BadenP

qwasze I do not agree that in a coed crew the males and females operate independently, that is not the case in our crew of 75 youth or any of the other crews we associate with. 5scoutmom has hit on an interesting conflicting point in the rules, a legally married couple can bunk together on trips in scouting, even Venturing, it does not matter if one is under 21. In our council the SE has taken the position that the married couple rule supercedes the under 21 year old association rule, these cases are indeed rare but it does come up once in a while.

I have to kinda of agree with Eagle 732 association with an organization is not the same as being one of its leaders. A good friend of mine who is a priest and I have had discussions about the Catholic Church. He told me that even many of his own parishioners look at him with distrust, he says attendance and offerings are really down since the pedophile reports became more widespread. It is really sad to me that he has to take the flack for the actions of his brother priests who hide in the shadows and protection of a code of silence among the church clergy. The BSA leadership is going t

F-scouter Frank I am always thankful that you are no longer working with any youth in a scout unit since you are such an old crumudgeon as to what the youth in scouting really want, or the kind of trivial things you think are SO IMPORTANT to maintain the integrity of scouting like in this scenario. Get over yourself already, scouting is ALL about the youth and not your own personal mandates of what it should be.

Pere Your comparison to all Catholic troops of long ago is no longer valid and no longer relevant to this discussion, and the AHG in practice does hold to a very regimented ultra conservative type of Christianity, since they discuss why all Christian sects do not go to heaven, and do not consider LDS to be Christians. So you are wrong on that point as well. SR540 That is where the BSA is totally hypocritical since the granting of those charters to groups that restrict membership to only those members of their own church violates the principles of the DRP, and why in my opinion why

SP The BSA is a nonsectarian organization open to all faiths, as well as promoting the understanding and tolerance of other faiths. Your scenario is just openly false and prejudicial, and goes against the DRP of the BSA. This is why the BSA association with the AHG is just a bad idea and will come back to haunt them.

OGE I think you really are confused. We are not talking about "tweaking the program" here, or changing/altering/deleting requirements, which is what you seem to be alluding to. This is about putting a few extra rank patches on the back of a sash, hardly a foundational shattering of the scouting program. The MB sash from my youth has all my rank badges sewn on it, as well as my camp patch, BSA lifeguard patch, POR patches. My uniform is long gone, donated to a new scout coming into scouts as I was leaving. So in essence my sash is the record of my time as a boy scout, and the only ite

Fred I have to disagree with you, the rank patches on the back of the sash show a record of the scout's journey in scouting. No harm or foul, IMO.(This message has been edited by BadenP)

My old troop did the same thing as Annies troop does, on the back of the sash neatly sewn on in order were the old rank patches. The kids wore their sashes for inspections by the UC and at district and council camporees and no one ever said a thing, and no uniform police were crying foul. Sometimes you can get way too anal about trivial things, scouting is for and all about the boys (not the adults), and some adult leaders need to remember to not sweat the small stuff.

Nike hit the nail on the head about AHG, "It is first and foremost a (so called Christian?) ministry outreach program." They are struggling to get themselves well connected with larger youth organizations to prevent them from disappearing all together. In my area they have gone from five troops down to one, which is really struggling to stay alive. The reason some former youth members directly told me what that all their group was doing was constantly praying and being lectured to about how non Christians were "All going to hell." These girls parents expressed to me their grave concerns about

Oak The Royal Rangers roots go to the Dutch Reformed Church here in America where they felt the BSA was not religious enough and too inclusive, not in keeping with their own beliefs. From what I have seen and experienced with the AHG they are agressively trying to get on the fast track to growing quickly, they still are a relatively small organization. They are almost forcing their way into churches that have active GSUSA troops telling pastors, my own church included, that the Girl Scouts are "AntiAmerican and AntiGod". This nonsense allowed them to break into two Catholic churches in my

It is just another negative against the National BSA that will only cause them even more grief and could cause some severe problems in getting those big contributions in the future. No matter what some others (SP,Pere, etc.) may think there is NOTHING that the BSA will gain from this alliance, just more bad publicity and more losses in membership. I hope Wayne is getting ready for an early retirement because at this rate he will not make it 3 more years.

Pere It is indeed you my my friend who is wrong, Tampa T quotes Pope Benedict to disprove your point, the Catholic Church does support evolution. Additionally try reading Pope John Paul II's book Crossing the Threshold, it will open your eyes to many other things that YOU mistakenly think the Catholic Church holds as absolute truth. pack- Sorry but there were no humans during the Cretaceous or Jurrasic periods walking the earth.(This message has been edited by BadenP)

Pere You are grasping at straws and pseudoscience once again. Are you aware that the Catholic, Episcopalian, Anglican, ELCA Lutheran, Methodist, Presbytarian, etc. hierarchies ALL accept the scientific evolution of the earth scenario as truth, with the addition of an intelligent creative force, ie God, guiding the process. If almost all of the mainstream Christian Churches are in agreement then your arguments become the voice of a very small minority who build Creationist Museums and show modern humans and dinosaurs coexsisting at the same period in time, and truly believe the entire worl

Pere YEC is illogical and not empirical, it can not be proven, whereas using scientific dating methods science has proven the earth is billions of years old. That is a proven fact instead of some misread and misinterpreted scripture, which has been redacted and rewritten hundreds of times over the last milennia, and which is the only support YEC has to support their position. As a minister I really have to feel sorry for those poor souls who put all their faith in one passage of the creation story in Genesis and use it to try to persuade others that it is scientific fact. However it is no

SP Well it looks like you got your wish with the BSA endorsement article in the latest Scouting magazine touting the praises of the American Heritage Girls. An organization that excludes non Christian girls and indoctrinates/conditions their members in their own particular/peculiar brand of Christianity. Still with these perversion files scandals and a total lack of accountability or future vision by the National BSA they are still batting zero, and the extent of the fallout remains to be seen. By the way a friend of mine in Seattle has his daughter in the GSUSA there and he is openly and w

Eagle92 I could not disagree with you more in this particular case. The woman was investigated and found innocent and the kid was found to be a habitual liar, in what universe is that just cause to revoke her membership? These facts were known and there would be no backlash as you claim. Yet the SE showed POOR judgement and no common sense in his decision which is why SE's should not be the ones making these decisions in the first place, they are not trained law enforcement or are they lawyers. The BSA is in the mess they are now because they felt they could keep it all in house in dealin

SMB I gotta tell you, you really are making mountains out of molehills here. Our crew have had three incidents of so called fraternization and all three were dealt with amicably with no disruption of the crew. Start treating these adults as adults instead of kids, which too many crew leaders do,explain the situation as you see it, and you may be surprised what they come up with as possible solutions. That is one reason IMO why many SM's make lousy crew advisors, they can never seem to get out of that "boy scout mentality" and run their crews like troops, which is a recipe for disaster.(Th

I have not seen any scouts selling popcorn outside of stores in our area for almost five years now. Then just the other day at my local grocery store there was a small group of young boy scouts selling very enthusiastically and giving out samples. Many people treated them rudely, one guy even pushed the scout away from his cart insulting him at the same time. It was sad to watch these kids take this kind of crap for no reason. The same kid who was pushed aside came up to me as I came out of the store, gave me his sales pitch and a sample with a big smile on his face. I was so impressed by his

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Twocub I agree with you 100%, Venturing program does need to be tweaked even more, however in my council at least Venturing is growing, our crews are strong, well supported, and together we put on a great program for the teens on both a unit, district, and council level.

SR540 is very correct, many if not most CO's are nothing more than a signature on a paper with little to no involvement with the scouts they sponsor. If the UMC really does decide to drop sponsorship of all scouting due to liability issues I fear it will start a potential avalanche of churches and service organizations following suit, just to protect their own interests. Personally I think BSA National needs to step up quickly and in a big way with a plan that protects both the youth and the CO's interests or face a very uncertain future.

Callooh BSA24 made some very good points to debunk your own propaganda which you do in reply is to pull out your same old rhetoric of the leftist vs right wing politics. Of course when all you read is wikipedia and use only that to support your views I can understand why you are so confused and misinformed. As others have said the BSA was founded by some of the avid conservationists of the day and has always been one of the centerpieces of the program which renders your argument irrelevant.

The saddest scenario for me about this whole mess is I had some friends over for dinner the other night and in my den they saw some of the scouting awards I have received over the years, and a couple mentioned to me, "Why are you even involved with an organization that does nothing to protect their youth, I am very glad we never allowed our sons to join boy scouts." Some of the others chimed in agreeing, none cared about YPT saying it was way too little and way too late. My two sons were there, both Eagle scouts, tried to defend the BSA but the others told them "You two were just lucky I guess

JW It is obvious to me by your post that you, like OGE, are not a Venturing leader or have ever dealt with this matter directly so your sentiments while well intentioned are not really realistic, and your solution would result in the crew losing both members, and possibly others. I agree with you that YPT in this matter concerning Venturing is poorly written and extremely outdated in both scope and practice.

Eamonn and Schiff Both of your posts are exquistly crafted and plainly stated. Bravo!