NJCubScouter

On the other hand, Packsaddle, you could be right. I don't think AZ or Moosetracker took my "suggestion" in quite the same spirit in which I made it. It actually is not the first time I have made that "suggestion" in this forum, though the last time may have been 7 or 8 years ago. But it is not entirely a non-serious suggestion. I suppose it is made with tongue about three-quarters in cheek. I know it will never happen. I do think it would be fair, IF the BSA were unable to resolve the issue within itself. But I want the BSA to resolve it within itself, so we truly CAN be one organization again. I'd like the BSA to have the same united spirit that it did when I was a Scout -- red berets optional.

But it has tremendously advantaged the militant atheists who are are still looking for the opportunity to strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest. Gee, I think someone could use a nap.

I think this idea of a new Scouting organization might not be such a bad thing. The BSA will, of course, be willing to share the name "Boy Scouts", so instead of the names that AZMike suggests, I would suggest "American Boy Scouts." Now, because many of the American Boy Scouts members and leaders have been members of the BSA, and have helped build up the BSA through the past 102 years through several generations (my family's BSA heritage goes back to at least 1938), it would be only fair to have some sharing of the assets as well. A poll would be taken, and let's say that 30 percent of the BSA membership said they planned to join the ABS. Now, we could divide this up several ways. The BSA councils could just transfer 30 percent of their camps, bank accounts, endowments, etc. etc. to the corresponding ABS councils, or with the camps there could be some kind of time-sharing arrangement where the ABS gets to use the camp 30 percent of the time. You'd have to do that with Philmont, Seabase, Summit etc. since there's only one of those each; ABS would get access 30 percent of the time. Of course, ABS gets 30 percent of the cash at HQ in Texas as well. Maybe someone would be willing to serve as CSE of the ABS for 30 percent of what Mr. Brock is going to make. This plan is sounding pretty good to me. How about you, AZMike? Of course, we could just go with local option in the BSA we already have. I think that sounds like an even better solution.

Moosetracker: Re your response to me: Ok. I did not immediately realize that you were using the word "will" in the sort of rhetorical sense that includes the present as well as the future. As for the "spammer" -- it's kind of funny that, less than four hours after you used the phrase "criminal background check" in a post, Tim242 shows up here and makes his first post, an ad for a company that does criminal background checks. (BSA has already chosen their vendor, but thanks anyway, Tim.) I am not a technical guy but I assume some marketing gurus have programs that search the Internet, see when phrases are mentioned that fall into their clients' area of business, and send some person to post the ad. Actually, my assumption would have been that "Tim" is a "bot", but I believe all forums these days have measures in place to prevent bots from registering accounts without human intervention, and "Tim" presumably registered his account right before he made his post. So, "Tim", if you really are a human being and that really is your name, welcome to the forums, I guess. Pull up a virtual log around the computer-generated campfire and share some more of your possibly pre-programmed thoughts.

You're both right. Scoutfish's quote explains the problem (or at least a large part of the problem), and Callooh explains why it is so difficult to solve the problem. And that is why there have been so many religious wars, massacres, persecutions, Inquisitions, crusades, forced conversions, and other unpleasantness, throughout history. And while the situation in the world today (and in our own country) is not quite as dramatic as all that, the problem is obviously still with us.

Pack: I know, my kids often make somewhat similar comments about my jokes.

Good for you, Lisa. Moosetracker says: Now-a-days more then in the past as our schools are now teaching use to respect diversity and they will add to it, homosexuals. They have already added it -- depending on where you live. Where I am, the public schools having been teaching respect for people regardless of sexual orientation for years -- along with the more "traditional" factors like race, religion, gender, etc. And in my state, like some others (but not all), discrimination in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal. My kids had at least two openly gay teachers when they were in school, that I knew of.

Wry, but not dry. (Dry, get it?)

Didn't this thread used to be about George Takei? Then for awhile it was about the "gay issue" in general. I'm not even sure what the topic is now. I think this thread may be nearing the record for the most distant topic-wanderings in a relatively short thread. And that's a tough record to beat in this forum.

scoutingagain says: The irony of having Mitt Romney, who signed into law Romneycare in Mass. with basically the same mandate and who had argued for the need and legality of it in interviews and in editorials now campaign on repealing the law is too rich. How is he supposed to maintain a shred of crediblity on any issue? Good question. I have been wondering the same thing. Yesterday Romney said this decision is one of the reasons why he should be elected, so he can (try to) repeal the health care law. Of course he did not mentions his health care law in Mass., which while not identical in all the details, was very similar and included a mandate. (Which does not create a constitutional issue because state governments have much broader powers in many areas than the federal government does, including the power to legislate for the "general welfare" without worrying about whether it affects "commerce" or anything like that.) I do not see how he is going to get away from it during the campaign. Every mention of "Obamacare" is going to be met with a reply of "Romneycare." It will be the proverbial albatross around his neck. If Romney is smart he will not talk about health care at all and just stick to the economy, the one issue he can actually win on. (Whether he should, or will, is another story -- but he could.)

I actually thought it would be declared completely unconstitutional, and that missed being the case by one vote. I knew Scalia, Alito and Thomas would decide it was unconstitutional, figured Roberts would join them and thought Kennedy would be the swing vote, as he has been many times. But I thought he would join his conservative brethren -- and I was right! But I was wrong about the Chief Justice. And I am glad I was wrong. But I can't chalk it up to the competence or incompetence of any attorneys, or anything other than that one justice made his decision, and that's the decision of the Court. On the decision itself, or what I know of it so far, I generally agree with Beavah. There did seem to be a lot of dancing around constitutional principles, although I don't like commenting on legal decisions based solely on bits and snippets heard on the radio or from five-paragraph articles on the Internet that don't come close to explaining the legal issues. I just went to print out the decision but decided not to, after seeing that it was 193 pages (including the concurrences and dissents.) I printed out the six-page syllabus instead, and have skimmed that. After skimming the part about the Medicaid funding, I am going to have to really read it before I understand what their reasoning was. I also agree with Beavah on this -- I do not recall ever hearing of a case in which the federal government's ability to tie strings to federal funding was limited in any way on constitutional grounds. When I think back to my Constitutional Law course (there were actually several courses that covered the constitution, but only one was called that), the conclusion seemed to be that Congress could tie any strings it wanted to funding to the states or other levels of government. Not any more, I guess. Just one thing, Beavah: "9 old folks"? You talking about the current Supreme Court? Watch who you're calling old. Justice Kagan is 52, Chief Justice Roberts is 57, Justice Sotomayor is 58 and Justice Alito is 62. Especially at my current age, I'd rather not think of any of them as old. (Although Kagan is the only one who is younger than I am.) I suspect you are even deeper in the same boat, Beavah, so let's be careful with "old", ok?

Eagledad says: >>And just to be really clear, the "line" is between "local option" and exclusion.

Oops, here is the link: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/fischer2.html(This message has been edited by Njcubscouter)

Although Bobby Fischer was NOT a very nice person, and late in life was a real (choose your epithet here), he did have a Scouting connection. I remember reading his chess columns in Boys Life magazine when I was a kid. I just found a link to a page that, amazingly, summarizes ALL of his Boys Life columns and has a sample page of his column. I love the Internet.

I would prefer that the "line" make sense. And just to be really clear, the "line" is between "local option" and exclusion. No CO has to appoint a leader they don't want.

Eagledad asks: How about the SM who got caught by his wife being unfaithful with the ASM? The choice is left up to the CO as to whether he will remain SM. If he applies to be SM somewhere else, then that CO will have the same option, and so on. Or the child porn film maker who wanted to be a SM. Take out the "child" part and make him a regular-old porn film maker, and the answer is the same as the adulterer. Leave in the "child" part, and you have someone who is committing very serious crimes against children. If this fact is generally known (and your questions pre-suppose that the facts you have mentioned are generally known), this person will not be an SM -- they will be arrested, charged, convicted, sentenced to prison and when they get out, will probably have conditions of parole that prohibit any involvement with any child, anywhere, any time. And then if if they do apply to be an SM, they will be excluded by the national background check due to their conviction for serious crimes against children. There is the stripper who wanted to be a CM. Same answer as the adulterer. They can be a CM if the CO wants them to. But how about a gay person, and let's say he has never cheated on his partner/spouse, made any dirty movies, or worked displaying his body to the public? Let's say he lives a quiet, monogamous suburban life with his partner (or spouse, depending on the state) and maybe an adopted child or two, and their dog, and he goes to work every day as an insurance salesman, or public school teacher, or pharmacist or whatever. And let's assume that, by being seen with his partner or spouse here and there, and identifying who the person is, he is considered an "open or avowed homosexual." (So far, by the way, this is a composite of several gay people I have actually known.) Now let's say he wants to be den leader, or Scoutmaster, or committee member or crew adviser for the BSA unit that his adopted son is in. Is the answer the same as for the adulterer, the non-child pornogapher, the stripper? Or the habitual drunk, the grossly overweight person, or any one of a number of other examples raised in this forum over the years? No. The answer is different. All of these other people can be leaders, if appointed by a CO. The hypothetical gay person cannot. If council hears that he is openly gay, he will receive a letter terminating his membership and basically telling him he cannot be involved in any unit, with any CO, anywhere. It's not up to the CO, unlike all the other situations that you listed and that I listed. That is the problem. If the CO was allowed to say either yes or no to the gay person, just like the CO can do with all the rest (or with any of us, for that matter), there would be no issue. It sounds like a good plan to me.

Reminds me of a law school exam question... Person A steals a car, in which Car Owner had left the keys in the ignition, then goes to Murphy's Bar in which witnesses say he appeared slightly intoxicated when he started to drink but definitely impaired when he left three hours later, then drives away and hits and injures Person B. (And usually there went on to be persons C, D, E, etc.) Who can sue who for what? (But please don't answer, I am not going to grade the bluebooks. I guess that's all done on computer now. We had real blue booklets.)

If you have 32 Cub Scouts looking for a new home (with hopefully enough leaders for that number of Cubs), why not form your own new pack, with a CO that has a large enough facility to accommodate you with room to grow, in whatever county, in whatever council, you want? Or am I missing something? But, by the way, you probably should not assume that you will be any happier in a neighboring council. From the tone of your posts, I am guessing that this is far from a certainty. Maybe you should just focus on your pack.

I thought that 34 percent figure sounded familiar. It has been a long time (about 10 years) since I have been involved with a Trail's End popcorn sale, but that 34 percent did ring a bell as the maximum the unit got to keep -- and (this may be different from council to council) that was only if the unit had jumped through the maximum number of hoops set by the council, i.e. you sent your "popcorn kernel" to the kickoff meeting, you bought a certain amount for a show-and-sell, maybe you had to send a volunteer to help unload the Trail's End truck at the central distribution site, stuff like that. For each hoop you missed, a small percentage was deducted from the unit's "cut." So 34 percent for "Scout accounts" definitely did not sound right. (We did not have Scout accounts in that pack; there were prizes from Trail's End for certain levels of sales, we decided that was good enough. My current troop does have what are, in effect, "Scout accounts" under a different name for our product fundraisers (not popcorn), but the Scout's "cut" is zero for the first $150 in sales, and about 15 percent after that, plus about 5 percent extra above a certain level (which most Scouts never reach.) I do agree with what others have said about this situation. These "accounts" are on shaky ground to begin with, and you are lucky to get anything when you leave a unit. And your son was most likely never getting credit for anywhere near 34 percent of the gross sales in the first place. I was almost prompted to tell my story about the time our pack had a popcorn show-and-sell, planned months in advance, that happened to occur on Saturday, September 15, 2001. (Think about it.) And this was approximately 40 miles from the World Trade Center site, where the smoke was literally still clearing and relief and recovery efforts in full swing. I'll save the whole story for another time, but the point here is that we ended up donating some large portion (maybe a third, maybe half) of our profit from the show-and-sell to the 9-11 relief efforts, along with any "extra donations" that were given to the boys with no specification of whether the money was for the pack or 9-11 (which was really all anybody was thinking about at the time.) I hope it was legal for us to donate the money. Maybe we should have had the CO's permission for that? But I think they would have said yes...

Moosetracker says: But, BSA has verbally stated a "Don't ask, Don't tell" and the policy is because they want the sexual discussions at home (and somehow if an adult knows your gay, that means your discussing being a homosexual with the kids). That raises the question (again) of exactly what the BSA means by an "open or avowed homosexual." (Up until the latest BSA press release it was just "avowed", now its "open or avowed"... but I don't think that changes the meaning.) I have always assumed (and we know what happens when you assume) that it means the same thing as "openly gay", which means that a person has basically "announced to world" that they are gay, so it is a matter of common knowledge, at least in their "community." This does not mean that if there is a local option, sexuality would be discussed in the "Scout setting" -- I think everybody agrees that this should not happen. But if, hypothetically, one adult "knows" that a person is gay, that doesn't necessarily mean the person is "openly gay." So I think we need to be careful in our suppositions of who exactly is subject to this policy.

I don't know. But whoever said it and when, I don't think it should be taken too literally.

For whatever it's worth, when George Takei was a spokesman for the BSA, he was not "open" about his orientation. But it is interesting that the BSA's policy means that someone who was obviously believed by the BSA to be such a good role model for its values that they used him as a national spokesman, presumably became "not" a good role model for its values after he publicly disclosed his orientation. He was still the same person, the only thing that changed was that the public knew one more piece of information about his personal life. And according to Wikipedia, his orientation was an "open secret" among Star Trek fans since the 1970s, so apparently the folks at BSA National are not Star Trek fans. (Although I am a Star Trek fan and I didn't know it until after he "announced" it.) I agree with Moosetracker, Mr. Takei -- a pretty prominent Japanese-American, who as a child spent most of WWII in an internment camp courtesy of the U.S. Government -- would probably be pretty surprised to learn that he is "white." As for "liberal", as others have asked before in this forum, why do some people feel the need to label other people so much? And to make inaccurate generalizations about what they supposedly believe? Most people would probably describe me as a "liberal", and I am white, but I do not "hate Scouting." I think Scouting is great, but I would like to see it improve, and one way I would like to see it improve would be by letting local units decide who their leaders are going to be, even if they are openly gay. As for whether this type of publicity has any "importance", time will tell. I think attitudes about this are changing, even within the BSA. When that will actually result in a change in the policy is anybody's guess. My guess is that it won't happen soon, but it will happen eventually.

In what years do these generations begin and end? I have seen various definitions, and just looked them up online, and there seems to be so much variation that it all seems artificial to me. How do you look at a person and tell what "generation" they are part of? I realize that many books and articles have been written about the differences between these "generations", which is fine for the people who make money from writing the books and articles, but I am not sure what it really means to the rest of us. Based on the definitions I just found online, some would consider my oldest child to be in Generation X, others would say Y; and some would consider my youngest child to be in Generation Y, others would say Z. (The middle one seems to be a Y by universal acclaim.) So potentially my three children, who are about nine and a half years apart from the oldest to the youngest, could be in three different generations! Of course, outside the world of artificial constructs, they are all in one generation: The generation after me.

"Then"... my recollection is that when I was a Scout, the majority of the guys who made Eagle (which did not include me) made it when they were 17. And "now"... in "my" troop, the majority of the Scouts who have made Eagle during my involvement (almost 10 years) have been 17. I would say about 90 percent have been 17 at the time their completed application (pre-BOR) was submitted, and probably about 70 percent of the total have been in the last 6 months before their 18th birthday. We have had our share of "last minute" completions, including my son. However, none of those have been Scouts who were inactive for a year or two or three and then "came back" to "finish Eagle." All of our Eagles have been active continuously, although some may have missed a few more meetings and camping trips than they had when they were younger. I do recall one who did leave and wanted to come back when he was 17, but I think he was also trying to get the SM to "count" his "inactive" (including unregistered) time toward his "active" requirements for Life (and maybe Star as well), the SM would not do it, and I believe the Scout then went to another unit. (I later heard that he had made Eagle -- perhaps helped along by another troop that read the requirements a bit differently than ours did.) As for "young Eagles", I believe our youngest has been 15, and there was only one of those. Actually our experience has been pretty similar to the list posted by CA_Scouter, though in addition to the one 15-year-old we have had a couple make it when they were 16. One of those also earned five or six palms, which was a new record for our troop, and not likely to be repeated very soon. We have yet another one coming down to the wire right now, with about four months left to go and still in the process of getting approvals for his project proposal.

Obviously, steps should be taken to minimize distractions at an Eagle BOR, but it is not some sacred ritual taking place on a mystical hilltop somewhere. It is taking place in the "real world". Life happens. Distractions and disruptions happen. This was not someone pulling out a phone to play a game, this was a newborn child that needed to be fed, now. Whether the newborn (and by extension, the mother) should have been in the Eagle BOR in the first place, I will leave for others to discuss. But they were there, the mother did not leave the room (which I think probably would have been more of a distraction than what she actually did), the Scout was not derailed by it, and life went on. In fact, the Scout got to show that he would not be thrown off-track by a minor little distraction. Now, if I were another member of the BOR present at the time, would I have found it a little disconcerting? Yes, probably. But I would have gotten over it quickly enough.