WoodBadger

I have a couple of thoughts on what we do and do not end up discussing with scouts and parents. On the gay issue our sponsoring church brought it up. We are in an urban area, and a significant number of the churches disagree with even their own national organizations on the subject of homosexuality and full inclusion of gays in the life of the church. Our sponsoring church includes gays and lesbians fully in membership and leadership. The Vestry was concerned enough with the BSA stance to consider not renewing the charters of our Troop, Pack and Venture Crew. We talked it over and assured

Uncle Bob...you are right on! I'm especially annoyed with the lack of praticality of the pants and socks. Also even with a uniform swap program you can't outfit a boy for a reasonable price. At one time uniforms helped erase "class" differences between kids (that's one reason schools use them). Does anyone know if school uniforms are as expensive as Scout uniforms? I don't know. I know the French Toast company has an extensive side business in school uniforms. I wonder what they could do for Scouting?

As readers of some other forums know, I'm against the BSA policy excluding gays. HOWEVER I am totally FOR the BSA and what it does for our sons. I don't like the way everyone is feeling pressure to choose sides and yank good program away from the boys. I don't even know how to talk to the boys about this...so I don't... but I know they and their friends talk about it amongst themselves. Can't we figure out a way to amend the policy so it targets what may be really "tearing down society"? Instead of focusing on gays, how about focusing on behaviors? No leaders should be involved in,

As a Scouter who feels strongly that the BSA policy is too restrictive and narrowly focused I would be interested in such a list for the opposite reason from jamessnow. However I hope America in general and the BSA in particular can avoid an "US" vs "THEM" mentality. More open and honest communication is needed to see why some people identify a person's influence as "immoral" while other equally well educated, equally well meaning, equally committed, and equally faithful people disagree. We need to come to some national policy that recognizes the legitimacy of different viewpoints. Not easy

I have thoroughly enjoyed the give and take in this forum even though it is so hard to come to an agreement when the issue is deeply felt on both sides. Here's an interesting thing that recently happened. A national chain store in our area sells Christmas trees then takes them back in Jan. for recycling. Our troop asked permission to raise money by cleaning out cars after customers return the trees. We got a prompt and polite response that the national store administration has removed its support for Boy Scouting because of the BSA policy restricting the membership/leadership of gays. I wi

Oh my God! (and I mean that literally). What OldGreyEagle just posted prompted me to check out the fundraising forum. Stormfront's web addresses, especially if you lop off everything past the first slash represent a point of view (regardless of how one feels about gays) that scares me deeply. If you're new to this forum check out http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=303 which is the fundraising forum....scroll down. OldGreyEagle, do the "christian identity" groups have strong ties with the BSA or is Stormfront's solicitation just a fluke? Talk about moral v

I wonder if it would work better to give local chartering organizations some say in their standards for leadership? Instead of focusing on "tiny group of homosexuals who want to be Scout leaders" (as if there's some kind of agenda that gays have to infiltrate Scouting....I trust that's not what frankj meant) I think troops and their sponsors could credibly focus on behaviors and attitudes that they felt were harmful influences. Several of our volunteers smoke cigarettes. They do it out of the sight of the boys, don't brag about their habits, don't involve the boys in their habits. Yeah, t

I recently wrote a letter to my local council asking them to look into an open and honest dialog on the "gay issue". As a result of that letter I was invited to sit in on a council meeting on the subject. Several interesting points came up including the question "Why is National insisting that we exclude one group of people?" There are probably strong regional differences in tolerance and abhorrence of homosexual people (not the practice...the people themselves). Here in eastern urban areas too many of us know and work with openly gay people of very good character for us to feel comfor