NJCubScouter

FOG says:

James Dale was an avowed homosexual when he said, "I like boys."

And when was that, exactly, FOG? Or more to the point, where in any of the thousands of words that have been written about the facts of that case, does it say that he ever said it? Except for you making it up, I mean.

Rooster, didn't I see you write the word "Perspective" in huge letters in a post in this thread? Well, here is some perspective: "Move on" sounds a lot better when you are on what is, at the time, the "winning" side. (Not the side with the better argument, just the side that won the most recent victory.)

Also: You are under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to get involved in a conversation you don't want to get involved in. As I indicated before, the "main line" of this thread has pretty much turned into the online-discussion equivalent of the night of the living dead anyway. Even Ed is screaming off into the night. So you wouldn't be missing anything.

And: It's really not a "debate" on homosexuality. As Acco raised it (only partially in jest), it's really a "debate" about consistency. And then it turned into a "debate" about how FOG misinterpreted what Acco said.

Like saltheart, my experience in watching the boys going for Eagle in my son's troop is that this "should not" is taken to mean "shall not" or "must not." (I would say "may not," but some of us seem to have a problem with that phrase. Maybe smoke gets in their eyes?)

Maybe there is more about this in that workbook they give the Life Scouts to begin working on Eagle. I have never had occasion to read one. For those of you who have, is there something more definitive about whether the project "may" benefit Scouting? I realize that if the answer is yes, that raises an issue of potential conflict with the actual requirements. Or, it may mean that "should not" is really supposed to mean "must not," but whoever wrote the requirement was trying to be diplomatic.

Oh goodie, here we go again. (That was some more sarcasm.)

Well, if ever there was a thread that cried out to be hijacked, it was this one. (I think Ed is already rehearsing scenes from "Poltergeist V: Jason Runs in Camp.) I don't feel so bad though, because the person who started this thread has also contributed to it's going astray.

To those playing the home version of our game, I am about to talk about the "gay issue," so avert your eyes if you wish.

So, FOG says:

"Avowed behavior" is behavior that the person has admitted so unless he is lying, it happened.

If I may speak for Acco, I don't think that's what he meant. And regardless of whether I am right about what he meant, the fact is that the "policy in question" is not necessarily about behavior. It is about status, or orientation. To confirm I am correct, I just looked up the word "homosexual" at www.dictionary.com. The definitions there speak of "orientation" or "attraction" or "practice" of homosexuality (that is, conduct.)

James Dale never described his conduct. I am sure the U.S. Supreme Court majority would have quoted him verbatim if he had. He said, in effect, "I'm gay." The guys in D.C. who wrote (or so legend has it) "I am gay" on their adult leader applications never said "and here's what my conduct is." They just said what they are. Now, the rest of us can fill in the blanks if we want, and in most cases we will probably be correct as to the implication of certain conduct. But conduct is not what the BSA is prohibiting. They are prohibiting announcing that one is oriented toward that conduct.

Heh heh, Acco. That's different, of course. That's a rule we like, so the same standards don't apply. (For you literalists out there, the preceding was sarcasm. "We" does not mean Acco and I, but rather those persons who, even now, are no doubt drafting in their minds an indignant response to Acco's and/or my post.)

FOG, maybe DSteele was travelling on the other side of the International Date Line when he wrote his post.

Maybe he figured you wouldn't read it until after midnight.

Maybe he suddenly converted to Orthodox Judaism and thinks it's Friday. (Just kidding about that last part DS; but if in some alternate universe that were true, it would also be true that you'd have to do any typing applicable to something happening on Saturday on Friday afternoon, because you wouldn't be able to type anything between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.)

In other words, give the guy a break.

Youth:

Ranks: Arrow of Light, Life Scout

Highest positions: SPL, JASM

Adult:

At age 18 I became an ASM but was only active for the 8 months until I started college.

As a "real" adult, I was a Den Leader and Assistant Cubmaster, and am now a Troop Committee Member.

First of all, Peter and Paul were (and I believe, still are) two-thirds of the folk singing group, Peter, Paul and Mary. Though atually Paul is the middle name of Noel Paul Stookey, but I guess they didn't like the sound of Peter, Noel and Mary. For that matter, Paul also is the middle name of James Paul McCartney. Let's see, how many mini-threads could I have started right there?

Second of all, I prefer a good Snickers. I don't go with this trend toward white chocolate, it just tastes too sweet to me. I'm also big on Twizzlers (the red kind).

I didn't realize scheduling of Boards of Review was such an issue. In my son's troop, boys get pulled out of whatever the "main event" is at the weekly troop meeting for a variety of reasons: Board of Review, Scoutmaster conference, meeting with merit badge counselors, working with an ASM on advancement, meeting with Eagle advisor on projects, etc. There are various rooms, hallways, stairwells etc. to do all this in so as not to be in the way of the main meeting, though sometimes the meeting itself will just break up into groups working on different levels of advancement. For obvious reasons, all these various activities do not take place during those moments when there is an organized activity that really requires everyone's participation. From what I have seen so far, other than things like announcements, there are not enough of those highly organized moments anyway, though fortunately there is a new SPL who seems intent on giving more structure and content to the meetings. When he succeeds, I suppose it will become more of a challenge to schedule the various "other activities," but I'm sure everybody will figure out a way to make it work.

That may be true, FScouter, but "mountain out of a mole mound" doesn't sound as good.

I read this bill and it is interesting, but it is somewhat more complicated than simply extending the military draft system to women. Service (of both men and women) would be "universal" (that is, everybody turning 18 would serve for at least two years with very limited exceptions or deferments), and service could be either military or civilian. However, it does appear that if military circumstances require, someone (other than a conscientious objector, which is a difficult status to achieve) could be compelled to go into military service as opposed to civilian service, and that includes women. This is not just registration; this is actual service, by (almost) everybody.

This idea of "universal service," including civilian service, has been around for a number of years. The only "new feature" that I see in this bill was that it was always my understanding that a young person would get to choose whether to go into military or civilian service, while under this bill, the military gets to choose you, so to speak. That apparently would apply to both men and women as well. I think the way it would actually work in practice is that a young person WOULD get to choose civilian service, unless the President decided that there was a military situation requiring more people in the military than were volunteering. In terms of MILITARY service (as opposed to civilian service), that's really no different than what we have now, except that women could be drafted into the military service.

However, I don't think it matters much. I think this bill has the proverbial "two chances" of being adopted (slim and none.)

I believe it goes:

New Forum Member

Junior Forum Member

Forum Member

Senior Forum Member

I'm not sure where the dividing lines are.

OGE, it had been my impression that the Israeli military drafts both men and women, but I did not know for sure and I did not know any of the details. A search turned up this site about Israel:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0kdq0

(Overall the site seems to take a rather dim view of Israel in general, though I did not study it that closely.) Here is an excerpt:

Women and the Armed Forces: Although service in the IDF is compulsory for both men and women, inequality does exist. The exclusion of women from many military professions and all combat units guaranteed that the highest positions were closed to them. In 2000, Israel's Parliament adopted an amendment to the Security Service Law, opening all military professions to women. Recently, this change has met with strong objections from religious institutions and politicians.

One other interesting point about the draft in Israel is that I believe it is "universal" i.e. everyone reaching whatever the age is, is drafted for a certain period. I am not sure whether there is any sort of student deferment or exemption, but I know that in recent years there has been a lot of controversy over whether there should be a religious exemption.

Scoutingagain, I agree with your post, I just have one question: Are there really women serving as fighter pilots? I thought that was one of the roles from which they were excluded.

Hunt, yes, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that prompted Jimmy Carter to propose reinstatement of draft registration (and also to pull the U.S. out of the Moscow Olympics, gosh that seems like a really long time ago.)

Ironically, as I recall, the actual commencement of draft registration was delayed by a pending court case involving a claim by one or men who had sued, claiming the system was unfair because women were not required to register. This case had actually been pending since the Vietnam era but I guess it had been placed on the back burner when draft registration was suspended in 1975 (I had reason to be keeping track of this, since I was born in January 1958, do the math.) When the new draft registration law had been passed by Congress and signed by President Carter, the attorneys must have run back to court and gotten an injunction against the process starting up again. My recollection becomes vague at this point, I know there was some delay, but I do not recall whether it was days, weeks or months. If I had to guess, it would be that it was a few weeks. When it finally did go into effect, it was in the summer of 1980. (But I did not have to register then either; as I recall they cut the date at Jan. 1, 1960, so anyone born before that date but after some time in 1957 never had to register.)

And here is a link to a picture of the fancy shiny Scoutmaster patch from the 70s

http://www.mninter.net/~blkeagle/insignia/train-sm.jpg

and the regular SM patch from the same era

http://www.mninter.net/~blkeagle/insignia/reg-sm.jpg

My father has one of the shiny ones on a uniform shirt that still hangs in his closet. I think it is the patch he is the proudest of with the possible exception of his Philmont patches, out of all the patches he has accumulated in 65 years of Scouting. He told me that while he was still a SM, years after the shiny patch had been discontinued, somebody offered him $100 for the patch. He didn't sell.

I've never heard that. It does not make any sense. The trained patch is for basic training for your position. Wood Badge does not replace basic training for your position, so why would you take the patch off -- unless you take a new position for which you are not yet trained, in which case you DO take the trained patch off -- but leave the Wood Badge insignia on. They are for 2 different things.

Janssenil (and others), I apologize for any offense I may have caused with the remark about the "alphabet soup" conditions. I did not mean to downplay these conditions, but the expression I used was a bit flippant. I guess I was conveying my own confusion about these various conditions.

But my main point was to say that the boy I was referring to does not seem to have a medical condition that would cause his poor behavior. It seems to be caused at least in part by the fact that he is being pushed into an age/social group that does not quite fit yet. Dsteele is correct that he meets the age requirements for a Boy Scout troop, but the problem I have is with how he meets the requirements. He meets them solely because his parents decide to call him a sixth grader, with no opportunity for anyone else to assess whether that is correct or not. By age he would be in the fifth grade now, and since he was never a Cub Scout, he would "age in" to the troop about 6-7 months later than when he actually joined. I think that would have been better both for him and the other boys. It just seems to me that there is too much room for "abuse" (not in the youth protection sense) when you combine the Boy Scout joining requirements with home schooling.

I guess another way to look at it is that, any way he were to join the troop, my son had to meet some criterion set by someone or some fact other than a decision of his parents. It could have been the objective fact of his age, in which case he would have joined a troop about 5 months before he did, but he and I decided there was no reason for that. It could have been his completion of fifth grade, which occurred under criteria set by the school system -- they decided that a child born after a certain date would wait to start kindergarten, and he did, resulting in his being a fifth grader almost a year "later" than a child who had been born 12 days earlier. However, that criterion also was not appropriate in his case. The appropriate criterion in his case was that he achieved the requirements established by the BSA for the Arrow of Light award.

I think this is a better system than a boy's own parents deciding he is "ready" because they have sole control over what "grade" he is in. As I may have said earlier, if the boy behaved himself, fine. But since he doesn't, I have to wonder what would have been so bad about making him wait a year.

I always get in trouble when I try to speak for other people, but I don't let that stop me. When I read sst3rd's post it did not seem that he was asking who, in the abstract, should be the source of fund-raising ideas. Rather, I think he was saying that the troop is trying to assign someone(s) the task of doing actual research and analysis of different fund-raising opportunities, but there is some uncertainty as to what person or persons that task should be assigned to. I don't know the answer either, but I am sure someone does.

OK, Rooster, you've convinced me: Let's abolish draft registration for men, so we don't have to worry about also registering women. Fighting wars with soldiers is outmoded anyway. If anyone gives us so much trouble that the all-volunteer force is insufficient, we can just "push the button" and be done with it. In fact, it seems to me that eliminating our capability to draft anyone would be a great deterrent, because it would mean that if we really find our backs against the wall, our enemies will be vaporized. Convincing the enemy that you're crazy is always a good way to avoid a fight.

Rooster, as some others have suggested or hinted at, my personal preference would be that NONE of my children be placed in a situation where they have go into combat against their will.

Another thing that is unfortunately worth considering here is that as much as we'd like to put it out of our minds, we are all in harm's way every day to one degree or another anyway. War is no longer something that is totally "over there somewhere" anymore. The people who thought they were just going to work in the World Trade Center on 9/11/01, or who were on a plane going wherever that someone decided should be redirected to crash into the Capitol, or who went to work one day in the Oklahoma City federal courthouse, did not know that they were on the front line of someone else's war until it was too late. In the latter case it was an internal enemy that I don't think we've even begun to deal with as a nation. The dead in those incidents included women and babies. Nobody had to send them off to war, the war came to them.

There's a point here somewhere, but I think I have now gotten myself too depressed to say what it is.

The Scoutmaster, SPL, ASPL (all the same family) brushed him off when he wanted to talk about it.

Hmmm. Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else's ears perk up at "all the same family"? Like in a "Danger, danger, Will Robinson" sort of way. I am sure there are many troops where the SM's son is SPL, and it's ok assuming that the SPL is elected as the book says. (I was one of those SPL's, and until a month ago our SM's son was SPL.) But when you add in that the ASPL is in the same family, presumably the SPL's younger brother, and the SM is their father, I begin to wonder whether the troop is being well-served. There was nobody else that could be ASPL?

I know, it's not really on-thread, but I couldn't help but wonder.

Rooster, I am not advocating that women be in "combat" positions -- at least not against their will. Right now, as I understand it, women cannot even VOLUNTEER to be in a "combat" position, and I am somewhat ambivalent about that.

But women can, and do, a whole host of military occupations, right now, some of which do take them close to the action. In addition to the traditional role of nurse, women drive supply trucks, they fly aircraft such as cargo and fueling aircraft (though not fighters and bombers), they serve on ships that could be attacked, they are intelligence officers and military police and probably dozens of other things. I am partly guessing at some of this, but I think I am correct. Women have been killed in "combat" and they have been captured, Private Lynch being the best-known example. I believe there were also some women on that military spy plane that was shot down by the Chinese a few years ago, and the crew held hostage.

So my only point is, if women can serve in support roles now as volunteers, why is it so far-fetched to say that if the national defense requires that people be drafted to fight, then women can be drafted to fulfill those support roles?

Rooster, I don't think your argument is with me, I think it is with the leaders of the military over the past 20 years or so, who have put women only a few feet from the front-line fighting in wars. All this thread is discussing is the mechanism that puts them there.

I wasn't sure exactly where and how to jump into this. My perspective is not as one who has any experience with or direct knowledge of the military, as I know little other than what I read in the papers or hear from other people. I do, however, have daughters age 21 and almost 17 and a 12 year old son, so draft registration is a subject of interest to me.

I think KoreaScouter has given me the opening to jump in here, though apparently not on the side he favors. He says:

Considering that we have more men registered than we can ever use, why register women too, unless it's to peg the social "fairness meter"? Aren't there better ways to do that? Women have the opportunities to join and excel in the military now (with just a few combat exceptions), without having to register for the draft. I don't see what they'll gain by compelling them to register.

Replace the word "women" with "men" in this passage, and take out the part about the combat exceptions, and it applies equally to men, doesn't it? If the all-volunteer military is sufficient, why register anyone at all? The answer, I assume, is that if an emergency occurs and the all-volunteer military becomes insufficient, we don't want to have to first start finding people to draft. That being the case, I can think of no principled reason why women should not be registered in the selective service system when they turn 18. What can I say, I guess I just have a hangup about that "fairness" thing that KoreaScouter seems able to dismiss so easily.

On the other hand, I don't know that the decision that women would definitely be drafted has to be made at the same time as the expansion of the registration system. Why not put all 18-year-old men and women in the system and decide later, when a draft becomes imminent, who is actually going to be drafted? Would this make it easier to make the decision to draft women? Sure. But that's ok, too.

One thing I am a bit confused about. Some in this thread seem to be saying that women can currently volunteer for combat assignments, and some are saying that women are still excluded from combat. It was my understanding that women are still excluded from combat, although some of the "support" roles they are eligible for can obviously put them in harm's way. (Like Private Lynch.) But that's a different issue also. Drafting women does not necessarily mean putting them in a tank on the front lines. They could (and now do) fill support roles that leave more men available for the direct combat roles. I realize that there are fairness issues there too, but I also realize that men and women are not identical, and by the way, the courts recognize that also.

I have run into this exact same issue in my son's troop and patrol. In June (2 months after my son joined), a boy joined who to my observation clearly had behavior and "maturity" problems and he was showing his lack of social skills by picking on the other boys in his patrol, all of whom are bigger than he is and anywhere from 6 to 18 months older. (My son was the only other boy in his "year" joining the troop in the spring, so they stuck both of them in the new-scout patrol that had been formed a year earlier.) To my knowledge, this boy does not suffer from any of the alphabet-soup conditions or any learning or other disability.

In chatting with his father (an ASM) I learned that this boy was 10 and a half years old (now approaching 11) and was never in the Cub Scouts. The ASM saw my sort of puzzled look that silently said "So what is he doing here?" and explained that the boy (and all his siblings) are home-schooled and that he had completed the fifth grade. I further gleaned (without interrogating the guy) that the boy has "completed the fifth grade" basically because his parents have decided that he has. Apparently this is permissible under the law of our state. If this boy was not home-schooled, he would have missed the age cutoff in any school district in this state and would NOW be in the fifth grade, and would have his first opportunity to join when he turns 11, which I am guessing will be somewhere in the December-February area.

The attitude I take is, what's the rush. I don't think anybody does their child any favors by pushing them into a Boy Scout troop based on a "technicality." My son joined a troop about 2 weeks short of 11-and-a-half, when he earned his Arrow of Light, and I think he has made the transition well. I really don't think that would have been the case a year earlier.