SeattlePioneer

You are doing the right thing, but I wouldn't emphasize punishments --- I would emphasize the rule. If the rule were understood I doubt there would have been an issue. Too bad adults didn't intervene when the issue was at hand.

Unfortunately, court decisions that have defined pretty much any and every organization except churches and political organizations as places of "public accommodation" for the purposes of anti discrimination laws have pretty much imposed thought control on the gay rights issue in the United States. Institutions are no longer free to organize behind moral issues if the moral issue involves homosexuality. About the only private organizations free to do so are BSA and St Patricks Day parades, and it took the US Supreme Court to free those organizations from the thought control of anti discrimination laws. Unfortunately, those laws have become some of the most extremist legislation in the country --- done primarily by the courts themselves.

Hello Peregrinator, > Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts? Just off hand, reading a story to Cub Scouts before lights out at camp seems like a great idea. Reading a story to Boy Scouts sounds rather surprising if that happened. With Cub Scout camping, I generally tell Scouts they can stay up talking as long as they want, secure in the knowledge that ten minutes after they get in bed they will all be asleep! Sounds like a charming idea, but I'm guessing it would need to be a short story if you wanted them to hear the end of it!

From the business owner who lent the use of his business for selling popcorn: Business Owner: I'm sorry, but despite our earlier agreement your Troop is not welcome to sell popcorn here? SM: Why is that? Business Owner: You made a scene in front of my business with the Cub Scouts. The Cub Scouts had my permission to be where they were, and it was rude of you to make a scene. SM: But they weren't supposed to be selling at that time! Business Owner: Supposing that is true, picking a fight with the Cub Scouts in front of my business was the wrong way to deal with it. You'll have to get packed up and leave, because I see the Cub Scouts arriving to sell pop corn today!

> Interesting observation. A Cubmaster I know has a home schooled son who won first place in the council popcorn sale, selling $6500 in popcorn two years ago. A year ago he came in second place in the popcorn sale selling $13,000 in popcorn. The boy is an excellent kid and dad is an insurance salesman who has devoted a lot of time to selling pop corn with his son. At least in this case, I don't see anything harmful about the close association between the boy and Dad in selling popcorn, and Dad has pretty much financed a relatively expensive pack program through revenues from the popcorn sale and running a quality program without as much help as he should have had. The boy has made Cub Scouts and selling popcorn his own goals that he chooses to achieve. But I imagine that Dad has had a significant role in choosing those goals. Not a problem in this case, anyway, in my view.

It sounds like Dad has earned his ScoutLawyer badge. I've seen this handled poorly myself. When the SM refused to approve a Scout for his Life award, his father, the CC, signed off on the advancement report by himself, without a BOR. The Scout had most of his Merit Badges signed off by his father (not approved by the SM) and the SM again refused to approve the Scout for his Eagle. In the case at hand, I think a SM conference would be in order to explain to the Scout which badge of rank he is entitled to wear by the Troop records, and to explain that if he wears a higher badge of rank he will be suspended from attending Troop Meetings and activities. I'd also seriously consider suspending the Scout from the troops because of the father's behavior. The Scout and his father aren't worth destroying your troop program and the standards of your troop.

Hello Scout Wolf, So what kinds of things are you interested in doing in Scouting?

Hello Outdoors, There is nothing intrinsically wrong with "discrimination." My liberal friends tend to be big advocates and supporters of racial discrimination in college admissions, government contracting and employment, and currently orchestrating legal efforts to convince the Supreme Court to continue to allow such programs of discrimination to occur. They are defending such programs under the rubric of "diversity," but somehow they don't seem to like the diversity BSA's policies represent. They only want their policies to rule --- no diversity needed there.

Hello Baden P. I was describing my own district, not yours. There are a few units that could maintain themselves for a period of years anyway without the district or council. But most units are either rather weak or go through a cycle of effective leadership followed by weakness, which would easily lead to collapse without support and aid from the district and council. I'm Unit Commissioner for a pack the collapsed in 2004, and I was assigned as UC to help build it up again. It was on the edge of collapse again this summer, but I helped find the leadership needed to keep it going again. I'd guess that without district and council support and programs, perhaps 3/4s of the units in the district would fail within ten years.

> I have noted before that a few units in my district might say the same thing --- located where the wealthy, well educated and intelligent live. The rest need district and council services in varying degrees. Would you like to see a Scouting movement limited to wealthy and well educated families?

Actually, neither Iowa nor Illinois lead in producing pork. That would be Washington DC.

Sounds like a gay Scoutmaster thread on this forum.

Hello Basement, > Heh, heh! That's an amusing anecdote. I'm guess your DE got promoted on the basis of his proven BRAVERY in bearding Basement in person!

Hello Eamonn, Excellent post! I continue to fail to understand where the common hostility towards district and council leaders comes from. I encounter it pretty often in my own district, although I know from my own experience that district leaders and the District Executive have a history of doing a good job with the resources available to them (us). And the council is well managed and does a good job too On several occasions I have been introduced to unit leaders as someone who is a council volunteer, "But he is one of the good ones."! It would be amusing if it weren't dispiriting. Perhaps someone can explain this mystery.

I'm guessing Obama will address this issue with a new Federal spending program. That's right ----more pork. -

Hello TCD, > I agree that screwing around with districts is dispiriting for district volunteers. Friendships and associations made through districts are often important motivators for district volunteers. I would compare arbitrarily reshaping districts to be comparable to reforming patrols in a Boy Scout Troop.

> Pretty much all the people receiving the Silver Beaver have been unit leaders as Cub masters or Scoutmasters --- often both. Often for decades. Thirty years of service seems pretty common. I imagine that most have taken many groups of boys backpacking, often while doing district and council positions as well. Recognition of achievements is one of the methods of Scouting. Not infrequently such recognition can shape behavior is positive ways, help motivate people and is a tangible way to say "Thank you!" to people. If such things are of no interest to you, that's certainly fine.

Hello Eagle,

I sometimes do a Bobcat ceremony with face paint as well. I do a ceremony to welcome new Tiger Cubs into the den and pack. For each I provide a neckerchief I've cut from a suitable sheet, and a neckerchief slide cut from a tree limb with a hole bored in it. The new Scouts are invited to come forward with their Tiger Cub Partner. Each is welcomed into the den by name and given their new neckerchief and slide. The Tiger Cub partner helps put the neckerchief and slide on their Tiger Cub. I explain that when they are wearing their neckerchief and slide, they are "in uniform." One aim is to establish the value of boys being in uniform immediately to boys and parents, to get boys in uniform without leaning on family budgets to go out and buy stuff right away and give families time to buy additional uniform parts as they wish on their own schedule. I use a butcher knife to cut out the neckerchiefs. They, like the slides, are all a little different, just like Cub Scouts are all different. That tends to work out pretty well in my experience. I cut 20 neckerchiefs out of a sheet that cost me $7 once when I kept track of that.

Just another example of how the sexual liberation movement perverts any and all institutions in a vain attempt to deal with the inevitable failures of the morality they foist upon society.

>"I am pleased to be able to say that our WDL is making that transition, with regular outdoor activities for Scouts in his 2nd year Webelos program."> The pack I volunteer with is still small and struggling. Despite that, on unit leader helped organize the Cub Scout Day Camp Last summer. I was Camp Director for the Tiger Twilight Camp as well as Unit Commissioner for a pack and troop and district membership chair. If other packs made contributions to district leadership like that in proportion to their membership, the district would be sitting pretty.

Hello Tampa, > I think this is likely to be especially common where the Webelos Den Leader is repeating the Cub Scout years, rather than making a real transition towards the greater independence of Boy Scouts. I am pleased to be able to say that our WDL is making that transition, with regular outdoor activities for Scouts in his 2nd year Webelos program.

For most of human history we had abstinence based cultural values, and they worked pretty well. Periodically there were efforts to promote sexual liberation, but they pretty much always failed in the ability to care for children and women and such. Of course, now we have a society that has actively undermined the idea of abstinance and written sexual liberation into our very constitution. Government spends huge amounts of money to try to make sexual liberation values work, but still failed families, teen pregnancies, Sexually transmitted disease and other failures are rife in this country and around the world. No matter how pervasive the failures though, they will not be recognized because indulging people's sexual itch has become the lame cornerstone of western civilization. People who have an itch for wealth are encouraged to work for it. Those who have a yen to beat up or kill people are prosecuted if they don't repress such an orientation. Jealousy, gluttony and numerous other vices people are expected to control or repress. But sexual license is to be indulged. Lust is just one of many human vices. There is no reason people can't be expected to control their lust and indulge it only upon appropriate occasions. But that is not what the sexual liberation movement proclaims and enforces these days. And it continues to roll on to new policy triumphs, always with the goal that "if it feels good, do it!"

The basic value of the sexual liberation movement is "If it feels good, do it." Government's role is to promote, enable and enforce that value among the public and to pick up the pieces when the disasters it causes occur. Of course, with contraception this began with the USSC ruling that contraception was a right of married couples. After greasing that slippery slope, the ramification of a right to contraception continues to expand --- to a right of children to have abortions without their parent's consent, to government paid abortions through Obama care, through sex educatyion of children in public schools, to government provided contraception in schools, and now this, merely the latest in a long series of policy decisions by government. Along the way, the impact of these decisions have enormously changed the culture of our society. In November several states will be having votes on same sex marriage. Just as with abortion, it's promoted as a decision that only impacts the individuals involved and that government has no right to control or prohibit. Of course that's bogus. Marriage and family decisions have a profound effect on society. But "progressive" thinkers ignore those consequences in their effort to continue to promote their fundamental value: "If it feels good, do it." That value continues to spin out new public policies and will continue to do so as long as it prevails in public policy.

I agree with others that changing troops should be a last option, not a first option. And it ought to be up to the boy to manage the programs in which he is active, not the parents.