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NJCubScouter

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Posts posted by NJCubScouter

  1. The Bear book covers almost everything the boys can earn (other than participation patches such as Pinewood Derby, Blue and Gold, or events that you decide on your own to make up a patch for.) You didn't specifically mention the Bear badge itself and the arrow points, but you did mention Progress Toward Ranks, so I assume you have the basic achievements and electives covered since they are the focus of the book.

     

    One thing you don't mention is the World Conservation Award; that is in the Bear Book. It is earned by completing certain achievements, plus a conservation service project. Which achievements are required depends on whether the boy earns it as a Wolf, Bear or Webelos.

     

    Another thing you will find in the Bear book are the religious awards, though these are not worked on in den or pack meetings. The boys earn these individually working with their families and religious organizations, and they are actually awarded by the religious organizations.

     

    How about the Whittlin' Chip? The requirements for this are in the Bear book (and not in any of the other handbooks, though I suspect that will change in the new editions of the handbooks that are expected out next summer.)

     

    There are also other awards such as the BSA Family Award and Physical Fitness Award. I am not sure whether these are in the handbooks or not.

     

    But if you are following the Bear book, you should not miss anything significant.

  2. Before this thread disappears, just for the record, I never said nor suggested that anyone was going on a "sex tour," a phrase I am not familiar with but I guess I understand what it means. If anyone did suggest that, it was the person who started this thread with the title "A whole new meaning to "Be Prepared." However, I think the title was an attempt at humor and was not making the suggestion of a "sex tour" either. My post about the gay issue was also mostly an attempt at humor, by the way, which I thought was in keeping with the title of the thread.

  3. I see no reason why the FOIA would apply to the BSA. As you say, it is not a governmental agency. It is a corporation, though with a charter granted by the U.S. Congress, rather than a charter from a state government as most corporations have. (Local BSA councils, to my knowledge, would be state-chartered not-for-profit corporations, and they also hold a "charter" from the BSA, though the word "charter" is being use to mean 2 different things here.)

  4. fella says:

     

    But for a boy or girl with an earring I think it's no big deal, so many of them get their ears pierced these days.

     

    I didn't say earrings are a "big deal," either on males or females, it's just that it annoys me a bit, and I fail to understand why anyone would do it, especially for a man or boy. I know it is a "fad," but it's like my mother used to say, If your friends want to jump off a bridge, it doesn't mean you have to do it too. (I think everybody's mother said that.) I'm sure that my attitude is partly a generational thing, and partly the vicarious pain I experience when I see that someone has added an extra hole(s) to their head. It may partly just be me too, I don't like wearing any jewelry, even a watch. I wear my wedding ring only because of the threats that have been made against me if I were to stop wearing it. :)

     

    As for girls wearing earrings, it is more difficult to explain my irritation about that. It is not a generational thing, because girls were wearing earrings when I was a boy, though the average age has probably gotten younger. That particular annoyance mainly applies just to my own daughters, though I recall once when visiting my wife's brother's house, and his wife had had their daughter's ears pierced, and she couldn't have been more than 6 months old. I just thought it was stupid, but fortunately I caught myself before verbalizing my opinion.

  5. Rooster says:

     

    Homosexuals came after BSA, not the other way around.

     

    How do you get that? The BSA banned gays, and enforced the ban, before any gay person or group took any legal action. If you're claiming the ban always existed, it did not. If I recall the history from the "Dale" decision, the first evidence the BSA was able to come up with that gays were banned was an internal memo from the late 70's. I don't think there was any public statement until the early 80's, which I believe was in response to the first lawsuit.

     

    To look at the most "celebrated" case, that of James Dale, the BSA definitely "came after" him, not the other way around. He was minding his own business and apparently, had never even mentioned his orientation to anyone connected with his troop. He was involved in a seminar somewhere and word apparently got back to council, and the next thing he knew he got a letter terminating him from the BSA. He started to follow the BSA appeal process up the line but was told that it was basically futile, so he filed a lawsuit. He came one Supreme Court justice away from winning, too.

     

    Rooster also says:

     

    Have you ever written policy statements? If so, you would realize, the more you write the more you will need to write some more. In other words, people use written policy statements to find legal loopholes. The more you put on paper, the more people will try to use that document to achieve their own selfish goals vice the goals of the organization. Apparently, BSA hired some lawyers who were smart enough to know that.

     

    I have to laugh at that one, because in fact the BSA lawyers (who I agree are smart, and I would add, crafty, clever and shrewd as well) have found it necessary to rewrite the "policy statement" a number of times over the past 25 or so years, before they "got it right." If you read the "Dale" case and the various things that the BSA has posted on its Web site over the past 2+ years that I have been following this (not sure if they are all still there), you will see that both the scope of the ban has changed at least once (from "known or avowed" to just "avowed")and that the "justification" for it has been revised a number of times. The first few times it was for legal purposes, and then after the Supreme Court decision, the changes were for public relations purposes.

  6. OGE, good points and thanks for the quotes. I have to wonder how this all works even for boys who DO have physical exams. Medical exams are fine for the more "traditional" things like hepatitis, t.b., etc., but what about HIV? As far as I know, HIV tests have not become routine for 11 year old boys. And someone can have the virus for years with no symptoms.

     

    And one thing you quoted from the G2SS concerns me: The reference to persons "suspected" of having a life-threatening communicable disease. I can see if a boy is coughing all the time or something, but for most diseases I am not sure how a non-medical person would "suspect" someone of having such a disease. Some people are too suspicious; I'd be concerned about giving them the power to exlude someone based on a suspicion.(This message has been edited by NJCubScouter)

  7. I don't think the subject of how to handle personal information has ever been mentioned in any training, roundtable, memo or anything else I have attended or seen. I was not aware of the "rule" on notification about communicable diseases until I read the first post in this thread. There should be some formalized instructions about this, especially now that privacy is becoming a larger and larger concern. If nothing else, I'd like someone to tell me how the health forms should be handled. For myself, I have never had any interest in reading them, we just collect them and have them in a big stack. Sometimes the people running the Cub Camporee want them, sometimes they don't. Peoples' personal information is being handled in a pretty cavalier manner.

  8. By the way, I never noticed it before, but the original post in this thread mentioned, in addition to extra holes in one's head, and tatoos, the issue of "baggy pants." I'm not sure why this would be a problem, as I was not aware that the BSA has begun making uniform pants in a "baggy" style.

     

    I'm half-joking, I know that uniform pants would not necessarily be worn on an outdoor activity anyway, though if baggy pants were showing up on my camping trips, I would consider making the uniform pants a requirement at all times. Now, this comes from the ACM of a Cub pack in which nobody wears the uniform pants, not the kids and not the adults. (Don't start with me on this, it's the wrong forum anyway. :)) When I was asked to write our pack's "guidebook for parents," the committee decided we would not force everybody to go buy the pants, so I wrote this: "The uniform pants are not mandatory in our pack. Any pants or jeans that are in neat condition are acceptable." If any baggy pants started showing up, I guess we would probably declare them to be "not neat." Or otherwise we would delete what I wrote and change it to (in essence): Go buy the pants.

  9. Gee Rooster, that is a great argument for local option, not just on bodily mutilation policies, but also for... well, I won't say it, because this is not the "Issue and Politics" forum. But you know what I mean. Rhymes with "may." Heh, heh.

  10. Eisely's post made me think of a question: What does the BSA ask in this regard, if anything? I have filled out "Class 1" medical forms for my son, but I don't recall it asking about communicable diseases, or specifically about AIDS (or more generally, immunodeficiency conditions.) The last time I saw the full-scale medical form (Class 3?) was when I was going to summer camp in the 70s, and if course I don't remember what it said. AIDS and HIV had not been discovered yet anyway.

     

    I know there is a very short health form on the back of the Cub Scout youth application. I assume the Boy Scout application has the same. I do not have either in my possession at the moment. I will check, though, to see if the Cub Scout application asks anything about this.

  11. I think Rooster's position can be boiled down to 1 or 2 sentences, this way: Even if scientists proved that people are "born gay," homosexual behavior would still be a "sin," and I guess more to the point, it would still justify exclusion of an openly gay leader from the BSA. If a second sentence is necessary, it would be that the born homosexual can avoid "sin" by abstaining. If I am oversimplifying here, please let me know, but I don't think I am.

     

    So: We're starting from the hypothesis (which I understand you do not accept, which is why it's called a hypothesis) that gay people are born that way. You say it doesn't matter, it's a sin. But where does the concept of "sin" come from, and who defines what is a "sin"? I assume you would say that the answer to both questions is "God." But since you also believe God made us (and makes us), wouldn't that mean that God made gay people gay? Wouldn't it further mean that God wanted a gay person to be gay? And wouldn't it further mean that God did not have a problem with a gay person behaving as God created him to behave?

     

    Rooster, when you respond, I wouldn't bother referring to the Bible. Since I have shown that your hypothesis (gays are born gay) means that God doesn't have a problem with them being gay, then the Word of God can't possibly declare that homosexuality is a sin. God wouldn't declare his own work to be a sin, right? That leaves only 3 choices where the Bible is concerned: One, it is not the Word of God; two, it is an imperfect rendition of the Word of God; three, what we today call the "Bible" contains misinterpretations and mistranslations of the original text that result in condemnations of homosexuality that the original author (or Author) never intended. I assume you would choose the third one, and there are articles that an Internet search will reveal, that will explain how all of the alleged Biblical condemnations of homosexuality are based on misinterpretations and mistranslations.(This message has been edited by NJCubScouter)

  12. OGE, medical privacy is not an area of the law I am very well-versed in, so I did a bit of research on the Internet. The first thing I learned when I did my search is that the acronym is HIPAA, not HIPPA. As I have said before, I make as many typos as the next guy, but when I do a Yahoo! search and it tells me "You might want to try 'HIPAA' instead," I just figured I'd mention it. :)

     

    I found a good site with a basic explanation, at www.hipaadvisory.com/regs/HIPAAprimer1.htm

     

    What this site tells me is that the HIPAA requirements apply to "health care organizations." It makes clear that an "organization" can be a 1-physician office, but in other words it must be some person or entity involved in providing the patient with health care. I looked at several other sites and none of them contradict this, most of them specifically mention doctors and hospitals, and more generally, "providers."

     

    The basic idea seems to be that when you give a health care provider information about your health for the purpose of obtaining diagnosis or treatment, or the provider learns information about you in the course of providing diagnosis or treatment, the provider is prohibited from providing that information (without your consent) to anyone, with certain exceptions.

     

    That being the case, I don't see how HIPAA could apply to this situation at all. The BSA (including a unit) is not a health care provider. Therefore, BSA would not be subject to HIPAA. I don't think this is a mere "technicality." The purpose of the law (I think) is so that people will feel that they are able to get medical treatment without the whole world (including their employer, or a company wishing to sell them products, for example) knowing about their condition. If you choose to give personal information to the BSA, there may be BSA rules about what happens to the information, but I don't think "The Law" gets into it.

     

    Another way of looking at it is that the health care provider exists to provide you with health care, and has the means to provide you with that care confidentially without unduly endangering anybody else. If you have a communicable disease, the doctor or hospital can take steps to provide you with care while protecting others from your disease. The BSA, on the other hand, exists to provide a youth group (but see note below) with a particular program. The interests of the "group" require that nobody with a deadly, communicable illness be in the group without other members knowing about it. (Note -- 2 words: Lone Scout. I realize it doesn't provide the "group" experience but at least the boy could get some benefits from the program. Maybe his one friend could join also.)

     

    Interestingly, the story doesn't really say how the Scout troop came to know that the boy had AIDS. The mother may have told the troop, so that the leaders would know, but asked that nobody else be told. It does not appear that the leaders went around telling everyone, instead they apparently just told the mother that BSA rules require disclosure, and therefore if the boy joined, it would have to be disclosed. Although I am a big believer in "privacy rights," I don't see anything wrong with this BSA rule, in the limited context of a deadly, communicable illness.(This message has been edited by NJCubScouter)

  13. Rooster, I don't completely disagree with you. If a boy's appearance is "intimidating" or if it really does cross the line into "self mutilation," I think that adults who have responsibility for the boy outside the home do have the right to say something. Maybe even the obligation, if it's that bad. (Of course, if it's that bad, I don't think you're telling the boy or his parents anything they don't already know, and I doubt the boy is in Scouting at that point anyway.

     

    So the real question would be where the "grey area" begins and ends. I suspect we would probably disagree about where that is.

     

    Maybe the main point is, I highly doubt that you would tolerate another adult taking the same role toward your children than you apparently want to play with other peoples' children. For example, take this statement from your first post in this thread:

     

    If parents dont like that opinion being expressed, I dont think they can do much about it - unless the chartering organization doesnt share that opinion.

     

    Rooster, if another adult leader took that attitude where your child were involved, I'm pretty sure you would be screaming blue bloody murder, as we used to say in the neighborhood. I can just see it now, "Well, if Rooster doesn't like what I said to his son, there's not much he can do about it." Admit it, you'd want the guy's head on a platter.

  14. Eisely, that's a pretty mean-spirited Christmas Eve message, isn't it? I realize you couched it in "positive" terms by offering it as a "prayer", but the phrase "the folly of trying to undo the good that others do," shows your true intent. That would be the case even if I agreed with you that Merlyn is trying to undo the good that anybody else does, which I don't. If I did a numerical analysis of his posts, I suspect that about 30-40 percent would be statements of issues already decided by the Supreme Court, and his statements in that regard are, to my knowledge, always correct -- though several members of this forum choose not to accept what the Supreme Court has decided, and has repeatedly confirmed, through both "conservative" and "liberal" regimes. Another 30-40 percent of Merlyn's posts are statements of what he believes courts will decide in the future. About half the time I think Merlyn is engaging in wishful thinking in these posts. And on the balance of his posts, I agree sometimes and disagree sometimes. I probably agree with him more often than I agree with some of the other regular posters in the "Issues and Politics" forum.

     

    So Eisely, you can include me in your backhanded "prayer" as well, if you'd like.

  15. Kwc: "Capture the flag" in the dark? Hmmm, I wonder what the "Guide to Safe Scouting" has to say about that one. Even if it says nothing specific, I suspect it has some statement to the effect of "use the sense God gave you." Since, as I recall from my Scout days, capture the flag was generally played on rough, wooded, hilly and often rocky terrain (otherwise how are you going to hide your position from the other team), doing it at night does not seem to comply with the "rule of common sense." And that's regardless of whether there might be a boy around with a blood-borne communicable disease. Also, with regard to HIV and AIDS, remember that AIDS does not always show up right away. There could potentially be a boy with HIV in every Scout troop in the country, and nobody would ever know... but the other members of the troop would still be at some risk of contracting HIV, and eventually AIDS, and nobody would know until it's too late. One more reason not to play capture the flag at night, I guess.

  16. First of all, everything else aside, what a terrible story, and what a terrible thing that this man did to a child. An 11-month-old child, and his own child -- the mind just reels. What he did was, in a way, worse than killing the child outright, though I guess that raises a philosophical question that I can't answer. What is indisputable is that this man has killed his own child, in slow-motion, and has robbed him of his childhood, and eventually his life as well. Imagine being 11 years old and not only going through the agony of a debilitating disease that leaves you exposed to cancer, among other things, but also knowing that you have already lived past when the doctors say you should have died.

     

    As for the BSA, if there really is a national policy that the other participants have to be notified, I can't disagree with it. If the story is to be taken literally (always risky when reading a news story), the boy was not excluded from a troop because he has AIDS; what the troop did was to turn down his mother's request that his condition be kept confidential. I agree with the BSA that when you are dealing with a "deadly, communicable disease," the "right to know" of other participants outweighs the interest in confidentiality. This boy does not merely have the HIV virus, he has "full-blown AIDS." His mother is probably correct that the boy is more at-risk from the other boys than they are from him, and that with precautions, the other boys can be protected, but that isn't really the point. The protection could never be complete, and there is no "margin of error" with AIDS. If you get the HIV virus, you are at very high risk to get AIDS (I don't know the percentage, but it is my impression that it is somewhere in the 30-40 percent range), and once you get AIDS, you're dead. There aren't too many other diseases that present those kinds of numbers. I don't think it is enough to tell parents what kind of precautions should be taken "just in case" there is a child around who has AIDS, I think they have the right to know which specific child it is.

     

    And I also disagree with the mother in her comments about the "gay issue," I don't think one has anything to do with the other. Unfortunately, her son has a communicable, 100 percent fatal illness, and I don't that that should be kept secret from other parents. I do have to wonder how they handle it in the boy's school, where the other children are at greater risk than the other boys in a Scout troop would be (because they are around him for a greater period of time) and where, I'm guessing, some of the boys in the same troop probably also attend.

  17. I said:

     

    Well, it's good to see that banning gays has caused all Scouts and Scouters to follow the straight and narrow path of strict morality.

     

    And Korea said:

     

    NJ: cheap shot, big time. Does every issue have to be related to the BSA gay ban for you? Lighten up a little bit, Atlas, set the world down off your shoulders for a few minutes, and enjoy life. You don't know me, my Scouts, or my brother SM who's going, or the values we model. I do know my Scouts, and they're not going on a sex tour. Neither is my brother SM, who's a loyal husband, dedicated father, excellent middle school teacher, a swimming coach, and a heckuva guitar player too. Please don't paint us with your broad brush.

     

    Korea, I'll let the assembled readership decide, after reading these 2 passages, which one of us needs to "lighten up and enjoy life."

  18. Rooster says:

     

    I do object to the Scoutmaster who would promote these things to the boys. Even if their worthiness was not a subject of debate, a Scoutmaster should not be using his influence to promote fads or fashion. His duty is to help build character.

     

    In other words, Rooster, you think it is fine for a Scoutmaster to express his opinion, even though such expression may contradict the boy's parents, as long as it is YOUR opinion. In this case I happen to generally agree with your opinion, but I don't think that either of our opinions are the proper basis for a policy that says when it's ok to, in effect, tell a boy that his parents are wrong. If a boy's parents have approved something and you think it's in "poor taste" or is disrupting the troop, I think the issue is between you and the parents, not between you and the boy.

  19. I personally hate the whole piercing and "body art" craze. I didn't even like it when my wife allowed our daughters to get their ears pierced. Now my oldest daughter (age 20) has a pierced navel. Her boyfriend has tatoos and earring, and yesterday he got his eyebrow pierced. I think he is an idiot. (Of course, I thought that already. :) ) He and my daughter spent about a half hour fooling with some sort of cleanser for his eyebrow to make sure it didn't get infected. I could have told them they could avoid infection much more easily by not putting extra holes in their heads, but of course nobody listens. My daughter was talking about getting more piercings herself, and I made my feelings heard in no uncertain terms.

     

    But that is my right as a parent. I am not sure where a Scoutmaster's "place" is in all this. Rooster, let me ask you this, what if the Scoutmaster has tatoos and or an earring (and is a man), and thinks it's a fine idea for kids to do the same? Is it is ok for him to express his opinions too, even though it may go against what the parents believe?

     

    I do agree that there is a "line" and that the swastika goes on the other side of it. I have my own Scouting "swastika story". As many of you probably know, the swastika also is a Native American symbol, although I am not sure whether the "arms" point the same way as the Nazi version -- I have heard it both ways. Well, when I was a Boy Scout, I remember going on a district camporee, and when my father (the Scoutmaster) received the patches for our troop, there was a picture of a teepee (tipi?) with various Indian (as we said then) symbols on it. Including, well you guessed it, a swastika. (Pointing the way it pointed in Nazi Germany.) My father, who is not only Jewish but also a WWII-Europe veteran (though never in combat), and knew some guys who never came home from fighting the Nazis, had an absolute fit. I don't recall him swearing, which he almost never did in front of us kids, but he said (loudly) almost every other thing one can possibly say to indicate displeasure. He protested to the district and several steps up the line, I think he was on the phone with the SE at one point threatening to call the newspapers if something wasn't done. There really wasn't anything that could be done, the patches had already been distributed. But I think the council did eventually send out a letter of apology to all the troops, mentioning that anyone with a stitch-ripper could remove the swastika from the patch. I think my father had already had my mother remove the swastikas from all the patches for our troop before distributing them. It didn't make the patch look very good, but the designer should have thought of that before he put a swastika on the patch.

  20. The "religious exemption" probably does not apply to the BSA, but it doesn't matter. Under the "Dale" decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, New York's new statute cannot constitutionally be applied to the BSA. New York's statute is, in meaning if not exact language, the same as the New Jersey statute involved in the "Dale" case. I read the New York statute and it does include "public accomodations" in the list of "places" where anti-gay discrimination is prohibited; it is the "public accomodation" section that the New Jersey Supreme Court said was applicable to the BSA.

     

    The "Dale" case gives a state high court, facing a similar case, two choices: One, find that the BSA is not a place of public accomodation under that state's law, in which case the statute probably doesn't apply; or two, find that the BSA is a place of public accomodation, in which case applying the statute would violate the BSA's First Amendment right of "expressive association," so the statute cannot be enforced in that instance. Either way, the result is the same.

  21. Kwc, you have a point, you usually don't know what a person is actually thinking. But, like a baseball manager deciding whether to send in a righty hitter against a lefty pitcher, you generally play the percentages. This comes into play more in picking a jury, and there are stories about lawyers who excuse a potential juror based on their profession or other characteristics, lose the case, and then find out later that the person probably would have been in their favor. It does sometimes factor in when deciding whether to try to get a judge disqualified from a case -- which is very difficult.

     

    Ironically, if I were a judge, an attorney representing a gay person, who found out that I was a Cub Scout leader, might very well want me off the case. The lawyer really would have no way of knowing that I oppose the anti-gay policy -- not that my feelings would influence how I would deal with a particular case.

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