengers. This could be (might be/might not be, but could be) different from the distracting impact of additional passengers on a more experienced driver, and/or on a more experienced and older driver with better developed risk awareness and judgment in life, generally speaking. Is that a bias on my part against the young? Too bad. Reality is that we restrict people from all sorts of things based on age in this society. Anyway the more general point is that there are limits on young drivers in place in many locales. These limits might actually conflict with the timing of scouting events, or the practicalities of traveling as a larger group with lots of cars. My first take is that how a scout gets to and from a weekly troop meeting is not the scout leaders' concern; it is the parents' concern. My second take is that how scouts get to events where the troop is arranging transportation, becomes somewhat the troop's concern, and there might be a bunch of practical reasons why troops would decline to encourage young drivers from driving - even if the scout is driving him or her self.

(I tried to spin this off, but I kept getting error messages.) I realized that I had contributed to the hijacking of the thread discussing a possible decline in LDS numbers (or declining growth in numbers, or whatever it was). So, with apologies to the original thread discussion, maybe we can continue talking about COs who are of unclear gov't origin as sponsors, here. In particular, I am curious about Volunteer Fire Depts and "playgrounds." I know we have units in my district sponsored by VFDs. I know, as well, that various DEs in the last 5 years have strongly advocated for more such units, sponsored by additional VFDs. I am talking about traditional units (packs, troops, and crews) and not LFL units. Back when I was doing district membership stuff, I raised concerns about the appropriateness of Fire Depts as COs with various scouting professional staffers. They claimed that the voluntary nature of the VFDs in question made them more like PTOs than like gov't entities. And while the fire fighting equipment and building was paid for primarily by taxes (hence, it is gov't equipment), the assertion was that scout groups aren't prohibited from meeting in public places where tax-funded equipment is present (like schools), so why should they be kept away from VFDs. Also, scouts weren't using the equipment and in some cases, weren't even meeting at the fire halls, but instead were only chartered by the VFD and held their meetings elsewhere. I never quite bought the "VFDs are like PTOs" argument, but I heard it plenty of times. Now about playgrounds. Merlyn, do you know of any actual "playgrounds" that sponsor BSA units? Or is this just an aggregate data category (playgrounds & rec centers) that you can't parse any further? Not trying to give you a hard time, just trying to understand this. Setting aside rec centers, which are at least entities with a staff and therefore have agency, how would a playground actually sponsor anything? Maybe a hypothetical group like "Friends of City Park Playground" could sponsor a BSA unit. They would be able to provide an actual person as institutional head, and a Charter Org. Representative. But that would be legally acceptable, wouldn't it? Such a group would not be any sort of a gov't entity, but instead a private citizen group of people who support the park through more ways than just their tax dollars, and who also support scouting.

I do not think there are any prohibitions regarding cub dens sitting around a campfire and enjoying themselves. Snacks, silly songs, stories, etc. are all more fun around the fire. We used to do a pack camp fire night, always a very enjoyable evening. When we combined it with a recruiting event, it went over very well. With young fellows, of course there's fire safety issues to pay attention to. (and hey, that's true of older fellows, too! I know some adult pyros who need close supervision...they get a little carried away sometimes.) And teaching **little** kids how to start/build fires is, as you say, probably not the best move (I think this is what is referred to in the age appropriate guidelines). But sitting around a well-tended, safe fire? I hope you enjoy yourselves! By the way Scoutfish, I seem to remember fire safety rules being covered in ??BALOO?? training (it was a few years ago now, I am not 100% certain it was BALOO but I think so). If you haven't already done BALOO, it probably would be useful for you. (This message has been edited by lisabob)

I can understand where the idea of the post dated check is coming from, but I still find it a little sad. And if it had been my son's pack's policy, he would have sold no popcorn. We, as a family, simply couldn't have taken the risk that he'd get stiffed by people and we'd end up personally footing that bill. As it was, my son sold over $1000 of popcorn in for 3 years in a row as a cub, and personally accounted for nearly half the popcorn the whole pack sold, in one of those years. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but that approach would have turned us away from selling anything.

I don't know whether the LFL units are included in Merlyn's list, but there is a post in my town that is sponsored by the police station. There are also some volunteer fire dept. packs, troops, and crews in my district. I don't know whether those are considered "law enforcement," or whether the voluntary nature of the fire depts makes this acceptable. But I do know they exist.

I agree that the business of kids getting to and from weekly meetings is really beyond what this policy is about. It seems most of us agree that young drivers should not be driving other scouts around, and there is plenty of statistical evidence to back this up (accidents more likely when the number of teens in the car together increases). Of course when we talk about statistics we are talking in general terms, and I am certain that there are plenty of kids out there who are very conscientious, safe drivers. Still, by definition, younger drivers are less experienced drivers. In most normal circumstances, that should trump any arguments about "tired leaders." (broken legs, heart attacks, and bear attacks not withstanding) If your leaders are too tired to drive then you either need more leaders, or better planning. The answer here isn't to expect your older teens to substitute as drivers in most cases. This is also why we are expected to do various safety trainings and fill out tour permits, so we think these things through when planning outings. So the policy, to me, seems to be a backstop for common sense. I think most scout leaders and most parents are going to be uncomfortable with having children drive other children around. Some scout leaders, though, do appear to lack common sense from time to time, hence we have these policies.

I may regret this but... Playgrounds as charter partners? I have never heard of that beyond this board. I notice that Merlyn has used that example a few times over the last couple of years and I do not doubt that he has some specific examples to back it up. I wonder, though, if it is something most of us (or any, or many, of us) who are active in scouting have seen in our localities? So I ask: Who here is personally familiar with a BSA unit that is chartered by a playground?

bear dad, Glad to hear you are leading the way in terms of training. It can be challenging to get other adults to commit to attending, but generally speaking, it is worth pursuing with the rest of the pack leadership. Otherwise you will be the only one who has the knowledge, and that can put you at odds with others in terms of vision for where the pack is headed, and also how to get there. Plus it puts a big burden on you, personally (if you are the one and only BALOO person, for example, guess who gets to go on every pack camp out! What happens if you are sick, or working, or whatever.) Couple of things you might try to see about getting others to commit to training. 1) personal invite and offer to go together to some training session. It is surprising how many people wouldn't go alone, but will go if you go. 2) team up with the CM or CC or both, so the training message is coming from multiple people and not just from you. Some would say 'oh that's just bear dad' and blow you off, but when asked by the CM or CC or both, those same people might sign up for training after all. 3) If your pack has a unit commissioner (district volunteer assigned to help your unit identify resources and set up a solid program), your commissioner could be invited to visit an upcoming pack leader meeting to extol the virtues of whatever upcoming training is approaching. Sometimes hearing it from an outsider helps and a good UC is the 'voice of experience' on stuff like this. 4) Round Table. If you can get even one or two other pack leaders or parents to go to your district round table with you, they will (hopefully) meet and be impressed by the knowledgeable and friendly scouters in your area. They'll also be more receptive to attending a training session if they've met some of the folks who are likely to be part of the training team (many of whom often attend Round Tables too). If you are really sneaky, you will even let the Round Table folks know that Joe Smith from Pack 123 is coming to next week's RT and Joe needs to be told about the upcoming district Cub Leader Training (or BALOO, or whatever). Good luck, and keep on doing what you are doing.

I would only like to add that it was not the ACLU that "drove" the BSA from public schools. When the BSA asserted in court documents that it is a religious organization, it brought this result upon itself. If the BSA was too short-sighted to see this coming, well then they needed to buy a better class of lawyers who could explain to them the consequences of their actions. But my guess is, they knew this would happen and opted to go down this road anyway, because that was the only way they could successfully argue that they are not a public accomodation, and could therefore invoke the 1st amendment assembly rights to keep gays out of scouting. No point in blaming this particular result on the ACLU, whose primary interest is in upholding the bill of rights.

Again I would encourage you, Scoutfish, to talk with the risk management, shooting sports, and professional staff of your council about this. You will find that BSA policies on cub shooting sports activities are not unclear. They go beyond what is written in the "age appropriate guidelines." They are well documented. You just need to read the additional documents. Nobody is going to win an appeal of a beltloop for archery or bb's on the basis you describe, because BSA policy is clearly written on these issues. Whether one likes the policy or agrees with the policy is a different issue, but a partial reading and twisting of one small subset of policies isn't going to void the much lengthier and extremely clear expectations spelled out in additional BSA policies on the matter. If you are in doubt, talk to the people in your council who handle these things, and get a copy of the shooting sports guide for cub scouts. Better yet, sign up for your council or district's next range training. I promise you, you'll get bludgeoned with BSA policy on this matter so as to avoid any confusion in the future.

Oh now come on. You want to (hypothetically) pursue this matter as an advancement denial? Over a belt loop? I don't think that makes a lot of sense. You'd end up burning an awful lot of bridges over something, and you'd probably still lose. If you want perfect internal consistency, BSA documents are not going to please you. But the policy on shooting sports for cubs is rather clear. If you are in doubt about it, talk to your council's risk management folks, and to your DE, and to your district or council shooting sports folks. You just won't win on this, no matter how "right" you might feel.