DWise1_AOL

I have seen situations in which a unit has rejected a member on religious grounds. However, that did not expel the member from BSA membership. When the member tried to seek redress, BSA backed up the unit in rejecting him, but kept him on as a member free to join another unit that would have him. To me, that is what the "local option" is about. Rather, the situation we are faced with is where the unit wants to keep the member, but BSA National has reached down and plucked him out of there while ignoring the unit and the chartered organization. That is what all these discrimination lawsu

click23, you should read what you post. How could you have overlooked this:

No, you were not asking for a definition, but rather I was. In your question, "So, you do believe in God?", what definition of "God" were you applying? What definition of "believe in God" were you applying? That is an extremely important question, because this entire issue revolves around BSA applying its own definition in complete opposition to its own rules that it does not and cannot define or interpret those terms. So if I were to have simply answered "yes" or "no", just exactly what was I saying "yes" or "no" to? I assume that you are a theist and most likely some form of Christi

Yes I do. I did throughout the events from 1989 to 1998 during which I was subjected to religious discrimination by BSA. My minister is recognized by officially published BSA policy to be the one to determine whether I do my Duty to God and he certified to BSA in writing that I do, but BSA chose to ignore both his letters both when he sent them and also each time I included them in my requests for review and my requests for status of my review, which dragged out for several years. Of course, my Duty to God has nothing whatsoever to do with YHWH nor any other literal supernatural being, co

Elsewhere while waiting for the server to come back up, I responded to qwazse having posted there about this question with: You asked me if I "believe in God". In asking that, you ignore officially published BSA religious policy. The 1991 Reaffirmation of the Position of the Boy Scouts of America on Duty to God clearly states that BSA does not intend to define what constitutes belief in God. The Advancement Guidelines RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES states that BSA "Does not define what constitutes belief in God or the practice of religion." It also clearly states that a member is to be judged ac

Yes I do. I did throughout the events from 1989 to 1998 during which I was subjected to religious discrimination by BSA. My minister is recognized by officially published BSA policy to be the one to determine whether I do my Duty to God and he certified to BSA in writing that I do, but BSA chose to ignore both his letters both when he sent them and also each time I included them in my requests for review and my requests for status of my review, which dragged out for several years. Of course, my Duty to God has nothing whatsoever to do with YHWH nor any other literal supernatural being, co

I know that this is not the place for this, but then you should have known that too. In the meantime as we wait for the forum software to work: You asked me if I "believe in God". In asking that, you ignore officially published BSA religious policy. The 1991 Reaffirmation of the Position of the Boy Scouts of America on Duty to God clearly states that BSA does not intend to define what constitutes belief in God. The Advancement Guidelines RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES states that BSA "Does not define what constitutes belief in God or the practice of religion." It also clearly states that a m

You need to get over it, or go to the local council and view the bylaws, or hire a lawyer and call the LA Times. Unlike the ban on homosexuals, the BSA's religious stance is right there on both the youth and adult application, it's in the oath, it's in the handbook, it's part of the program. If swearing as an atheist to do your duty to God didn't tip you off that you were going to intrinsically be in conflict with BSA, you either weren't paying attention, or you wanted that conflict. BSA didn't cause your suffering, you caused your suffering when you knowingly and willfully joined an organizat

Let's try this again. I need to know about changes to the BSA Rules & Regulations, Bylaws, Advancement Guidelines, Declaration of Religious Principles, etc, pertaining to religion that were made since the late 1990's. In particular, I am interested in learning whether the "belief in a Supreme Being" non-rule has been incorporated into officially published BSA policy. In other words, has that non-rule been turned into an actual rule? And if so, then where? My own experience was from 1988 to about 1998. During that time, I became very familiar with those official publications a

Since the server seems to be back up now, am trying this to return this topic to the top of the list.

I think that official BSA publications describe very well what that means and how to implement it. I just found a post I had written for rec.scouting in 1996 that somebody else has quoted in full: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/rec.scouting/adi4Dl5TlZY In it I quoted those officially published BSA policies and then described how BSA was (and undoubtedly still is) willfully violating each and every one of them. Every member is to following his own faith, not somebody else's, and put it into practice. Every member is to be judged by the standards of his own religiou

I suffered through BSA's religious discrimination in the 1990's and was very active on the rec.scouting during that time. I was also very active in Scouting at the time even though I had been summarily expelled for being an atheist, but since my boys aged out I have been out of the loop since circa 1999. I am starting to prepare web pages describing my experience and I need to know the current situation. The main problem was that BSA claimed to have a rule that required belief in a "Supreme Being" and used that "rule" as the reason for expelling both youth and adults for religious reasons

My first experience with this forum and I get the same problems. Notification of two messages, but none to be found. Issues & politics won't display any topics. However, if I sneak in through the back way (through a Google search), then topics do display. That is how I saw that my attempts to post a new topic caused a rash of new topics to appear, but then they are all empty. All attempts so far to post (ie, new topic, reply in an existing topic) have failed with the same error messages noted above. Who knows about this current attempt? Who's in charge of the software? Have