Philly raises scouts rent $199,999/year

[packsaddle 753]

...going for 15...

Trev, if my daughter decides to marry someday, you'll benefit from an invitation, my declining bank account, and a big NY Italian wedding. But right now she's intent on avoiding those sorts of entanglements. Might have to wait a while.

 

Gold Winger, your point has been made before. But as a practical matter, unless you are going to enforce the rule yourself in some manner, as TJ notes, BSA won't. BSA is, in fact, as guilty of your assertion as TJ is since BSA itself does not enforce its own rule either often or consistently. If it is wrong for an individual, in your view, to ignore the rules, then your condemnation is at least equally applicable to BSA.

Moreover, if you want to have maximum impact on rule-following, you should seek some way to persuade or force BSA to take the action you desire, ferreting out all avowed gays (and don't forget those atheists) and ejecting them. Good luck.

 

Brent writes, "Man, I'm glad my ancestors evolved!"

That would be OUR ancestors, I hope.

[Gold Winger 9]

We're not talking about what BSA should or shouldn't do.

 

We have been discussing tj's attempts to dance around the fact that he's broken the promise that he gave when he signed up as an adult. At least that's what I've been doing, he's been trying more misdirection than Kreskin.

[tjhammer 10]

I studied dance and worked in the theater as a young man.

 

Hmm, I wondered why my Spidey sense was tingling.

 

You try to dance around the fact but you, not BSA, is the hypocrite.

 

Already copped to that plea. And I'd feel even less honorable about it if BSA hadn't defined the rules of engagement on this equivocation.

 

 

[tjhammer 10]

Charter, Bylaws and the Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America

 

BTW, you must have a different copy of those documents than me. The policy saying gay people are incapable of being the best kinds of citizens is not in those documents.

 

As to why I choose the play the semantics game that BSA started... I'm a product of Scouting. More than any influence on my life... more than church, school or friends... as much as family, Scouting formed and shaped the man I am today. My debt to the Scouting Movement (if not BSA Inc.) is immeasurable and non-expiring.

 

Some day I might "avow" my homosexuality in Scouting, probably sooner rather than later, because I recognize "familiarity" is the only way to overcome prejudice. But for now I choose not to avow it, and continue to support the Movement the best I know how today.

 

 

[Gold Winger 9]

Since the bylaws and rules are not generally available to the average member, I'll go with what I know of other organizations.

 

Im sure that if you read the rules the Cheif Scout or board of directors has powers beyond those specified in writing which makes their decisions the same as an enumerated rule. Just like the EPA publishing a rule, it may not have been enacted by congress but they have the power to do so and you and I have to toe the line.

[evmori 11]

The BSA isn't a species, it's an organization so that usual comparison doesn't apply. Why should the BSA compromise it's membership standards? Because the ACLU says it should? Rubbish!

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

 

[Trevorum 24]

Quite right, Ed. But perhaps exclusionary membership policies may be considered to be a meme, a holdover from the 19th and eartly 20th centuries, but no longer wholly adaptive in the changed environment of the 21st. This bears further consideration, I think ...

[evmori 11]

Trevorum,

 

So the membership requirements should change. Why? Should they include gays and atheists? Women & girls?

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Lisabob 13]

Ed, I am compelled to point out that the BSA did in fact change its rules (not too long ago, either) to allow women to hold any leadership position in the organization...

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

Not only did the BSA change its rules on women leaders, they did it after winning court battles to keep them out, if I remember correctly.

[GernBlansten 10]

Monkey meat going extinct? Henny Penny, I'm gonna have to alter all my recipes.

[OldGreyEagle 5]

Actually girls can be members of the BSA. The Charter President of the Venture Crew won a bet with her Poly Sci teacher. He said girls couldnt be Boy Scouts, she said she was and they made a bet. She showed him her registration card and he agreed she was. Although I have always mainained she should have explained what Venturing was, she said the sight of him in the dress all day was quite the spectacle

 

I know things evolve, way back in the Chicago suburbs in the 60's, I used to caddy at the local golf course, Elmhurst Country Club if anyone remembers. Back then the groundskeepers, mostly illegals, would get deported every quarter or so, today our government is working on a way to make illegals official citizens and allow social security benefits.

 

When I started as an Altar Boy, we had to know latin, now the mass is said in the vulgate

 

You couldnt earn merit badges until you were first class and had to have the same amount for each rank as today

 

You could wear the red beret for a few shinning years and then it went away thanks to Curtis Sliwa of the Guardian Angels

 

The Quartermaster patch was a key over a wagon

 

I was always told by my cousins who lived in the country that I was lucky I lived in Chicago, I had 5 TV stations to choose from

 

To change TV stations, you had to walk over to the TV set (the horror, the horror)

 

AM Radio stations played actual music, the first song I ever heard on the radio was Tommy James and the Shondells singing my baby does the hanky panky

[erickelly65 10]

This is a way tangent comment...Last night while channel surfing I came across a program on the History Channel that was discussing Gamma Ray Bursts and theory that in Earth's ancient past it was hit by such a burst and that burst and its initial effects and the lingering impact on the climate wiped out the trilobite's

[packsaddle 753]

This close to Halloween, OGE and Gern that's what it is isn't it? You're both trying to scare me a little, right?

 

I would welcome ALL young people into scouting, period. I would not single them out as gays and straights, girls and boys, or for that matter atheists, protestants, or religious looney tunes. Just young people.

All young people should have access to the benefits of scouting.

 

I do recognize, ahem, that this forum would slim down quite a bit...not as much to argue about. Let's see - is that an upside or a downside...thinking....

[onehouraweekmy 10]

MerVyn says:

"That's one of the problems of using subjective criteria like that. The BSA is on record in court as says gays aren't "clean" and "morally straight", and that atheists can't be the best kinds of citizens. I'd say that qualifies as promoting hate."

 

tjhammer tells us in effect "I'm homosexual, but I won't be open about that to the parents of the boys I am in contact with as an adult leader."

 

Scary stuff. BSA is now a hate group because it won't bend to the PC winds blowing and admit that homosexuality is great and hey, no problem, camp in close quarters with lots of young boys.

 

These comments prove why the BSA is so right to exclude homosexuals. They want access to our youth as adult leaders, plain and simple. Whether you think homosexuality is morally unclean, deviant, and unnatural, or whether you think it is just a violation of plain common sense to allow those sexually attracted to males to camp in close quarters with young males, excluding homosexuals is the only way to go.

 

We would never think of allowing unrelated women to camp with our boys given all the possibilities for improper contact or even the appearance of improper contact.

 

It's a safety issue, bottom line, even if you don't agree that homosexual acts are perverse. What world are some of you living in, to think it would be jack-dandy to expose kids to more risk than is already out there?