Scouting_in_the_Greatland

This topic has seemed to generate a bit of controversy, so Id like to state for the record, that neither I nor anyone at our local unit, has anything against women being active and important members of the scouting team. There are actually more women than men currently serving as active adult leaders in our troop. They attend meetings, go on campouts, serve as merit badge councilors and committee members, etc. We could not survive without the time, energy, and effort all these women bring to bear. The positive role model these women set are definitely an essential component to an overall r

Thanks for all the input! This is a great resource. But I guess I'd like to clarify something. Nobody is saying that a woman might not make a good SM in any broad discussion of the matter. But when you get down in the dirt on the local, personal level of each unit's circumstance, such broad concepts are not always useful. Many of the boys who seek out scouting are sorely lacking a positive male role model in their life. Moms are great! But sometimes a boy needs a positive male influence to assist the women in his life, in helping him along his journey to become a better man. I rea

This may seem like a strange question, but a local debate has developed at our unit level about whether a local unit committee has the authority to define a Scoutmaster as a qualified "man." Some argue that we can not discriminate in that way and that we must always entertain the possibility of a Scoutmaster being a woman. We do not wish to enter the debate about whether a woman is capable of being a Scoutmaster, here or anyplace else; we only want to know if it is okay for our Troop to say that for our unit alone, we want our Scoutmaster to be male. Does anyone know if this is something we