NJCubScouter

What Calico said. A "council investigation" is probably not enough, especially if your son turns 18 in the very near future. The Guide to Advancement has a specific procedure for requesting an Eagle BOR "Under Disputed Circumstances", and I am pretty sure the "disputed circumstances" include a unit leader and/or committee chair refusing to sign either the Eagle application or the project workbook. That seems to be exactly where your son is. He should finish that merit badge, get as many signatures in the project workbook as he can, and make the request to council.

Thank you Richard.

It is a shame when people leave, but the fact (on this and every other Web site) is that people leave and join the forum all the time. They leave for all sorts of reasons. I myself left this forum once, for something like 1.5-2 years. I came back. I just don't see a person or two or three leaving in a huff as a crisis. Unfortunate yes, crisis no. And it is not something new. And sometimes it is just an April Fool's joke.

First of all, with all WHAT concern? Second of all, the "warning point" system is a feature of the "new" forum software, and the moderators have never really used it on a systematic basis. I think I used it once on a "borderline" spammer. I don't know whether any of the other moderators have ever used it. For "regular" members of the forum it is better to handle these things through email. For spammers where the situation isn't borderline, we generally just ban the account. Although recently there has been no spam. I think the human spammers and maybe even the spambots have figured out that our "approval/disapproval" system prevents the spam from being seen by anyone but the moderators. I'd say it has worked very well.

There are Aviation Explorer posts.

We're not in a race here. And I don't think the forum should be in a position of "saving people from themselves". The forum owner (who is the person who decides what sub-forums we have) seems to follow a policy of treating forum members like adults who can decide what they are and are not going to read. (I do realize that there are some under-18 members here, but in fact they are treated like adults here as well.) I don't have a problem with that. Of course, anyone who wants to write to Terry and propose a change in the forum is free to do so.

I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Maybe it's because I work in a profession where people don't play pranks much, because if they do it usually costs somebody money, or worse. Only in my "online life" (which is basically this and Wikipedia) was yesterday April Fool's Day. Even my son doesn't prank me anymore, after he got me once on Annual Talk Like a Pirate Day. (Suddenly our home computer had an odd penchant for the letter Ahhrrr.)

All I can say is that if there are offensive private messages being sent, they have not been brought to the attention of this moderator.

This is what "uniform" means in 2016, I guess. Maybe we should start calling it a Somewhat Similar instead of a Uniform. (Which reminds me of the old lawyer line, How can you call this a Brief? It looks more like a Length to me.)

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me I&P has been relatively tame the past few days. Stosh, if you're leaving completely, sorry to see you go.

That sounds like a good issue for you to take up with your local state representative, if you're so interested.

Last summer I had a client show up for a hearing in a federal courthouse in shorts and flip flops. I could not believe it. Fortunately the appearance was not in a courtroom, it was in a meeting room and present were two other attorneys, the client and myself. Needless to say the rest of us were not wearing shorts and flip flops. Nobody said anything about it, but given that the client was the one who was "on stage" at this meeting, how are you supposed to take someone seriously when their attire is so ridiculously inappropriate for the situation? Makes me wonder, if he wears shorts and flip flops into a federal courthouse, what does he wear to the beach? And this guy is around 50 years old. (And by the way, the shorts were not even "casual dress" shorts, they were cutoffs. The flip flops were not from a formalwear store either.)

We have had some parents ask if they can buy less expensive pants if they are the same shade of green. We tell them yes. Unfortunately this experience has taught us that some parents, and some Scouts, are evidently colorblind.

I don't think the issue is what you, personally, would expect. Some holidays that are religious in nature are also legal holidays, for various purposes. If, for example, you were a teacher or administrator working for my local school district, you would have Rosh Hashanah (just the first day, not the second day) and Yom Kippur as paid days off, assuming they did not fall on a weekend. Wouldn't matter how much you wanted to work, and it wouldn't matter how Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, deist, pantheist or whatever you were. The schools are closed. And we are not a majority-Jewish district, I would estimate maybe 5% of the teachers and probably 10-15% of the students are. The schools have been closed on those days since long before we moved there. And when a group of Hindu parents recently petitioned the school board to close school on their Festival of Lights (Diwali), they were turned down. Most people who I have talked to about it believe there are probably more Hindus than Jewish people in the school district, but that's the way it is. It probably will not be that way forever - either the schools will be open on the Jewish High Holy Days or the closures will expand to one day of Diwali and probably the holiest Muslim day (called Eid, I think?) You know, Stosh, as much as we disagree on many things, I think you are an intelligent person, so I am pretty confident that you know that that is not a valid analogy.

Well, as I understand it, Hindus do believe in God (although they probably use a non-English word instead of "God", just as Muslims and many Jewish people do), it's just that they believe in more than one God. As I said in my post a few minutes ago, I don't feel any need to get into the 100th discussion in this forum of where Buddhists fit into the Duty to God requirement.

I don't think that makes any sense. Christmas is a legal holiday. If you work in a field where there is work to be done on Christmas or any other legal holiday, and the law or company policy says you get paid overtime on legal holidays, you get what you are entitled to. It has nothing to do with beliefs and it is not hypocritical. Just wondering, would you say the same about a person who is Jewish? (Christmas has no religious significance for me either, but since my wife is Catholic, for me it is a "family holiday" as well as a legal holiday.) Or Muslim? Or Hindu? (Notice I didn't say the B-word, we don't need yet another tangent in this thread.)

My attitude is, what's so difficult about wearing the uniform? I'm not talking about what the specific consequences of wearing or not wearing the uniform should or should not be, but I think a troop should support the wearing of the uniform in every way that is not prohibited by BSA policy. I understand the frustration of seeing kids show up without a uniform when I know that in the vast majority of cases, with about 5 minutes of advance planning, they could have stopped at home after their athletic practice or play rehearsal or marching band or whatever it is, and put on their uniform - or brought their uniform to school and put in their locker, and put it on in the rest room stall at the meeting. I have done the adult equivalent myself on many occasions. I have my full uniform in my car right now, for just such an eventuality. And trust me, with everything I have to do, I am not necessarily any more organized than any of the kids. (Well, a few I suppose - some of the kids are astoundingly disorganized, but even most of those can manage to show up in uniform most of the time.) And I am not talking about kids who don't own a uniform. Every Scout in my troop owns a uniform. In a few cases someone other than their parents paid for it because the parents couldn't afford it, or it came out of the uniform closet, and the patches may not be exactly right, but it's a uniform. We are not sticklers for patch placement or correctness, though it is certainly a goal. We are more interested in each Scout wearing their uniform shirt, pants, neckerchief, hat and belt. One thing in the original post I don't get, and that is someone having a problem with sweatshirts being worn over the uniform. I don't see "A Scout is Cold" in the Scout Law. Wearing an outergarment does not mean you are not in uniform. I wear a sweatshirt sometimes but I prefer to wear it under my short-sleeved uniform shirt. That's my personal choice, however. It is not mandatory.

I don't think that's at all apparent from the quotations from the UUA president, especially if you read those lines in context with the entire paragraph. He is saying that the "enforcement" of the "belief in God" policy is inconsistent, which is something that we all know anyway. I think he is also suggesting that the UUA might "push the envelope" a little to try to get the policy changed from within. But I don't think he is saying that atheists are allowed in UUA-chartered BSA units. He clearly knows that this is not the UUA's decision, and I think that is "apparent" from the entire paragraph.

One might argue that it is the Barnette case that makes them stop, but whatever. Interestingly, in every opening ceremony in my troop we say the Pledge of Allegiance in addition to the Scout Oath. (Scout Law is usually said during closing.) The subject of what would happen if someone did not want to say any of these things has never come up. It's certainly possible that there might be a Scout or two (in the past, present or future) that goes silent just for the word "God" and nobody would notice. (In fact, it is possible that I may have done that for awhile when I was in high school and I thought I was an atheist, but that was a long time ago.) If anyone noticed a Scout doing that in our troop, I am not sure what would happen. I suspect it would be nothing. In our troop. We have had the question of religious belief come up in an EBOR, but that was from the district representative, not someone in our troop. (It turned out to be fine, a Scout left the "religious reference" line blank on his Eagle application, but he actually did have a "religious reference" letter (from his father.) The district guy just got a little agitated about something he didn't need to get agitated about.)

I wonder what the grants would be used for? Printing banners or posters? Defraying dues? (But that last one might not qualify under the second bullet-point in RS's post.) I do not know of anything like this but I am not directly involved in recruiting.

Thanks Eagledad.

I was having the same thought as Stosh, but I do notice you say "toxic combinations" rather than "toxic Scouts." What is it about these combinations that is "toxic", and what has been done to try to resolve the issues? And how many "toxic combinations" are we talking about here?

Sorry to see you go, Cyclops. Hopefully the day will come when people in this forum stop making fun of other peoples' religions, however cleverly and subtly they may word their posts in order to avoid action by the moderators.

Ok, just checking.

RS, I think the kinds of people you are talking about should be recognized by the BSA with some sort of award or "status", under whatever name. "Honorary Scout" I would not have a problem with, but I don't think "Honorary Eagle" is a good idea. "Spirit of the Eagle", as Krampus mentions, is something completely different. It is really the BSA's way of reaching out to a family that has lost a child who was a Boy Scout. Even if that could be considered an "honorary Eagle", it's obviously a very rare and self-limiting thing and I don't know of anybody who has a problem with it.