Jump to content

Merlyn_LeRoy

Members
  • Content Count

    4558
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

Everything posted by Merlyn_LeRoy

  1. | If the local public schools (PTAs, etc.) allow BSA back into the schools, they may offset these losses. We'll see. This doesn't change the legal issues with public schools, since the BSA still excludes atheists.
  2. Well then, I don't know what you meant by "true majority", since there's no real data.
  3. So, do you have any real poll that shows how the majority feels?
  4. Stosh complains about the minority ruling the majority, unless the majority votes the way he doesn't like, then he complains about that.
  5. I could have sworn a majority voted in this change.
  6. Atheism has nothing to do with citizenship. Some religious people refuse to say the pledge (Jehovah's Witnesses, for one -- see Minersville School District v. Gobitis and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette), plus there are members of BSA units who are citizens of another country, and having them recite the pledge could actually be considered a crime in their home country (since they would be pledging allegiance to a foreign power). So you can't tell using either of those.
  7. No, atheists just don't believe in gods. Gods aren't the only suggested way that a "higher level of existence" can be true.
  8. So you don't think that Russell T. Davies exists?
  9. Any BSA unit that is considered a public accommodation is required to admit atheists.
  10. I'd say those are out-and-out lies by the BSA's lawyers, so the BSA could look like it was "forced". "Dale was a narrow 5–4 decision that balanced the government’s interest in protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation and the BSA’s right protected by the First Amendment to select its own leaders." No, the Dale decision said the BSA was a private organization, so it could discriminate in any way it liked. "There is no national determination of whether the BSA is a place of public accommodation." The supreme court ruled the BSA was a private organizat
  11. Fearmongerer, as in "I am sure the new membership will not look kindly to that song"?
  12. I don't see how the BSA's changes make it into something else instead of remaining a private organization. Private organizations can exclude, include, or have some mixture of admitting gays or anyone else, and they can change these rules. What kind of change makes it into a non-private organization? What does it turn into, a public accommodation? Something else?
  13. Graham Chapman seemed OK with it. He was gay*, you know. (later he amended that to 75%/25% bisexual, favoring males)
  14. How is that supposed to happen? Lower courts are restricted by case law, including supreme court opinions. The BSA still says it's a private organization, and if they want to allow some units to allow gays and other units to decide for themselves, that doesn't change what the BSA is. Only the supreme court could reverse itself.
  15. Well, you brought it up just when the BSA made a gay policy change, when a similar change by the GSUSA had no effect on membership, so I'd say you did it only to inaccurately slam the GSUSA.
  16. Looking at the years immediately following when the GSUSA stated that gays and atheists could join (1993), it didn't affect their membership numbers at all. Are you trying to claim their recent membership drops are a 20+ year delay?
  17. I was responding to people who think litigation will result. The only parts mentioning litigation were about employment: The Scouts will also on Monday bar discrimination based on sexual orientation in all official facilities and paying jobs across the country, heading off potential suits. The rest of it just reads as the usual social pressure.
  18. No, that's over employment, which has been subjected to the 1964 civil rights act for half a century. That has nothing to do with church-chartered BSA units.
  19. What if they are married, not just claiming to be?
  20. Looks like the BSA still has a blind spot where discrimination against atheists is something other than religious discrimination: http://scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Religious-Organization-Protections-Memo-062915.pdf All other leader requirements, including “duty to God,†would remain in effect for all chartered organizations. ... The decisions concluding that the BSA is not a place of public accommodation all predate the decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, and the most recent decision is from 17 years ago. The conclusions in those decisions are largely
  21. There are plenty of baseless lawsuits, but that's true no matter what. The BSA hasn't changed from a private group to a public accommodation, so bringing up the possibility of baseless lawsuits is just a scare tactic -- before, there was the possibility of baseless lawsuits, and after, there's STILL the possibility of baseless lawsuits. Hey, maybe if the BSA changes the official uniform, that'll spur some baseless lawsuits.
  22. Do they not have Lone Scouts any more? The BSA website still refers to the program: http://www.scouting.org/About/FactSheets/LoneScout.aspx http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/02-515.pdf
  23. That doesn't resemble the BSA situation at all. The state of Illinois told Catholic Charities that they couldn't both accept state money for adoption services and discriminate; Catholic Charities sued and lost, so they closed down. They could have either continued with state funding and not discriminate, or without state funding and discriminate, but they didn't choose either of those. The BSA is (finally acting more like) a private club; they can discriminate. Allowing gays in some units won't change that. The national BSA has backed up BSA units that don't allow women SMs, and a
  24. What's the CO? If it's a church, they won't lose.
×
×
  • Create New...