NJCubScouter

I think we need to understand what the problem is, and what it isn't. ChoicePoint provides a variety of services to a variety of clients. Some of their services involve collection of financial and other personal information (for example, they provide credit reports), and to my understanding it was this information that was accessed by criminals who use it to steal peoples' identities. To my knowledge, the BSA does not use this service. What the BSA does use ChoicePoint for is criminal background checks, which if I correctly recall the BSA's statements when this program started, involves the compilation of PUBLIC information from state and federal sources. Of course, at least one piece of "non-public" information is used in that process, and that is the adult leader's social security number, which must be provided on the current version of the BSA's adult leader application. But it does not sound to me like the criminal background check process was the "target" of these criminals who were involved in identity theft. That does not mean that I am a big fan of ChoicePoint or other similar companies. I think they have too much information on too many people and this episode is only a minor example of what can go wrong when that happens. I do not know whether there are other companies that the BSA could use to do the criminal background checks. If ChoicePoint provides the most value (meaning in this case, such things as speed and accuracy in providing the information) for whatever the BSA pays for the service, in relation to other companies, that is a reason for the BSA to continue to use them. But if the BSA has other options that would provide similar value for the money, and do not have the "baggage" of ChoicePoint, my personal preference would be that the BSA go with one of those other options.

OGE, writing about events in the 80s in Illinois, says: No one was ever arrsted for speaking their minds... Nor were the protesters in Philadelphia arrested for speaking their minds, if you believe the police. The "expressive" portion of their conduct may be exposing them to a higher penalty, but that's a different issue. If they were simply speaking their minds, there would have been nothing to arrest them for.

Rooster says: We are clearly instructed to show Gods love, even to those who hate us. Yeah, Rooster, when I read your posts I can just feel "God's love" dripping off every word.

OGE says: Not being acclimated to all the groups that do legal things for groups I apologize if I misunderstood the ACLU mission, I thought it was for everyone. At the very least the ACLU gets the most publicity Well, it certainly is the most criticized, especially in this forum. As for whether it is for "everyone," that strikes me as sort of ironic in light of the idea that some of us used to have that the Boy Scouts were for "everyone," not convicted felons or those who had actually harmed someone of course, but just about everyone else. Apparently it isn't for "everyone" anymore. And neither, I suppose, is the ACLU. They take the cases they take. If they believe that your First Amendment rights have been violated they then have to decide whether to actually take the case, but I am not sure that these peoples' rights were violated. It depends on which version you believe. I think we get in a slippery slide if Free Speech isn't free, it cant have restrictions on it as far as what is hate, taunting, whatever, they had a right to speak and the other side had a right to ignore or speak back. Again, this case may not just be about "speech." It may be about other things as well. One thing people need to remember about "civil disobediance" is that when you block a street or "sit in" or ignore the orders of a police officer to vacate the area, regardless of how just your cause may be, you are breaking the law. Some people decide that the "protest" is worth the risk of getting arrested. But you can't have it both ways. If the videotape shows you doing more than "speech" and breaking the law, it's not just a matter of freedom of speech. That's all I'm saying. You seem to accept the first half of the web page you linked to, while ignoring the "other side of the story" in the second half of the page. Having said all that, if it really was just a matter of "hate speech," I agree with you. I have a big problem with prosecuting people for what they say or think. I can see an enhanced penalty for a violent crime motivated by hatred of a particular group, but if the "hate" is being expressed simply by protesting, the penalty should be whatever it is for the offense itself. But that doesn't change the fact that there may be a valid penalty for the "non-expressive" parts of your conduct.

One other thing. OGE said in his original post, "It would seem this would be tailor made for the ACLU to be brought in on the side of the Christians." I don't know why some people seem to think the ACLU is the only organization that steps in to defend people in high-profile or ideologically-charged cases, or that they have some sort of obligation to get involved in any particular case. In fact in this case, the message from Mr. Wildmon states that his American Family Association Center for Law and Policy is providing legal representation for these defendants. There are a number of organizations that do that sort of thing, some specializing in the "right," some in the "left," some in both and some in neither. The ACLU is only one of them. I think most people on the "right" would feel more comfortable turning to some other organization, as in this case.

FScouter, it depends what the "church people" do when they "try to put a stop to it." Maybe they BOTH get arrested. Maybe neither side gets arrested. It also depends what the "homosexuals" do to interrupt the church event. Are they just talking loudly? Are they throwing rocks? Are they destroying church property? What do they do when the police tell them to disperse? It all depends on the facts, and in your case as in this case, we don't really know what those are.

We don't really know what happened here. What we have are the versions of the story from each side, with each side claiming it was peaceful and orderly, and the other side was not. The anti-gay protesters say they were arrested for "preaching," but the police say they were arrested for being disorderly, trying to disrupt the speech of others, blocking the street, etc. The story you get from the bottom section of the page is much different than the one in the section on top. This is what we have courts for, to sort these things out and hopefully arrive at the truth. In this case there appear to be two "competing" videos of the events, which is two more than a court usually has available to figure out what happened. What the tapes show, and what their proponents say they show, may of course be two different things. Either way, this is not the "crime of the century" and chances are the penalties will be light even if there are convictions. But to tell people that these individuals were arrested for "preaching" or for "reading the Bible"... well, that is the kind of thing that plays well on the Internet, but it isn't necessarily the truth.

What, they didnt have evolution on planet Kling? Talk about a political issue Ha ha. I don't want to turn this into a Star Trek forum, but I can't resist answering this. Evolution would be one thing, but the first appearance of "new look" Klingons was in the first "Star Trek" movie, which is supposed to take place about five years (I think) after the end of the "original five year mission." Evolution does not take place that fast, in any quadrant of the galaxy. And now with the new series "Enterprise," we are seeing "new look" Klingons in the 22nd century -- about 100 years BEFORE the setting of the original series. So you have "new look" Klingons in the late 22nd, late 23rd and late 24th centuries, and "old look" Klingons in mid-23rd century. And in "Deep Space Nine" (a 24th century series) we saw some of the SAME CHARACTERS who had the "old look" in the original series, now, as old men, with the "new look." Evolution indeed. The real reason for all this, which is why I brought it up in the changing-Yoda connection, is that the makeup budget (and the amount of thought that went into the makeup) for a perpetually-failing tv series in the 1960's was nowhere near what it was for a major movie in the 70's, or for a series in the 80's that was widely expected to be (and was) a success. They even upgraded the name of the planet. It was called Kling in the old series, but in the Next Generation and since then, it was "Qu'nos," although my Klingonese spelling is a little rusty.

On the "Yoda issue," could it have something to do with the fact that in the first trilogy Yoda was a Muppet, and in the second trilogy Yoda is a computer-generated image? In Episodes V and VI (the first trilogy) muppet-Yoda's movements are fairly limited -- walking with a cane, wacking Luke over the head with it a few times, clenching his face to lift Luke's ship out of the swamp, that sort of thing. Twenty years later (in our time, not Star Wars time), CGI-Yoda's movements are basically unlimited. He can ride above the ground without the ugly special-effects "artifacts" that litter the original versions of the first trilogy. (If you ever watched that documentary on the making of the "special editions" of the first trilogy, where George Lucas "cleaned up" many of the special-effects problems seen in the original versions, you will know what I am talking about.) He can also do that battle scene from Episode II, where he fights Christopher Lee with the light saber, which would have been impossible (or very, very expensive) with muppet-Yoda. Sorry, I know that's not very interesting. And you don't want to get me started on why the Klingons in the later Star Trek series and movies look so different from the Klingons in the original series.

Ahem. Leaving the lawyer-bashing aside... I think the article in question shares a flaw that many of the posts in the "Issues and Politics" forum have; that is, it contains a flawed analogy. Hunt has pointed out the flaw, which is that the law does not contain legal protections for EVERY choice. The fact that it does protect at least one choice (religion) does not mean that it must protect every other choice. Or, put another way, I think if a state legislature is going to say that you cannot discriminate in employment, housing or public accommodation based on sexual orientation, it should be because the legislature thinks that is the right thing to do... or if the legislature chooses not to, because it thinks it is not the right thing to do. Unfortunately that is not the kind of thinking reflected by several of the people quoted in this article, or by the author himself. The question that preoccupies most of the people in this article is whether sexual orientation is "like" or "unlike" other things that are on the list of factors that you can't discriminate against. (That sentence was ungrammatical, but I'm tired.) I don't think sexual orientation needs to be "like" race, religion, gender or any other factor in order to be on the "list", except in the one respect that the legislature has decided that discrimination on that basis is wrong. It doesn't have to be "wrong" for exactly the same reason as everything else on the list. (In case anyone isn't sure, I think laws like the one Washington is considering are a good idea. From what I can glean from the article, it looks exactly like the change New Jersey made to its anti-discrimination law in the early 90's. The legislature took the existing anti-discrimination statute, with the list that includes race, creed, color, religion, etc. etc. and simply added sexual orientation and a few other things to the list.)

Gee Rooster, if you don't "buck the system" while you are in college, then when do you? I think everybody needs to buck the system at some point in their lives and I can't think of a better time to do it than when one is in college. It's a luxury that we usually don't get anymore once we have careers and families and mortgage payment and car payments and all that kind of stuff.

Merlyn, by interesting coincidence, while you were typing your post with the Bobby Fischer analogy, I was watching an episode of "Law & Order" on USA Network about a chess grandmaster who had achieved fame as a teenager in New York but who threw his career away as an adult because he wouldn't follow the rules of the chess authorities and then became an incredibly paranoid lunatic. After that point the story diverges from Bobby Fischer's actual life (since even Bobby, the Jewish anti-Semite, hasn't gone so far off the deep end that he would be the "main guest star" on an episode of "Law & Order," though funnily enough the last name of the Fischer character was Blake, and I have a suspicion the writers were thinking they had merged Bobby Fischer and Robert Blake) but I don't think there is any question that the character was based on Bobby Fischer plus some literary license. Were you watching it too? Ed, I have to tell you, Merlyn's analogy is right on target. Unfortunately, yours is not. The BSA does "discriminate" against atheists, and public school districts do "discriminate" against youths who do not live within their district, but both instances of discrimination are lawful. However, a school district could not lawfully exclude a student from attending the school's educational program on the basis that he or she is an atheist, or black, or Christian. That would be unlawful discrimination under the United States Constitution. (It would also no doubt be unlawful for other reasons under state law, but that is off the point.) When a school becomes the chartering organization (in other words, the owner) of of a BSA unit, the unit in effect becomes one of the programs of the school district. That program (the BSA unit) cannot exclude an atheist boy any more than the school could exclude the boy from Algebra class. The problem is easily fixed, at least from a constitutional point of view: BSA units must be chartered to non-public entities. As others have pointed out in the past, this is not really the BSA's problem, it is the problem of the school district, military unit or other governmental entity that wishes to be a CO. But the end result is the same: A non-public entity must be the CO. I don't really see why that is such a troublesome issue. It might cause some inconvenience and expense, but complying with the Constitution is not always convenient or free.

Eamonn, don't you get the difference between a public entity (like a school) allowing various organizations to USE its facilities (for recruitment or meetings) and the public entity OWNING an organization? All of the quotations from Merlyn that you have referred to are about a public entity owning (that is, being the chartered organization for) an organization (that is, a BSA unit.) The standards are different, specifically, a public entity has considerably more rights and obligations when it comes to actually owning an organization, than when merely allowing use of its facilities. Different standards produce different results.

Nldscouter says, among other things: But what we are talking about is our taxpayer money being sent to governments that at every chance criticizes the US. One could debate whether this matters, if it were true... but I don't even think it is true in this case, is it? The countries we are talking about are India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia, and secondarily Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh. I am not positive about the foreign policies of each of these nations, but I don't think ANY of them are countries the U.S. has much of a problem with -- or that they have much of a problem with us. Some are democracies, some are not, some are struggling to be democracies. Thailand has "always" been on friendly terms with the U.S. as far as I know; India and the U.S. have had a variable relationship but I think we are friends at the moment; Sri Lanka I can't tell you much about except that I think they have been in a perpetual civil war for years; and Indonesia is a country I think we really WANT to help as much as we can. They are a high-population, geographically large mostly-Muslim nation that is, at least this month, a democracy. Of the other countries I know little, except that I think Myanmar is a dictatorship that has some "human rights issues," but they don't give us (or anybody else) much trouble because they can barely sustain themselves. Bangladesh is pretty much synonymous with the word "disaster" and like some of the other countries, they are usually too concerned with not starving to death to get too involved in anybody else's business. All I can really tell you about Malaysia is that they have the tallest buildings in the world and a pretty harsh justice system... or is that Singapore? Maldives? Anyone... anyone? But regardless of what governments may say, the people who are suffering are PEOPLE, not simply units of a foreign entity. These are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who need our help so that hopefully the death toll will not continue to rise due to disease and starvation and so that hopefully these countries can get back to some semblance of normality. Both our government and private groups (i.e. the Boy Scouts) and individuals help these people because we can, and should. Politics ought to take a back seat, and unlike some situations in the past where our help has been diverted (like Ethiopia), I think that can happen here. As an aside having nothing to do with either our government or the Boy Scouts, I heard today that one of the people who is helping to organize relief efforts and who has traveled to the affected areas, is Roberto Clemente Jr., partly as a tribute to his late father. Those of you who follow baseball will know what that means, and how inspiring it is.

Fuzzy, please don't take this in a negative way, because you certainly have put together a comprehensive list of questions to ask of a large number of people... but just out of curiosity, have you ever shown up at a troop/committee meeting(s) as a Webelos parent and actually ASKED all of these questions? And/or have you seen other people do so? And if so, how did it go?

Let's be clear on this though, Trevorum, Shakespeare didn't really want to kill all the lawyers. I have studied this for personal reasons. NJCubscouter, Esq.

I meant to add to that last post: I suspect, however, that Packsaddle has -- maybe not a dozen times, but at least once.

OK, OGE, let me guess: You've never seen the movie "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home." (Or maybe more to the point, you haven't seen it about a dozen times.)

So Merlyn, are you saying that you contacted BSA National and they just sent you a disk (or e-mail) with the names of every troop, pack and crew in the country, with the name of their chartered organization? Did they ask you what you wanted it for? It just seems a little ironic to me in light of some of the reports I have heard (in this forum and others) about Scouters getting the third-degree in response to requests for what would seem like basic information.

You must be confused with the American modern classical novelist who ranks right up there with writers such as Jaqueline Suzanne and Harold Robbins. "Ah. The giants."

I looked at Merlyn's list for New Jersey, and there are two schools that sort of stick out as being private schools, not public schools or school districts. One is the American Boychoir School, the other is the Noor-Ul-Iman Schools, Inc. I checked both of their web sites and the first is a private boarding middle school for boys, and the second is an Islamic religious school, but they are both obviously private. More generally, on all of these units that are supposedly chartered to schools, I would be interested in seeing what the charters actually say. I would be not be surprised if you were to find that many of them, perhaps a majority, actually are chartered to PTA's or similar organizations (PTO's, Home-and-School Associations, etc.) comprised of parents in the schools, but not the schools themselves. I have found that a number of people whose units meet in schools are not perfectly clear on who or what the CO actually is, and whatever source you are using may say the "school" when actually it is a separate organization. I had this experience myself, when I first got involved with a Cub pack I asked who the CO was and told it was the school, but when I got my hands on the charter itself, it turned out that it was actually the PTO.

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Johndaigler, Great post. I agree with all of it. I had done a little research on Roger Baldwin and found a good article that sort of puts his 1930's pro-Communist quote in perspective. I wanted to wait until I had time to write what I think about it, but I still don't and probably won't anytime soon, so I'll just post the link: http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/baldwin.html The bottom line is, the guy was a Communist in the 1930's. A lot of people were Communists in the 30's, before Stalin really started his reign of terror, or at least before the rest of the world knew about it. You know what? At least one of my grandfathers was a Communist, or at least a Socialist, in the 1930's, or at least I'm pretty sure he was. It didn't mean the same thing then as it does to us today. It didn't mean you were anti-American, it just meant you favored a different economic system and didn't think the Soviet Union was so bad, because at that point the Soviet Union really hadn't done anything so bad, that we knew

Ed says: I didn't mean they didn't use the word discrimination or discriminate, NJ! Well then, Ed, what exactly DID you mean by: "I don't think they said a thing about discrimination."? You're starting to sound like Bob White! Now that's a low blow. But actually, if I sounded like Bob White, lately, I wouldn't have said anything at all. Has anyone noticed he seems to have disappeared? I looked it up and he hasn't posted since Nov. 23. And I don't see a goodbye note anywhere.

Ed says: The supreme court ruled the BSA as a private organization has the right to set it's own membership requirements. I don't think they said a thing about discrimination. You don't think so? That seemed kind of odd to me, since the entire case was about discrimination and whether the BSA has a constitutional right to discriminate in a way that state law says is prohibited. So I found the opinion and did a word search on "discriminate," "discrimination" and all variations thereof. The word appears in the majority opinion 11 times and the dissenting opinions 49 times for a total of 60 times. Now, a few of those are in appendices where the New Jersey statute at issue (called the "Law Against Discrimination," by the way) is quoted directly, and of course the statute uses the word discrimination, but the vast majority of the references are in the text of the opinions. But regardless of how you count it, I'd say the Supreme Court said much more than "a thing" about discrimination.