NeverAnEagle

"We told the District NO one year and they came to our Blue and Gold uninvited and struck before the Pack leadership could respond......We were serving food and he came in walked right up on stage and started the presentation." They seek into ECOH's and do it here too; just plain tacky IMO.

"We told the District NO one year and they came to our Blue and Gold uninvited and struck before the Pack leadership could respond......We were serving food and he came in walked right up on stage and started the presentation." They seek into ECOH's and do it here too; just plain tacky IMO.

Percentage that comes back to the units: 0% All the money that is generated from FOS stays in the council office. In our council if you meet your FOS goal you get 15% of the use of camp during one off-season weekend. WHOOP-DE-DOO! Using camp is still 10 times more expensive than taking kids out into the National Forest for regular camping.

I live here: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informe...ve_hate_groups In addition to the active KKK groups listed above there are an additional 20 different white supremacy groups which hold active chapters in the USA, listed here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...#United_States Where do you live?

wrong spot

We kept the number and still had the CO, we just weren't allowed to meet in the Church or attached School as long as Mormons were present. The Pack moved, granted it was only 10 miles to a community building that didn't care who attended as long as we paid for the space each month. The only thing that changed was the location.

Here is a question: Why does it matter to you, as a SM, what the lads religion is or isn't? Did the lad actually say, "Hey Mr. B, I'm atheist." or could you simply let it go and assume he said, "Hey Mr. B, I'm a theist." Simply letting atheist spell the word with an extra space could solve a lot of problems. Not to mention that the sentences sound exactly the same!

I will have a 13 year old eagle if he schedules his Board of Review anytime soon. It depends on the kid, his brother is 16 and still only Star. If you have a highly motivated kid who does everything he's supposed to age should not be an issue. I've heard similar grumblings here, which is why you have to document everything. My son decided when he was 10 years old that he would make Eagle before his brother and set himself on a course to do so. I'd hate to see any child punished for being motivated and industrious.

Basementdweller & WAKWIB There still are councils who practice racial discrimination; now they just do it under the guise of "allowing units to choose their membership." Most of the units are sponsored by churches and a lot of churches do not allow non-whites to join their congregations, hence they are prohibited from joining the unit as well.

The short answer is yes. I was with a Pack that was moved because the Chartered Organization no longer wanted to provide a meeting place after the CM registered a Mormon family. The Pack was given the option of either kicking the boys out or meeting elsewhere; we choose to meet elsewhere.

Instead of "Faith has two meanings" maybe you should approach it from the perspective of "Many meanings have Faith." I thought about this today after adding a new word to my lexicon. The word was "Catamount" and I had never come across it before. I was reading a book set in Appalachia which included a passage about a fearsome catamount who was terrorizing the families in the glen. The description and choice of words evoked an emotion (fear.) Not being familiar with the word or Appalachia I thought it might be a dangerous mythical creature not unlike the Lock Ness Monster or Big Foot. I looked up the word and discovered that a catamount is also known as: Puma, Cougar, Mountain Lion, and Panther. Armed with information I returned to the book with understanding, no longer confused with a fear of the unknown. The same is true for religion. A lot of people engage in knee-jerk reactions because they are uneducated. I'm on the "bad list" of a good portion of the community because I'm not Christian. I hear a lot about "those atheist," "those Muslims," or "those who are into the Occult." If people took the time to understand each other they would know that "those atheist" actually posses a moral compass and "those Muslims" worship the same God as you Christians, or that those "weirdos into the occult" really just worship nature. Good Luck. (And you might want to pick up a copy of Being a United Methodist in the Bible Belt and read it before you begin; it has good information on how to counter denominational infighting.)

This is magnificent; thanks for sharing.

KDD: Arrrgh you sure??? LOL

Typical Christian form. A Muslim, Jewish, or any other payer would be very different. Muslim: "Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Universe, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful! Master of the Day for Judgment! You alone do we worship and You alone do we call on for help. Guide us along the Straight Path, The path of those whom You have favored, Not the path of those who earned Your anger, nor of those who went astray. Amen." Jewish: "Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the lights of Shabbat. (Amen) " Wiccan: "Make me strong in spirit, courageous in action, gentle in heart. Let me act in Wisdom, conquer my fear and doubts, discover my own hidden gifts. Meet others with compassion, be a source of healing energies, and let each day be a source of hope and joy. So mote it be." Buddhist: "May each of us find our true path and learn from our karma and accept each other's evolutionary pathway and not feel, show, or express disapproval with the choices the other makes. May we feel compassion instead of hatred, love instead of anger, and an acceptance not only of others but of ourselves as well. May each of us do all of the above in a mindful way." Every religion has it's own form for worship. All too often Christian think the are including others, but don't realize that what they are doing can be very offensive to others. I think many don't truly understand the difference between non-denominational and non-sectarian; or simply don't realize that other religions pray and worship very differently. Probably because they've never experienced anything other than the Christian faith.

Confidential files turned over for a lawsuit set to go to trial in Minnesota may shed new light on the problem of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America. Attorneys for one former Scout won a court order for the nationwide internal files, commonly known as "ineligible volunteer" or "perversion files." They cover the years 1999-2008, much more recent than similar files forced into the open in an Oregon case last year. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/files-detail-sex-abuse-boy-scouts-20193511

True. I have friends that can't earn a religious emblem because BSA has not approved one yet. At least the "rest of us" can still celebrate Festivus!

Both these sound very Christian to me.

Isn't there a place where old threads can go to die???? With Trail Life taking the "Fundies" won't this become a non-issue now?

My Aunt's favorite prayer is: "May God bless all my enemies with a limp; that way they will be easily identified and avoided. And if necessary I'll be able to out-run them. AMEN." I hope Trail Life becomes a private christian club that no one has ever heard of. There is one Royal Ranger group here and another that I know of 2 counties north. I have met a Royal Ranger, and like the kids from AWANA, he wanted to be a boy scout, but his parents religious views prevented it. I think that like Royal Rangers, Trail Life may become a holding tank for the wing-nuts; which gives us the opportunity to identify and avoid them.

Duckfoot: ROFLMAO! Diversity? In Scouting? Where???? (We need to know so we can put a stop to that!) If by "ticket" you are referring to Wood Badge, then no, I didn't see real diversity or diversity training. The diversity section of my WB course said to include multiple GENERATIONS, not colors, ethnicity, religions, etc. There was small mention of interacting with "other" socioeconomic groups as well (A.K.A. the poor) but not to much interaction, the poverty could rub off! The LDS hold their own events so as not to mix with the others, because they aren't "real Christians" you know. Of course the protestants don't want to mix with the Catholics because they aren't "real Christians" either and everyone hates the Methodists; they may as well be devil worshipers. If I take my son and my father fishing on the same day sure we have multiple generations, but seeing as we're all middle-class white guys with the same religious views; I wouldn't necessarily call it diversity. I'm happy their gone, I just wish they'd take a few more with them.

We have a whole troop joining Trail Life here. The troop was pretty closed to begin with, so I guessing you just hit the nail on the head, they gay vote was just an excuse to leave. This particular troop only allowed boys in if they were Catholic and attended the local Catholic school. If your parents couldn't afford to send you to the Catholic school, you family wasn't "Catholic Enough" to join the troop. Their former SM was a good friend of mine and was recently kicked out of the troop & KofC because he wasn't "Catholic Enough" either. (This was a man who double-fisted his rosary's' and attended Mass multiple times a week.) The issue was that he was dating a woman who was open about not being christian and had no intention of converting; they say it as "poor judgement" on his part. I can only hope Trail Life will go the way of the Royal Rangers.

Exactly! The YP guidelines keep those of us who aren't pervs out of being falsely accused. Nothing will stop the pervs but vigilance, by the leaders and the boys. We have a local lawyer (also a scout leader) who specializes in sexual abuse to talk to our scouts about once a year. He discusses one major aspect of protection a year. Like you, I keep my eyes and ears open, and thankfully, I haven't noticed anything predatory. If I do, I will have no problems reporting it. My boys don't attend camp in our council anymore because the camp dose not comply with YP Guidelines. We were there in 2008 in the midst of the whole trial over the boys who were molested on Camp the previous year, so I guess I was more vigilante than I otherwise would be; but I watched and was appalled by what I saw. The Archery guy would ask 11 yr old Scouts to stay behind to help find arrows after classes. They would be alone, just him and the little Scout. There were multiple instances where I would get back to camp from a shower and ask where some boy was off to, only to learn that a staff member had stopped by camp and gone off alone with the lad, leaving me to track them down, often in the woods well after dark. The Camp Director was unconcerned, which left me very concerned. I reported this to council and was labeled a trouble maker for my efforts. Now there are 4 more coming forward; granted for them the abuse was awhile ago, but when you think how hard it is to get the YP guidelines enforced; I'm betting it's still happening. Think of the statistics for women; I read somewhere that 1 in 4 women are raped, but very few actually report it and that's after years of the feminist movement telling them to come forward. How much harder would it be for a young lad to come forward??? Far more difficult I would bet.

qwazse: Our church charters a Girl Scout Troop and a Boy Scout Troop. There is pretty heavy rivalry between the girls and boys; with the girls generally winning. They have won the events at Fall Camp O'ree two years running and have proudly displayed the traveling plaque in the "Scout Room" for all the boys to see. This year the girls were disappointed to learn that they have been prohibited from participating in the Fall Camp O'ree or any other Boy Scout events. Apparently the other troops complained to the camping committee when the girls won. My niece runs her own trap line every year and can out "boy scout" both my son's. I think comments like BD's are just the rantings of an insecure man. Sure there are girls who like the mall, but they don't join scouts. They are boys who like the mall too and they don't join scouts either. To proclaim that someone wouldn't like camping based solely on their gender is just plain silly.

Two things you have to ask yourself: 1. Who pays for the testing? 2. Will it be reliable? It's one thing to screen folks for routine 1-on-1 contact. But there should be no 1-on-1 contact in the BSA! Is there a test that will find the guy/gal who will violate the 1-on-1 principle? Can you identify the person who will assault their colleague before the do it? You can screen out applicants that have a disproportional amount of deviant tenancies. Most of the testing is computer based so after you've paid for the software, an organization like BSA would only need 1 or 2 people in interpret any results that got a red flag. You wouldn't need to do it for everyone, just paid positions. Granted perverts will be drawn to where-ever there are kids, the problem seems to be that the higher-up mucky-mucks don't investigate allegations of abuse, they'd rather hide it. Those are the guys who need to be tested to see if they can make ethical decisions. When a kid comes forward and says he was abused you should have the balls to confront it and protect the kid, not try to hid the incident and keep it out of the media for the sake of "protecting BSA's Brand name!"

Exactly! The YP guidelines keep those of us who aren't pervs out of being falsely accused. Nothing will stop the pervs but vigilance, by the leaders and the boys. We have a local lawyer (also a scout leader) who specializes in sexual abuse to talk to our scouts about once a year. He discusses one major aspect of protection a year. Like you, I keep my eyes and ears open, and thankfully, I haven't noticed anything predatory. If I do, I will have no problems reporting it. YP guidelines only work if they are enforced. The problem is that professional scouters, not only don't make sure they are enforced, but when abuse is brought forward they try to hide that fact rather than publicly denounce the abuser. If BSA paid personnel made a point of openly and publicly denouncing the abusers as soon as abuse was brought to their attention, perverts might start looking for another organization to hide in. As it stands now, the Council staff are complicit in the abuse because they knew about it and allow it to continue.