NJCubScouter

I don't know if that's what he meant, but it seems like an unnecessary bureaucratic step. There is only one committee member that the Scouts in our troop have to see (or email) to get a BOR scheduled, and that's me, as Advancement Chair (or Advancement Coordinator for the purists.) If I am not at a troop meeting and the CC is, they can see him instead. Usually the Scouts will come to see us right after their SMC and we will schedule it for the next troop meeting, unless the Scout wants it scheduled for a later meeting. (Keep in mind that the Guide to Advancement now says that the Scout should

Well, I don't know whether it's going to turn out to be a good thing or not. I do know that the departure of the LDS church is not good for at least the short-term health of the organization. And readers of this forum know that when the situation is right, I can be almost as gloomy as the next guy. I have made my own predictions about things, some of which have turned out to be correct, and some of which have not. But I just don't think it's productive to go from making a gloomy prediction to being in continuous red-alert panic mode over a possible future situation that may or may not turn

Well, that was really the pre-1980s/90s approach - not necessarily in BSA exactly, but generally. But now the general consensus is that you don't know who is an innocent actor or a guilty actor in advance, and prevention (or at least reduction in occurrences) is better than punishment anyway. A kid who has been abused is not really going to be helped by the fact that his abuser received punishment, but if you could have made it so difficult for the abuser to be alone with the abused that it never happened in the first place, that really does help. Obviously you punish an offender after he/

Oh no, I must have missed that. They really didn't have to do that. But I don't think anyone is going to leave over it.

I don't know when that was, but I was a Boy Scout 1969-76, before YP even existed, and there are MANY differences between what you could do then and what you can do now. The two examples that strike me as the most glaring at the moment are (1) When I went to Philmont (1974) the majority of crews had ONE adult leader. There was a ranger (who as I recall was probably barely an adult, but he was an adult) who was with us part of the time, but I don't think he was with us most of the time. And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at th

What I have quoted above is the first sentence of this thread. FireStone asked that in this discussion, we PUT ASIDE the doom and gloom. I see later posts here where the doom and gloom has not remained off to the side, but is front-and-center. There are many, many other threads where doom and gloom is the order of the day. (Just as an aside, don't people get tired of that? Day after day, week after week of the sky is falling? Even if I thought the sky were falling, at some point I would get tired of saying it. Of course, I know that a couple of people are already thinking, See, there he

If you are equating dispensing condoms to a minor to having sex with a minor, I think we have identified the problem right there. If you walk into any drug store in New Jersey, the condoms are on a rack right out there in the open, unlike "restricted products" such as cigarettes, which are behind the counter, unless it is one of the chains that have stopped selling tobacco products anyway. And unlike cold medicines with pseudoephedrine (a.k.a the kind the actually work), which are not only behind the pharmacy counter, but you have to sign your name on the credit card machine so that if i

Do you have a link to anything about that appeal? The District Court decision (the initial decision) sounds right to me.

I am not sure whether there was an actual lawsuit or not, and whether it actually reached a conclusion. I think that when directly confronted with the issue (however that was accomplished), both the government and the BSA realized that the government was not going to win in court with the argument that the government can provide significant free services to an organization that discriminates on the basis of religion (i.e exclusion of atheists.) The BSA is legally able to exclude atheists from receiving its services. The government is not.

Making items available to deal with a situation that you know is going to occur, does not amount to endorsing, condoning or allowing sexual activity at Scouting events. Maybe the condoms they hand out should have wrappers that say, "Don't use this until you get home, and (assuming you are of the proper age) get married, and even then, only if the precepts of your religion permit." Then everybody's conscience can be clear.

Condescension? Condensation involves water.

I can relate to that personally. And yes, his belief that "there was likely a higher power of some sort that he could not fully define" does meet BSA requirements for leaders, perhaps just barely, but it does.

Aren't those the names of songs on "Dark Side of the Moon"? (Actually, one of them really is, which sort of spoils the joke, but anyway...)

You are correct, I don't know and it isn't any of my business. In fact, if I had not at that point changed the subject to something else (how about those Yankees?), the next thing out of his mouth probably would have been "It's none of your business."

Interesting how you can extrapolate a conclusion about large groups of people from what I say about TWO people (my daughter and my other daughter's husband), neither of whom you know, and about whom you know only the very small amount of information I have provided. Here's a little bit more, in about four months my daughter who has the step-daughter is going to have a daughter of her own, and the demographic statistics would suggest that she is going to grow up to be one of nasty progressive liberals too.

And presumably he knows that, and has apparently decided that his granddaughter would be better off in the BSA than the GSUSA. I have a step-granddaughter who is of Cub Scout age and I have mentioned to my son-in-law (the girl's father) that she is (or soon will be) eligible to join the Cub Scouts, but his reply was basically that he is an atheist and is not interested in having his daughter in an organization that would not have him as a member. He doesn't seem very interested in having her being a Girl Scout either. I think it's kind of a shame, but she is not my child, nor my child's

Welcome to the forum JayAre! (As in, Who Shot...?)

After two weeks maybe, as David says. But if its a two-day camping trip, losing 10% of your body weight sounds like a problem, no matter how overweight you are. Even over two weeks, it's probably not a great idea.

Actually, I think I would rather hear that one. Someone(s) might be getting kicked out of the troop (or not), but at least everyone is going home in one piece. I have sometimes half-jokingly said that the main role of the adult leaders on a camping trip is to make sure that when we arrive back at the church parking lot on Sunday, we have the same number of kids as when we left.

Reminds me of the tv commercial that's out now for a low-cost life insurance company. The guy is wrapped in bubble-wrap and explains that he is wrapped in bubble wrap because he can't afford life insurance. It is somewhat funnier the way he says it than how I am describing it.

www.jewishscouting.org Sound familiar?

I'd say it turned into that about five pages ago.

I didn't realize that exclusion of girls was compelled by morality.

As I (and others) said in this forum while the gay-exclusion policy was in effect, the BSA was not really acting in a non-denominational way by having that policy. It was enforcing the beliefs of some religions, denominations, etc. over the anti-discriminatory beliefs of others. I also don't think the exclusion of atheists is a "moral policy," meaning that I don't think it is compelled by moral principles. I know people who profess a belief in God, who are not very moral people, and people who are atheists who I consider to be very moral people. And if you look at atheism as a religi

I’ll drink to that... um, well, you know what I mean...