ThomasJefferson

Those "conveniences" are not enough. It is the advent of home entertainment that is the key convenience. You can't lay blame at the foot of a program that boys did not even know existed or notice as different. I was a boy scout throughout the change in one direction and then the other. I did not see any difference in any of it. I still don't see anything signficant until the ODR uniform came about (an atrocity). What happened in the early 1970's was that TV exploded. It went from flickery, B&W lone ranger re-runs and test patterns at night to 19" color screens being in multiple rooms

Here's the real problem: Culture. The US no longer has the culture that supported and called for a Scouting program. It was founded in the early 20th Century by the progressive movement as a reaction to the industrial revolution and its pollution and child abuse. Today's kids don't need saving from the industrial revolution. They are no longer in need of rescue. They are not unhappy with their conditions. A kid in 1910 went camping and conditions improved for him. A kid in 2010 went camping and he was without anything he wanted around him basically suffering. Scouting membership was buff

Wrong, jblack47. That is exactly not what a theory is. A scientific theory is a proven out body of scientific knowledge that, while not the final word on the topic because more information is always becoming available, is fact. Gravity, for example, is a theory. Do you disbelieve in it? You are confusing hypothesis, which is a speculation based on observation, with a theory, which is what we get when we test a hypothesis and find out the truth. Find me a valid scientific study on personality that shows women are feelers and men aren't. I will refer you to the work Amy Cudd

In a troop in the 1950's there was only one adult usually. That's why no adult politics. Patrols camped without adults. They hiked without adults. They built clubhouses and held meetings without adults. The troop met together every couple of weeks. The patrols met as buddies on a regular basis. The ACLU didn't go on an offensive. That's political doubletalk. BSA got involved in that Dale mess and never should have. They should have let the local unit decide his fate, and they should have let it go. Instead of making a case about their rights, they tried to argue the right to exclude sectio

More proof God does not exist. If God does exist, he hates the scouts, because the scouts are seemingly targeted for termination via natural selection through every process our nation has.

There is in fact a pile of scientific evidence that your beliefs about being emotional and making emotional judgments are gender based are nonsense. Proven probably by about 80 years of scientific data with none showing the opposite. If you study theories of personality, you will find that men and women are divided almost 50/50 between those that prefer feeling based decision making vs. thinking based decision making within each gender. Says every expert on the topic ever. Oh, and horsehair ropes don't repel snakes, either.

You don't need to deny my denial of God to be a Man's man, or piss and moan about thread hijacking expressing your fear. That's pretty much the opposite of being a man's man. Today's scouting is wussified because of two things: lawsuits and the Mormons. Lawsuits have driven BSA into a corner over faith and morality, because they took too hard of a stand in the 90's, executed a PR disaster, and lost the left wing of their membership. Now they are stuck, and Mormons have crept in quietly, and scouting has become more about "wholesome American old-fashioned virgin until marriage fun."

Religion has not always been forefront like it is now. It was just part of normal culture of the 19th century Victorians to mention it considerable. During the 1910's - 1950's, the handbook tells you how big of a component it was: It merited a mention that the scout law and duty to god were blah blah blah and that's it. The whole thing today with Scouts being a Sunday school class with right wingers everywhere screaming about Jesus and the oppression of the left - that's all new.

Agreed. Scouting has gone from being an outdoorsman's adventuring program for boys and men with a "law" that guides behavior to being a church program with some token outdooring in it. The focus is no longer on being a capable Kudu-worthy first class scout who can make his own hiking stick, camp under a home-made tent, and shoot squirrels and shishkabob them. Now it is about having family interventions, scoutmaster conferences, citizenship badges, meetings, elections, "boy led" and getting that eagle badge on your resume. Scouting was originally mainly focused on the outdoors. All of the

Humans are so stupid. How we made it this far is a mystery. Anyone who thinks we will be here in 300 years is not paying attention. I would have put my own wood badge beads on you myself if I had been personal witness to this atrocity. This is why BSA's membership policy has to go. BSA is too stupid to enforce a policy like this effectively. The guys who run BSA all have below average IQ's.

"We're all free to say anything, we are not free of the consequences of" That is said by many and frequently, but I think it is oxymoronic. You are not free to speak if the speech has consequences. Consequences negate freedom. That would be like saying you have freedom to murder, but you will have consequences. The truth is that the US has a rather low rating for free speech amongst the first world affluent nations. We're sort of bad at living up to our ideal that Congress not making laws that abridge the freedom of speech. I do not believe in "free speech", so this does not bot

Really?!? Are we going to say it is politically incorrect to tell someone they are acting like a jerk if they cloak it in faith. My personal faith in God teaches me to steal small electronics. Don't call me out on it. You are disrespecting my faith. Tip-toeing around what is wrong is not leadership. Let's also be clear that there is nothing faith-based about resentment of homosexuals. The same people citing obscure old testament verses for their beliefs are skipping over the ones that also condemn wearing of cotton, women serving as teachers, eating pork and other unclean animals (de

Being gay is not a sin. Being gay is at worst a birth defect, and at least a intermittent mutation among many animals as a response to stress during pregnancy or overcrowding. I mean mutation in the scientific sense, not the "gross! a mutation!" sense. Instead of continuing to teach children that gay people are bad people, why not just teach them the truth: Bigotry is a stupid, old-fashioned, outdated, foolish mindset that smacks of the uneducated rural folk missing teeth who fly confederate flags in their yards.

REading about how there is a universal morality is tedious. There is no such thing and never has been. The only universal truth amongst the mobs of humans who populate this world is that most of them act in their own best interest and within the limits of what their fellows in whatever culture they live in will allow. In Saudi Arabia it is OK to behead a man for setting foot in Mecca and not being Muslim. In some countries, chopping off someone's hand is OK. In our country, the death penalty is OK, and apparently so is putting a rather disturbingly large portion of our citizens beh

Wow. What a stupid thing to bother worrying over. It's just a joke. Who poured sour milk on your wheaties this morning?

Since I am Thomas Jefferson, I guess it is appropriate that I should answer this one. I never intended there to be a tax code or a national treasury. My frenemies Washington and Hamilton were in favor of it. This was one of the issues upon which Federalist and Democratic Republicans enjoyed spirited conversations. As President, despite my principles and feelings on the matter, I did see to it that our great nation acquired the French and Indian territory to the West known as Louisiana by establishing and then raiding national coffers of some substance. We did not institute national

Considering the description OP has presented in giving more details, I am very comfortable with the decision to remove all of the youth involved and rejection of the appeal. Sorry, but I don't want my son in a scout unit with those involved.

Apparently Christians in the US are so used to being an unopposed majority that they interpret not getting their way with being oppressed.

I'm sorry, but I don't see any evidence for any of your claims about the differences between girls and boys at cub scout age having impacts on youth enjoyment of camping and learning of life lessons. Do you segregate your Sunday School classes and Church services? Aren't women and men different? Don't we learn differently than each other? Then why are you sitting together in the same service? Isn't worship of God most important of all, and doing it together probably means the men can't be men while learning about and worshipping God. After all, men commit most of the crime in th

AZMike: Well I am certainly won over by your friendly statements that religion has played a vital role in make you a very nice person. LOL Religion at work here.

Some of these comments are hilarious. I was a boy. I don't remember hurting for time "being a boy." I pretty much was one all the time. How does having girls present keep boys from being boys? If the boys aren't allowed to swear, go skinny dipping in the pond, or talk about girls & sex with male leaders present, then how does adding girls change anything? The program has already neutered the boy-specific activities and boy-oriented nature of the scouts. It is essentially already primed for girl participation. As for the Cub Scouts, I have no idea why that is not co-ed now. Girls

I think BSA does not know what they mean by non-sectarian. Technically, a sect is a religious branch of which isn't large enough to qualify as a denomination. Example: Methodists and Baptists are denominations. The unaffiliated "Church of God" in your neighborhood is a sect since it isn't very big and has it's own set of beliefs separate from others. Non-sectarian would technically mean "unconcerned with differences within a single religion." BSA uses the word incorrectly, imo. I'm also convinced that BSA doesn't care that they use it incorrectly, and that they are only tolerant of

Do you think that membership for gay youth means eagle awards for gay youth? Or are we just assuming that? Because if it does, is BSA going to apologize to all youth previous denied the eagle award and go back and award them in arrears? Will there be some sort of press conference like when black veterans of WWII were given the Honor Medal in the 1990's as a corrective action? Essentially, that would be BSA putting Eagle Awards on grown, gay adults. Will there be lawsuits to have them awarded in arrears to force BSA to do something like this publicly? You think they thought

When you are conducting a survey to help you figure out what to do, you are not "moral." You are not doing what you believe in. You are not leading. You are not standing up for anything. When you need a survey to figure out what your policy is, you are just chasing dollar bills and members. I am an atheist, and I would like to see the policy rescinded, but I would only be satisfied in BSA rescinded all of the membership policy no matter the fallout or destruction it caused, because they realize what they were doing is wrong, and then apologized to everyone wronged in the past and made re

"Any solution, to be effective, has to affirmatively respect both sides." I would say the opposite. Any solution has to affirmatively reject one of the two sides for once and for all. The fence sitting is what perpetuates the conflict. One side has to be told they are never going to get their way, and that they were wrong. That is how human differences are resolved. A court, an executive office, or a legislature or committee of some kind rules and says, "This is now where the line between right and wrong is. Everyone on that side, you are now wrong. The end. Too bad."