When classes are out, religious clubs increasingly are in

[Hunt 11]

"Persecute" means "To oppress or harass with ill-treatment, especially because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or beliefs.

To annoy persistently; bother."

 

The Dale case was an example of an unjustified attack on BSA--I know it was unjustified, because BSA won the case--but it certainly cost them a lot of money. Unlike challenges to school sponsorship, that case was a direct attack on BSA's membership policies as a private organization. It was an example of persecution.

 

I also think it was persecution when Boy Scouts were booed at the Democratic National Convention a few years ago.

 

I would also suggest that you can distinguish a would-be persecutor from someone who just strongly disagrees with you by the rhetoric they use. If their rhetoric is full of insults, generalizations, exaggerations, attribution of bad motives to well-meaning people, etc., then they are likely to be persecutors. Thus, for example, if the Democratic delegates had simply declined to attend a session with Boy Scouts there, it would have been a statement of strong disagreement--booing made them persecutors.

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

5-4 court decisions aren't "persecution", and the BSA certainly acted like a public accommodation pre-Dale (such as public schools owning & operating BSA units). Post-Dale, the BSA hasn't been honest enough to divest itself of all the things that a private, discriminatory, religious organization isn't entitled to (like the aforementioned public school charters), so the BSA has to be threatened with legal action to behave honestly.

[evmori 11]

Give it a rest, Merlyn! You & your ilk (yeah ilk) have been attacking i.e. persecuting the BSA since the Dale case. You lost & you're ticked! And you will try anything you can to get even! Keep trying! The only thing you will accomplish is making the BSA stronger in it's resolve to keep the values it was founded on. Caving into the likes of you won't happen! Why? Because your arguments are so skewed they are beginning to talk back to themselves!

 

Those with no moral fiber unwind like a ball of yarn.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[packsaddle 753]

Ed, Merlyn, enough already! Or else, get a room! In less than three pages the thread has decomposed to 'ilk'. We already know what your responses are going to be before you write them. Please try to come up with something new...Just a personal view.

Ronvo, I would like to say that I agree with your posts and I hope to read more of you in the future. Hunt, thanks for your clarifications.

Edited part: dyslexic fingers, sorry(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[OldGreyEagle 5]

Ed, help me out here, again one of your posts confused me. You addressed Merlyn in your last post, first you aked him to give it a rest and then you encouraged him to keep trying, which is it? For him to stop or continue?

[evmori 11]

OGE,

Not worth the effort.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[OldGreyEagle 5]

Ed, I can accept your feeling that its not worth the effort as long as you can accept the excuse its not worth the effort yourself.

 

(This message has been edited by OldGreyEagle)

[CA_Scouter 11]

I'm with Packsaddle. This is exactly why I asked my 'Agnostic Scout' thread to be closed, because I knew once these two started going at it, it would be a flame war. Now sadly, OGE is part of this too.

 

This is not Scout like behavior. Get a room, get on AOL, mud pies at 20 paces or a rubber band war, but do your personal arguing elsewhere PLEASE!!!!

 

 

[evmori 11]

OGE,

That's not going to happen.

 

Have a great Thanksgiving.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[Rooster7 11]

It will change; just take some more time. Girls will be in the BSA at all levels (name will probably be changed to Scouting USA or some such)

 

Homophobia will become a non-issue.

 

Not sure what to predict about Reverence. Redefined? Dropped? Replaced?

 

And the rainbow coalition marches on...

 

If girls are allowed to join the BSA, and thus the organization is renamed appropriately, it will be a sad day. Not because girls don't deserve to have access to such a fine organization - But because an organization uniquely designed to capture the hearts of boys will no longer exist. If that day comes, the BSA will probably continue to be a good organization, but it won't be the same organization.

 

If "homophobia becomes a non-issue", I hope its because homosexuality is recognized universally as the perversion it is, and thus homosexual activists are not given any attention by the BSA or the general public.

 

If reverence is redefined, dropped, or replaced, then the BSA will truly cease to be the organization that millions have come to love. It will just become another in a litany of organizations that have succumbed to political correctness, either because they had it shoved down their throats and were too cowardly to resist it, or because they were overtaken from within and embraced it willingly as the new world doctrine. As such, they will no doubt trumpet the change as the beginning of a new era of open-mindedness. Alas, it will be a new era, but of mindlessness not open-mindedness.

 

You may be right about the BSA's future, but I for one, am hoping that you are wrong...very wrong.

 

[Hunt 11]

In thinking about the three changes that were just discussed, we should be honest with ourselves about which of these would make the most radical changes in Boy Scouting as it is actually practices today in the United States.

To me, the one that would have by far the most far-reaching effect would be letting girls in.

To be perfectly honest, dropping the requirement for a belief in God would have very little effect on Scouting as it is experienced by the vast majority of boys. The same is true for allowing gay members, assuming that the same standards of behavior are maintained.

Note I'm not talking about values at all, but about the actual on-the-ground changes in program that you would see. It's interesting to me that the change that would likely be the most radical in practical terms--allowing girls in--is probably the one of the three that is least upsetting to people. Perhaps it's because it is not based on religious principle in the same way.

[ronvo 10]

Hunt

 

I think you are quite correct. Scouting has unbdoubtedly always had and still has some members and that includes leaders who were/are gay.

 

For the most part religion was a non-issue when I was a Scout as a boy and from my experience as an adult it still is until you get into these philosophical debates.

 

Most people don't give these things as much of their time as we seem to on this forum.

 

I do agree that the BSA should be a male only organization a place where "boys can be boys". I know I will feel the wrath here - I also think that adult leaders for the Boys Scout level should all be male.

 

If you are to allow women to be leaders and in the OA why not allow girls in. The only reason the BSA did so I believe was due to falling numbers of male adult volunteers.

 

I also think taht in fighting the religious/homophobe battles that thay are wasting money that could be better spent elsewhere in the program.

 

My opinion. I know most on the list, like Rooster, will disagree. Too bad we can't have a poll of a larger number of Scouters around the country.

 

ronvo

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

CA_Scouter writes:

This is not Scout like behavior. Get a room, get on AOL, mud pies at 20 paces or a rubber band war, but do your personal arguing elsewhere PLEASE!!!!

 

Since this particular forum expressly exists to talk about BSA issues including the 3Gs, I suggest you leave the "Issues & Politics" forum instead.

 

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!"

[Prairie_Scouter 10]

I'd agree with Rooster that if girls were let in, "gayness" became a non-issue, and a belief in a god was no longer required, BSA would certainly be a different organization. Whether it's good or bad is largely in the eye of the beholder.

 

I suspect that if you polled the average member of BSA, of those 3 changes, adding girls would probably cause the most heartburn. I suspect that if the "gay" and "god" policies were to change, a small number of people would actually leave, the rest would just move on and hardly notice the difference or ignore it. Adding girls to BSA would require quite a bit of change in BSA; changing the other policies would, in reality, probably not require much change at all insofar as how the organization is run.

[evmori 11]

For once, I agree with Merlyn. This is the forum for these type of topics & the debate & discussion can get heated! If you don't like the heat get out of the forum!

 

There is a strange chill coming from beneath my feet. Could it be .....................................................?

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10