Stosh

I do believe that one is not to wear the MB sash while wearing the OA sash. With Boy Scout Sunday being a non-OA event, I'd go with the MB sash.

One always has to remember that we live in a country where freedoms are important. One of those freedoms is the freedom to associate with whomever they wish. If the current group has begun to redefine itself in ways different than it once did, there is nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing wrong with individuals freedom to find other associations to align with. If the changes cause one to concern whether or not the risk is too great then the choice they make is the right one.

Oh, but there's where you are wrong. My CO would welcome any and all boys, they made that clear when I first started working with the troop. I am spending a lot of time training up my replacement now. It won't be long before the torch is passed. I have no intention of making the Sex Offender's Hall of Fame.

@@Col. Flagg and @@walk in the woods If after a boy goes all through the check marks and is entitled to receive the Eagle rank, it does not mean he has taken any of what was learned along the way to heart. It just means he has gone through all the check marks and is entitled to receive the Eagle rank. A boy may say he promises to "help other people at all times", but promises can easily be broken. Someone on the thread mentioned, one cannot teach a person to care. This is the key to the whole discussion. Did the boy jump through all these hoops for himself or for others. From then does it make much difference who those others are? Sure, there will be those who think it should be certain people and others say yet a different set of certain people Like anything else, perception is important. More often than not a person is judged based on perception rather than on reality and so the debate will rage on, and on, and on, and on....

Sorry, @@Cambridgeskip, that post is actually in the wrong thread, my mistake, my apologies.

@Stosh, if the Boy Scout's identified gender of male is different than what is listed on their birth certificate, I think it is required to have a female adult along on the trip. If the gender listed is the same based on state law, no female adult is required. First problem solved. Not quite. It would seem that one is singling out this person as different, the very thing they are trying to avoid. They are a girl, they want to be a boy, they want to be treated as a boy, they use the same facilities as the boys and they wear only swimming trunks at the waterfront. So the adults are going to decide to treat this person different than any of the other boys..... I don't think the problem solving is as easy as one can assume right from the git-go. I guess I'm not so myopic as to think this is going to be all that easy. One can be in trouble if they treat this person like a boy and they can be in trouble if they don't. I don't see a win for the adults in this situation. +-++ Yep, treat them differently than the other boys......or better yet, avoid any and all situations where YPT will come into conflict with what the parents won't sue the SM. Not my call. If national wishes to make such rulings and if the CO goes along with it, then national and CO can be present to deal with it on-site. Not me, I'm planning on being sick any time that situation arises. If that means the opportunities for the other boys are reduced, that's a result of national and CO's decisions. Not my call, not my responsibility, not my problem.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/02/boy-scouts-watched-circus-admitting-transgender-girls/ Yet another comment

Not only that, the adults aren't supposed to be the leaders in a properly run troop.

Learn the alphabet, nothing wrong with spelling out everything. A true deaf person will watch your face, but keep a corner of their eye open to your hand spelling. Say the word as you spell it. They catch on VERY quickly and appreciate the effort you are putting into it. When all else fails, paper and pencil will work, but it is far more tedious than spelling and/or picking up a few words here and there that make communication flow smoother.

Easy, they just ignore the Scouter's BSA Oath where he/she promises "to help other people at all times."

Yep, the "normal" routine in the units I have experienced are like @@CNYScouter indicates and have SM and ASM's all sign up for the Eagle MB's and maybe a few more, and then the boys only take those, unless they pick up the others at summer MB camp or MB school days. In all the years I have been a SM, no scout has ever needed to go the route suggested by BSA. This may be the reason why the "Secret List" really is such a low priority it may not even exist anymore. I would assume that I am the exception to the rule by having registered as a full council available MB counselor.

Until it comes to YPT issues. Boy Scouts may be male identified, but unlike Venturing (apples) which is co-ed, Boy Scouts (oranges) is not. There is no requirement for male/female SM/ASM's on an activity, but the can of worms has been opened. The girl may identify herself as male, but the reality of YPT doesn't change. That means special considerations, singling her out, imposing different rules for her latrine showering, and tenting issues all run counter to her sensitivities of her situation. One can run aground in a boy-only organization that has females on-sight and everyone is being politically correct until the lawyers step in and throws a penalty flag. I for one won't ever put myself in that situation. There's a valid reason why I have survived 45+ years working with youth and I have no interest in being exposed to vagularities that jeopardize that. If the "boys" all want to camp out this weekend and "she" wants to come along because "she" has marked her application contrary to "her" sexuality, one or the other parents will need to, at their own expense, chaperone "her". They signed the application, they take responsibility. If the parents are "too busy" that weekend to go along, their "son" stays home or the activity is cancelled.

@@clemlaw Obviously we are both from the same council. Other than adult driven summer MB camps and MB school days, I have no idea how to go about setting up MB counselors. The BSA policy is to have the boy contact the MB counselor, set up a schedule and do the MB. The only glitch in the process is that the boy have no idea who is available to teach. The "Secret List" is never made known to anyone other than scouters which in theory shouldn't have anything to do with the process. This is just another secret process to allow the adults to have control of the MB world. Even if the boys did have access to the "Secret List" they would quickly find that unless the MB counselor is listed as their troop only, which why have the list if that is the case, the boys already know of a counselor in that circumstance. So they call up and ask who's on the list for Auto Mechanics that is council-wide? No one! Scratch that one off the list of available MB's. How about Welding? Same thing, etc. etc. etc. What one is going to find is that the only place to get MB's is at summer MB camp and MB school days and that the only counselors on the "Secret List" are those who have signed up with their troop only to be able to sign off on their boys' partials. And how secret is the "Secret List"? 30 years of MB counseling for council-wide and one nibble start of a MB with a boy many years ago that never came back to finish it up. With a track record like that it makes it really hard to try and talk our parents into being MB counselors and impossible to get them to sign up for council-wide. It makes one wonder how many of these scouter counselors out there take the words, "help other people at all times" seriously.

Unfortunately having the medical profession make that call means that child will forever be called out on it and be stigmatized for life because of it. It's one thing to say one is transgender, another to have certified proof of it. A person can have their name legally changed and then all documents and such have a legal backing to it. On the other hand one can use any name they wish and even sign legal documents with that self selected name as long as it is not used to intend fraud. and or deception. If Little Sally wants to be in Scouts and the parents mark her as male so she can be in the program without any other purpose other than fraud and deception, that adds a whole new dynamic to the YPT issue and parental abuse when things get sorted out in court when one as SM gets hauled into court for sexual impropriety issues. A psychological diagnosis is just as valid in a court of law as a blood test.

I have signed on as a MB counselor for 10 MB's. I kept it open to any scout in the council not just my troop. I have not received any notification that I am on anyone's list. I have never been asked to do any of the MB's. Once about 10 years ago I had a boy want to do the Bugling MB. He came we talked about it, said to practice the various calls and what they were used for and he can then schedule a time to come back and demonstrate he could play them and know when to use them. He never came back. Had he been able to play them at the first session, I would have signed off right then and there. I had a bugle available for him to use. That is the full extent of 20+ years of MB history for me in my council. I'm thinking that most of the MB's are taken at summer camp, and MB days in the council and any partials are completed and signed off by someone in the troop without checking any signatures against any MB lists. The scout has a signed card, that's the end of the process. Who actually signed it is irrelevant. I'm thinking things are run pretty fast and loose in my council.

There are English dialects that make it almost impossible to understand English from one part of the country to another. The slang makes it even more difficult. I do know that what I was taught as Sign Language is not what is taught in a classical ASL class. Why would ASL be any different than any other language with it's variants in every other word? If one is using just the alphabet for everything, they can communicate in any language with the Roman/Latin alphabet. With a bit of adaptation they might be able to convert it over to the Greek/Cyrillic alphabet. Good luck with the Oriental/Asian languages. When I "learned" sign language, I was taught that one indicated either tomorrow (future tense for all verbs) or yesterday (past tense for all verbs). It got the message across. I am going (present tense) and tomorrow I am going (future tense) work well, but I still knew that yesterday I am going really meant I went.

If boys are leading shouldn't everyone else be following? People who guide and direct are setting the path to follow that means they are the one's leading. A lot of scouters are great backseat drivers thinking that just because they aren't touching the wheel that they aren't the ones requiring that others follow them. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/books/review/the-gift-of-failure-by-jessica-lahey.html

If one's cat decides to leave them a bit of a surprise in their bed in the middle of the night, they can accept that as the new normal and roll over and go back to sleep or they can get up and go sleep on the couch. Either way, the world as they know it will never be the same. One can't unring the bell.

In the US Adventure Scouts USA Pioneers Trail Life USA GS/USA Royal Rangers Hope Scouts Navigators USA Pathfinders Heritage Girls Camp Fire Frontier Girls Awana Caravan Moriya Just to name a few, why does everyone have to dump all over the BSA?

Our council is the calendar year. With a June charter renewal, it was difficult to ever gain the award so the troop never tried.

I think this might be the reason why my speech professor in college would instruct everyone never to turn their back on the audience. I thin the theater department might have had the same kind of rules too.

@@HelpfulTracks As a UC I also face the same denial issues in our neck of the woods. After many, many, many years I have never heard a SM tell me the reason the older boys are leaving is because he's/she's running a poor program for them. I hear about the fumes, the sports, the jobs, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. One day before I die I would love to have a SM tell me he/she is overwhelmed by the older boys, their need for ever increasing demands for more and more adventure, that they don't want to babysit 6th graders anymore but want to experience a scout opportunity they have been working on for the past 5 years, what can I do to help these boys??? Nope, never gonna hear that one. Instead all I hear is how excuses absolve the SM's from having to step up and help the older boys with the same energy and determination they do with the younger boys. 110 miles on a Philmont or A/T hike? 250 miles of canoeing on the Yukon? RAGBRAI? one of the days is always 100+ miles!!! They look at me like I've lost my mind. I don't know if it's true or not but someone said that the first people to walk the A/T, even before it was completed was 4 Boy Scouts? Or the 1936 World Jamboree where some Argentinian Scouts walked from Argentina to the US to participate? Or "back in the day" when summer camp was summer camp, all summer long! I can see where girls may be a higher priority later on in the teen years. Sports will always draw a few and cars can and often do drive the roads to campgrounds. A job? How can a job be a higher priority than scouts? I held a job all the way through my scouting experience, made a lot of money and paid for my scout experience without ever competing with it. But alas, my troop was totally ill-equipped to handle older boys, I never knew of a boy who ever eagled in that troop. So after 4 years of going nowhere (I was a 2nd Class scout), Civil Air Patrol, functional radio operation and navigation opportunities along with the potential of a glider's license came along, my buddies and I exited the program. Girls were still there (it was co-ed), still got my driver's license, and still held down a job. It might do well to really find out why boys are leaving your troop's program instead of simply offering up speculative excuses that seem plausible to those around you.

In one way or another we are, according to Christianity, all sinners and fall short of what God created us to be. So now the free will choices of this world. 1) I can accept that and just say, "it's God's fault for creating me this way." 2) I can understand that the world is not perfect so I struggle against it to regain some of the potential I can be in this world. 3) I can work to have the world conform to me and then I won't feel bad any more about who or what I am or have become. And so here we have it. I was born a kleptomaniac. I'm not perfect, but 1) God made me this way and so it's all his fault that I am in and out of jail every other week, I have a record a mile long and no one wants to have me over to their house for fear some of their fine silver won't survive the evening. Or I can learn to live with my short-coming and using some sort of moral code as my True North, work at coping with my problem. Or I can force those I steal from to accept me as I am and find ways to work around it in THEIR lives so I won't feel bad about having a basement full of items I didn't work to pay for. It's just that in our society, sexual issues seem to take on a greater life of their own and the most accommodations around are created. The committing adultery Commandment seems to garner more focus than the not gossiping one or the stealing one. Killing one can be a problem but we can work around much of that with varying degrees of homicide so people can get away with murder if they play their cards right. Too bad there's not an explicit Commandment about political agendising and other persuasion tactics to manipulate others into accepting alternative codes of moral behavior. Ooops. there is. Refer back to the first statement I made.

This somewhat falls into the idea that if the program goes with what some have suggested, one earns eagle before 14 so they can go on to Venturing hassle free. That way the Boy Scout part of the 11-14 year olds will be guaranteed no eagles in the troop.

The ultimate winter camping..... meadow crash! Don't need a shelter, don't need straw, don't need to haul a tent, just a -35o sleeping bag and waterproof mat. In the bag is the best part of the whole weekend.