AZMike

Since we have apparently decided that being insulted is in the eye of the allegedly insulted, I have to say that I find Merlyn's implication that I have insulted him is itself insulting to me. And as CalicoPenn has said, if I feel I've been insulted, then I've been insulted!

Let's eat Grandpa. Let's eat, Grandpa. Grammar saves lives.

But do buy at Lowe's, which announced a program to financially support Boy Scouts at a grass-roots level with their Eagle Scout projects: http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2012/09/24/lowes-nails-it-helps-pay-for-eagle-scout-service-projects/#more-16419 When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window, as we were told by the Mother Superior in "The Sound of Music." We'll still get by, no matter if a Chief Diversity Officer and Global Director of Education & External Relations throws a hissy fit or not. Merlyn is of course welcome to send Lowe's a nasty letter for not supporting his gay hobby-horse d'jour, and demanding that they cease and desist.

"Actually, the Intel Foundation is supporting ANERA - a US 501c3 organization - in support of an educational program in Palestine. Unlike the Boy Scouts of America, ANERA doesn't have a policy of discrimination based on sexual orgainzation. The countries they work with may have laws against homosexuality, and folks in the Islamic religion may interpret the Koran to mean that homosexuality is a sin, just like folks in the Christian and Judean interpret the Bible and the Torah in that way, but granting organizations generally don't require that their recipients only work in areas where there is no discrimination - official or otherwise. They only require that their grantees follow their policies. To do otherwise would mean that no one would ever get funding. Intel would have to make sure that none of their grantees does work in states like Arizona, or Utah." Unfortunately, the Intel Foundation's contributions support of the American Near East Refugee Association funnels money towards an "educational program in Palestine" that is not exactly a community college, but which is a religious institution that is closely tied to HAMAS. The Dean of Quranic Studies at the college said, "We place our hopes in Allah and trust that the day will come when our triumph will not be restricted to Palestine. Our hopes go beyond that -- to raise the banner of the Caliphate over the Vatican, the "Rome" of today, in accordance with the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: "Constantinople shall be conquered and then Rome." (You can watch the clip here: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3450.htm). 16 of their professors are HAMAS representatives in Palestinian Assembly, and the University has been used to store weapons directed against Israel. The university has called for the destruction of the state of Israel, and also doesn't like homosexuals too much, either. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a HAMAS terrorist who helped found the University in 1978 and is still on board of directors, has called for the execution of homosexuals in the Gaza Strip (many of whom have fled to Israel, where they are safer.) al-Zahar declared same-sex marriage in the Palestinian strip to be anathema, stating, "Are these [allowing for same-sex marriage] the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?" al-Zahara also said, You in the West do not live like human beings. You do not even live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?" It is the stated goal of the staff of the Islamic University of Gaza to extend Sharia Law over the middle east and the world, which calls for the execution of homosexuals. Christians (and most Boys Scouts and Scouters) may believe that homosexual behavior is a sin and should be condemned, but they teach that we should love the individual and treat him or her with compassion. The staff of the Islamic University of Gaza, to whom Intel funnels funds through ANERA, makes the BSA look like the ACLU in its treatment of homosexuals. We all understand that Intel is perfectly within its rights to extend grant funding to whichever organization it likes. Just as we are free to boycott Intel or to criticize it for corporate hypocrisy. Don't. Buy. Intel. Pass it on.(This message has been edited by AZMike)

Merlyn: "Maybe Intel shouldn't donate to any Christian organizations, either." Do they?

I think it would be appropriate if you are a user of Intel products and you find this action by Intel's Chief Diversity Officer and Global Director of Education & External Relations for Intel Corporation, Rosalind Hudnell to be objectionable and discriminatory, to send a polite, reasoned letter to to the Intel Corporation. I would suggest you keep it polite, professional, and courteous, but explain why you find this action offensive, and if it would impact your decision to purchase any of Intel's product line. If your stock portfolio includes Intel stock, or you are considering a purchase of Intel's stock, it would be appropriate to express your concerns as a shareholder, by writing a letter to the Intel Investor's Relations Department or calling them. I'm sure someone there would be willing to listen to your concerns: Intel Corporation RNB 4-148 2200 Mission College Blvd P.O. Box 58119 Santa Clara, California 95052-8119 USA Phone: 1-408-765-1480 Or their general corporate mailing address at: 2200 Mission College Blvd. Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549 USA (408) 765-8080 If you would like to send a letter to your local office, or ask to meet with their staff personally to discuss corporate discrimination against youth programs for religious reasons, you can find the address for your local office here: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/location/usa.html Remember that a Scout is courteous, and that a polite, reasoned letter or in-person inquiry has more credibility than a rant, particularly if you have an existing professional or investment relationship with Intel.

I note that the Intel Corporation actively supports the Gaza Islamic University: "Intel is thrilled to be working with ANERA on this important new educational project in Gaza. ANERA has a remarkable track record in meeting the needs of communities in the Middle East by both expanding the local universe of IT professionals and providing them with the skills they need to find good jobs, remarked Aysegul Ildeniz, Intel regional director for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. The services and training offered at the Intel IT Center of Excellence will help provide critical building blocks in advancing the adoption of technology in the Palestinian territories. In addition, this new center will offer new opportunities for Palestinian women and help bridge the IT gender divide. The investment in the center underscores Intels long-term commitment to accelerate the development and adoption of technology, contribute to the improvement of the regional economy and improve the lives of those living in the region. Source: http://www.arabnews.com/node/275959 The last I heard, homosexuality was condemned by Islam, and some Islamic nations (including Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, North Sudan and Yemen) punish it with the death penalty, the more "moderate" states may just flog gays, yet here the Intel corporation is donating to an Islamic religious university. Gay "marriage" or civil unions are not recognized in the Palestinian territories, and same-sex acts between men are punishable by imprisonment. Any bets that Intel won't stand up to the Islamic faith and demand they change their doctrine to accommodate the sensibilities of the editors of The Advocate?

"So teaching the youth its all about power and having people fear you is a good thing?" Lighten up. We can still make jokes.

JMHawkins, I'll try to write something up as a follow-up on my comments on forgotten lessons. I have to go out of town so it may not be until after the weekend,

"AZMike, the difference in what I asked about and what you just answered is the 'rate', not the 'number'. I asked about your claim, "Educators, who seem to be the profession with the highest rate of sexual abuse against minors". You just answered, "You sound a little surprised that your profession (I think you mentioned you teach) has the highest number of reported sexual offenses." " Given the number of young persons we interact with I'm not the least surprised about 'numbers'. But the rate is a different matter. Your original claim suggests to me that a greater proportion of educators commit sexual abuse against minors than any other profession. The statistics I'm reading in your response, on the other hand, is the proportion of students who have been abused. They aren't the same thing. But if the proportion IS the highest for any profession then, yes, I'm surprised. I'd agree that it's unlikely that there is a greater _percentage_ of educators that commit sexual assault, and there is a difficulty in defining the parameters of what an "educator" is - do we include coaches, teacher's aides, counselors, janitors? There is an enormous number of school employees in the U.S., and the vast majority of them are decent, hardworking people. The same would seem to apply to Catholic priests and other Christian ministers. My use of _rate_ applies to the sheer number of sexual assaults committed by educators, which is more than any other profession. As Prof. Jenkins stated, this is not due to teachers having more evil people than other groups, it's because there are so many of them in American society, because of their access to children, and because a single offender usually has multiple victims. The educational establishment, particularly the unions, also hinders the effective collection of data, as well as punishment, of the offenders within the teaching profession. The greater issue, and the point of this thread, is not that teachers are worse than ministers or priests or doctors or scouters, it's that the teacher's unions commit the same crimes of complicity as some bishops did, and that the level of training in youth safety for those who we entrust with the safety of our children during the day is so poor. Are we as scouters doing any better? Is our level of youth safety training adequate for the 21st Century? I'm bringing this up not to try to score ideological points, but to try to help us bring some light to this discussion, instead of just heat. I haven't been on this forum for long, but I hear the same arguments about the same issues over and over, and the level of personal invective is becoming high enough that I'll probably just retire from this forum if it keeps up. I like a good discussion, even an occasional heated one, but I'm too old to waste my time arguing about points where everyone has dug in their heels and isn't going to change their minds and finally just start insulting each other. The scouts in my troop know to act better than that. I'd rather have a _discussion_, with the ultimate goal I think we all have - how to make Scouting a better experience for the boys involved. I'd rather talk _about_ things than just argue or try to count coup on each other. We should probably just agree to disagree about the issue of gays in Scouting - I don't think anyone here has changed their opinion. If my comments have contributed to the level of incivility on this forum, I apologize to all involved, quite sincerely, and will try to do better in the future. So with that in mind, let me throw this out for discussion to see if we can turn this thread into something useful for us: Should we be doing more in training our adult leaders in youth safety? I think, based on my experience with other groups that deal with youths, that we're actually doing pretty good in the training and the policies. The teachers I know almost uniformly say they have not received even a minimal level of training, and often fall back on their hunches and common sense. Should we be looking to teach about other areas of youth safety than just molestation? Should we be training scouters in how to provide effective anti-drug education? Should we be training scouters in recognizing the signs of physical and emotional abuse, and what reasonable response they should take? Should we be training scouters in how to provide effective training in Internet safety to scouts? If so, what would that kind of training look like? How would it be incorporated into existing adult leader training programs? Should we devote as much time to BSA Safe Life Instructor Training (or whatever) as we do to Leave No Trace Instructor training? If it is worthwhile to incorporate more of this kind of training, and as training protocols are developed, would it be worthwhile to export it to other youth programs, and offer certification? Would this be a way to rebrand the BSA as youth safety experts and contribute to the community?

It's interesting that us adult scouters are talking about using an experience with an obnoxious adult as a teachable moment, and that scouts should learn to deal with unpleasant individuals as they will have to deal with them in sales environments later, and that they should learn ways to deflect angry answers and find common areas of agreement. I asked one of the scouts in our troop last night what HE would do if an adult acted in a snarky manner when he was doing door-to-door popcorn sales. His immediate response was, "Toilet paper. Lots of it. After he goes to sleep." I'm pretty sure he was joking, but maybe there's something to be said for the idea of a boy-led troop. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best. "Oderint, dum metuant."(This message has been edited by AZMike)

Sure, bring it back if you want. You asked me for some information I didn't get a chance to post, and I'd be happy to post it for you.

AZMike, "Educators, who seem to be the profession with the highest rate of sexual abuse against minors" packsaddle: "I was unaware of this statistic. Could you provide a reference for that claim?" Well, you could start by reading your newspaper every day. I live in a city that is somewhere around the 5th largest in the U.S., and it is rare for a week to go by without a teacher, coach, counselor, or other school employee being arrested for a sexual offense against a child in the metropolitan area. I suspect that statistic will hold in most areas. The occasional article on a minister, in the area charged with an offense is reported much less often, and there are almost no current cases involving Catholic priests these days. The cases that are reported are almost all older cases that are being reported decades later, often after the accused is dead. The rate of sexual offenses has dropped off dramatically in the Catholic Church (due to reasons that I'll address later when I have time to write up an answer to SeattlePioneer's question), although it has spiked up in the Protestant denominations, as the insurance companies that issue policies for churches have noted, and is (in my estimation) likely to increase in times to come, with the increase in the new gay-friendly denominations. The John Jay study on sexual offenses against children alleged against Catholic priests (which is generally acknowledged as being the best source of research data on the subject, and used the Church's own data) examined plausible accusations made between 1950 and 1992. The John Jay researchers reported that about 4 percent of the 110,000 priests (that's a total of 6,115 who were "credibly" or "not implausibly" accused over 42 years (ranging from "sexual talk" to rape) by 10,667 victims. Although 1 victim is too many, that is a very small proportion of the members of the Catholic faith, the single largest religious denomination in America, from 1950 to 1992, and a smaller proportion than the number of educators accused of sexual offenses against children. Reports of allegations against priests made after 2002, including those of incidents that occurred years earlier, are released each year as part of the church's annual audits. Those reports continue to focus on new allegations dating from decades before, but the rate of current allegations has dropped way, way, way below current allegations against clerics from other Christian and Jewish denominations , and certainly way below educators (whether "physical educators" or not). The credible allegations against priests for all of 2011? Seven. For 2010, it was eight. As there are roughly 41,406 Catholic priests in the United States, seven credibly accused priests would represent .000169 (or 0.0169%) of all U.S. priests. And... 45% of all priests who were accused for 2011 were already deceased (this is a record high figure); 75% of all priests who were accused for 2011 are either deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or missing; over 90% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least two decades ago (the most common time period was from almost 40 years ago: 1975-1979) (http://usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/2011-annual-report.pdf) The takeaway from this, I think, is that youth protection training and guidelines, such as mandated by the Catholic Church and the BSA WORKS, as does the reduction of admitted homosexuals from positions of trust with teenagers. As the Catholic Church has done under Pope Benedict. As the BSA continues to do. If we compare this to some of the rates of abuse different studies have reported for educators... An article in Slate reviewed the studies on the rate of sexual abuse by educators, and noted, "[t]"he best available study suggests that about 10 percent of students suffer some form of sexual abuse during their school careers. In the 2000 report, commissioned by the American Association of University Women, surveyors asked students between eighth and 11th grades whether they had ever experienced inappropriate sexual conduct at school. The list of such conduct included lewd comments, exposure to pornography, peeping in the locker room, and sexual touching or grabbing. Around one in 10 students said they had been the victim of one or more such things from a teacher or other school employee, and two-thirds of those reported the incident involved physical contact. If these numbers are representative of the student population nationwide, 4.5 million students currently in grades K-12 have suffered some form of sexual abuse by an educator, and more than 3 million have experienced sexual touching or assault. This number would include both inappropriate romantic relationships between teachers and upperclassmen, and outright pedophilia." The article reasonably notes that "these statistics are uncertain, however, because no one has ever designed a nationwide study for the expressed purpose of measuring the prevalence of sexual abuse by educators. The Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services cant agree on whose domain teacher sexual misconduct falls into, and Congress has shown little appetite to spend money on the issue. In the study described above, surveyors asked participants if they had ever experienced sexual improprieties at school, then asked students who reported abuse to identify the perpetrator. Since the study was intended to measure student-to-student sexual misconduct, the original investigators didnt focus on teacher-offenders. A third-party academic later used the raw data to suss out the prevalence of teacher sex abuse. A few smaller or less methodologically rigorous studies have also addressed the question, with wildly inconsistent results. One looked at college sociology students and estimated that nearly half had experienced sexual harassment by a teacher. Another surveyed 4,000 adults, with 4.1 percent reporting inappropriate sexual contact with a teacher during their high-school years. But the sample included only urbanites, and white respondents were overrepresented. A third study used responses to a questionnaire published in Seventeen magazine and estimated that just 3.7 percent of children suffer sexual abuse from their teachers." (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html) What is apparent is that the high rate of sexual abuse by teachers continues even as it has dropped off in the Church. In just the first 3 months of 2012 in the New York Public School System, 248 cases of sexual abuse were reported. Yet in the last 5 years, only 97 teachers in the NY school system were actually charged - largely because the teacher's union acts to protect abusers with a zeal that the worst bishops in the Catholic Church would find appalling: "Here's why. Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem. For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing the unions (whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unionsbelieving that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual predatorsprefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged with inappropriate sexual conduct. The effects of this policy are mounting. One example: An arbitrator in 2007 found that teacher Alexis Grullon had victimized young girls with repeated hugging, "incidental though not accidental contact with one student's breast" and "sexually suggestive remarks." The teacher had denied all these charges. In the end the arbitrator found him "unrepentant," yet punished him with only a six-month suspension. Another example from 2007: Teacher William Scharbach was found to have inappropriately touched and held young boys. "Respondent's actions at best give the appearance of impropriety and at worst suggest pedophilia," wrote the arbitratorbefore giving the teacher only a reprimand. The teacher didn't deny the touching but denied that it was inappropriate. Then there was teacher Steven Ostrin, who in 2010 was found to have asked a young girl to give him a striptease, harassed students by text, and engaged in sexual banter. The arbitrator in his case concluded that since the teacher hadn't actually solicited sex from students, the chargesall of which the teacher deniedwarranted only a suspension." (Read more here: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10000872396390443437504577547313612049308-lMyQjAxMTAyMDMwMDAzODA3Wj.html) The high rate of administrative cover-ups by the educational establishment (which is the point of this thread, BTW - not which profession has the most abusers) has also been noted by researchers: A 2004 U.S. Department of Education study (Charol Shakeshaft and Audrey Cohan, In loco parentis: Sexual abuse of students in schools, (What administrators should know). Report to the U.S. Department of Education, Field Initiated Grants -http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED372511&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED372511) examined 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York City. All of the accused admitted sexual abuse of a student, but none of the abusers were reported to the authorities, and only 1 percent lost their license to teach. Only 35 percent suffered negative consequences of any kind, and 39 percent chose to leave their school district, most with positive recommendations. Some were even given an early retirement package. In only 1% of the cases did superintendents advise the new school district (the "Passing the Trash" phenomenon, as described in Diana Jean Schemo, Silently Shifting Teachers in Sex Abuse Cases, New York Times, June 18, 2002, p. A19) Public school teacher Jon White, who molested 8 kids, not only was sheltered by his school administrators, they actually wrote him a glowing letter of recommendation - you can even read it here: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_04e5b949-69f6-5270-9a02-9c681d99e9a1.html Here is just a sampling of the cases involving sexual abuse of children by teachers reported this summer - when you'd think they'd at least be on break: A former middle school teacher in Tennessee pleaded guilty to performing sex acts on 10 students, some of which occurred in the classroom. Police arrested an Oklahoma band and choir teacher and charged him with "18 counts of rape, sodomy and lewd molestation" of a 14-year-old student. A court sentenced a New York gym teacher to prison after a jury found him guilty of molesting a girl from kindergarten through fifth grade. A Los Angeles Unified School District middle school teacher accused of repeatedly molesting a 14-year-old girl led police on a high-speed chase that ended with him crashing into a tree. A grand jury indicted a Kentucky high school teacher for engaging with sex acts with students. A grand jury indicted a Virginia teacher for sex offenses with a minor. A retired teacher in Alaska was sentened for having sex with an underage girl. An Illinois teacher was sentenced for having sex with a student. Police arrested a Texas teacher on suspicion of having sex several times with a student at various hotels. Police arrested a California high school choir teacher for sexual misconduct with a student. A jury is hearing the case of a Pennsylvania teacher accused of having sex with two students. After a court sentenced a Dallas-area teacher to 62 years in prison for acting out a sickening diaper fetish, three parents sued the school for failing to prevent the abuse. In what even the media dubbed "an extraordinary move," prosecutors actually charged a California elementary school principal for failing to report alleged abuse by a teacher who was arrested and charged with sexually abusing five students. Fourteen mothers of former students of a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) elementary school sued the district and two principals on the claim that LAUSD and officials "ignored sexual abuse of minor students" by a former teacher. I can give you links to any of those if you don't believe me, Packsaddle. The 2004 U.S. Department of Education paper "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature" (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED372511&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED372511) noted the 10,667 young people who made credible claims of sexually mistreatment by priests between 1950 and 2002. In contrast, the extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 reflects that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee during a much shorter period, between 1991 and 2000. The figures suggest the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests, said Shakeshaft. Phil Jenkins, who wrote probably the best study of the Catholic abuse scandal (and who is not himself Catholic, but a Lutheran) commented on the Shakeshaft study in an article in USA Today. It's worth quoting at length for the lessons relating to the "recent" BSA disclosures: "Among other findings, we read that about 10% of secular school pupils in grades eight to 11 report having been at the receiving end of such sexual misconduct, broadly defined. That does not mean that 10% of teachers misbehave, rather that a tiny number offend frequently, and egregiously: very much the same situation, in fact, as among Catholic priests. Why, then, do we hear so much about Catholic cases? What is different about the Catholic Church is the manner in which its problems have come to light, and this involves both the nature of the institution itself and the workings of the law. As a result, the church is much more open to civil litigation than any other institution. These lawsuits allow the exposure of numerous cases that would never have surfaced if the perpetrators were not priests. The next time you read an account of an abuse scandal affecting priests, note the time frame in which the acts allegedly occurred. Almost certainly, it will date from long ago, probably 30 years or more. Why is that? Typically, an individual sues a church over abuse that he suffered in his childhood, and in the Catholic context, he might well find written evidence to confirm his charges of misconduct long ago. He is, after all, dealing with an institution that prizes its collective memory and preserves records dating back centuries. The victim can not only find embarrassing information about Father John Doe, but his lawyers also then can force a diocese to disclose ever more information about ancient charges against other priests, which can lead into other jurisdictions. One case thus becomes the basis for a whole network of interlocking investigations. Perhaps it's good that such older abuse cases are still coming to light, but the long passage of time makes it very unlikely that the charges can be investigated in a fair or reliable way. Nor does the plaintiff in a civil case have to meet the high standards of a criminal case, of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. He just has to convince a jury that his allegations are more probably true than not. Most civil cases involving priestly abuse go forward on the basis of evidence that would not stand up in a criminal court. Often, dioceses settle dubious cases to avoid expensive legal proceedings, but such closure can be a mixed blessing. Whatever the merits of the particular case, critics take the fact of settling to suggest that the church is paying blood money to conceal its crimes. That's not just a church problem. Celebrities and corporations face the same problem, that the public does not understand the workings of litigation. As the resulting Catholic horror stories accumulate, so many media organizations develop a ready-made format for reporting them, a familiar mythology of specifically Catholic malpractice. Saying that does not mean charging any particular news outlet with deliberate religious prejudice: Some go to great lengths to be fair to accused clergy. But when we approach the issue as a specifically Catholic one, we inevitably cast the church as villain, to the exclusion ofother interpretations. The more firmly the public accepts the image of the sinister priest, the harder it becomes to find juries who will disbelieve abuse allegations. The more cases are reported, the more people come forward to publicize their own complaints. Most plaintiffs are reporting genuine victimization, but some are not. Abuse in public schools Few institutions, secular or religious, offer anything like the same advantages for plaintiffs. The internal records of other bodies are rarely as thorough as those kept by the Catholic Church, and they lack the elaborate organizational framework. It's simply not as easy to dredge up old cases. And specific legal oddities mean that it's much harder to sue other institutions. As public entities, public schools, for instance, operate under governmental or sovereign immunity. While schools can be sued, plaintiffs face restrictions that don't apply to Catholic dioceses. Financial liability is limited, and complaints have to be brought within a set time, using rigid administrative procedures. As a result, at least until recently, it just was not possible to pursue cases from long ago. But that might be changing. Recently, plaintiffs have found ways to sue public schools for abuse they suffered long ago, charging that school districts violated their federal civil rights to receive an education free of the menace of harassment or sexual discrimination. In one well-publicized case that should serve as a national wake-up call, a woman won a $3.7 million judgment against a Kentucky school district for sexual abuse she experienced in the late 1970s. However widely this particular decision may apply, it's very likely that such lawsuits will spread in coming years, so that we will undoubtedly be hearing a great deal more about abusive educators. Presently, though, pedophile pastors or teachers are little known to the general public, while pedophile priests have become a familiar villain. In consequence, cases of abusive priests are reported as part of a systematic crisis within a deeply flawed church, while non-Catholic offenders are treated as isolated villains, just bad apples within their professions. The sexual exploitation of children is a heinous offense with lifelong consequences, and the trauma is all the greater when the offender is a trusted mentor, a pastor, priest, or teacher. It is profoundly unjust to focus all our attention on the victims of one type of perpetrator to the exclusion of others." (full article in http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-07-column07_ST_N.htm) I'd be curious, Packsaddle. You sound a little surprised that your profession (I think you mentioned you teach) has the highest number of reported sexual offenses. Did you think there was another profession that did? If so, which one?

As others have pointed out, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up...or at least, the public's perception that there is a cover-up. It's not enough to point fingers and try to claim that one group who works with youth are somehow "worse" than your favored group to try to score some kind of ideological point on behalf of your side. We need instead to ask if there are safeguards in place to protect youth against predators; whether those safeguards are appropriate and effective; whether innocent adults are being protected against false accusations; and whether there is a reporting mechanism that documents abuse allegations and reports them to the appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation. This mechanism has to have not only mandated reporting requirements, but also a sense of buy-in from the members of the profession. A clear, easily understood standard has to be applied. And that's where organizations fall down. Educators, who seem to be the profession with the highest rate of sexual abuse against minors, have as bad (or worse) track record than religious institutions in this regard, largely because both have historically relied on "on the job" training as a means of youth protection training and the identification of what an "abuser" would be like. As in any other professions, there is a sense of collegiality between its members that acts to protect its members whether they are innocent or guilty. Penn State is nothing new. It's been a persistent problem for both the education establishment and the medical establishment, as documented in research over at least the last two decades. A 1990 study found that only 40% of maltreatment cases and 35% of the most serious cases known to professionals who are mandated by law to report were, in fact, reported to the child protection system. A study done a decade later found that 65% of social workers, 53% of physicians, and 58% of physician assistants were not reporting the cases of abuse they were mandated to report (both non-sexual physical abuse and sexual abuse). The study was reported in Steven Delaronde, et al., Opinions Among Mandated Reporters Toward Child Maltreatment Reporting Policies, 24 CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT 901, 905 (2000). In a survey, 197 teachers were given 2 hypothetical cases of abuse - in the first, the teachers were asked of they would make a report if a student told them a stepfather had been touching their genitals. Only 26% of the teachers said they would. In the second hypothetical, the teachers were asked if they would make a report if a student told them that another teacher was touching their genitals. Only 11% of the teachers said they would report such an abuse allegation involving a colleague to the authorities. The study was reported in Maureen c. Kenny, Child Abuse Reporting: Teachers' Perceived Deterrents, 25 CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT 81, 88 (2001). In that same study, 73% of teachers reported that they had NEVER made a report of potential child abuse; those who said they had averaged only one report, despite an average of 10 years teaching experience among the study group. Of those who had, the majorityonly made a report to a supervisor, and did not follow up with a report to law enforcement. Poor training is probably a big culprit in this - we may complain about the mandated youth safety training in the BSA, and lay and clerical workers may complain about the mandated youth safety training that the Catholic Church has mandated for anyone who comes into contact with a child in a parish, but that minimal level of training by both organizations is head and shoulders above most organizations, including educational professionals. A 2011 study that contacted 1,400 mandated reporters in Pennsylvania found that 14% said they had NEVER received any mandated reporter training, and 24% said they had not received any mandated reporter training in the past 5 years. What training they received may have been inadequate - about 80% of the respondents said the training was not approved for continuing education credits or they were uncertain. Undergraduate level training in child maltreatment is almost non-existent in most educational programs for criminal justic, social work, human services, nursing, medicine, psychology, sociology, or education. Only 29% of those programs in 1,416 colleges and universities had ANY course work on child maltreatment, and then almost all in sociology or psychology departments. NONE of those 1,416 had a concentration, much less a minor, on child maltreatment. The graduate programs are no better. And we should probably take a historical look - no other organization did any better than the BSA in the relevant period on the abuse issue, and there was a lot of misinformation that was widely accepted. A lot of the information on how to deal with the abuse situation that WAS accurate and effective got brushed aside as new psychological and social theories came to the forefront in the 1960s and 1970s.(This message has been edited by AZMike)

""Most kids are taught about the Scopes Monkey Trial, with the idea that the noble civil libertarian Clarence Darrow represented "Good" in supporting the teaching of evolution and redneck William Jennings Bryan represented "bad" in opposing the teaching of Darwinism." and later, "Bryan wasn't the redneck hick modern schools often depict him as." AZMike, I noticed the above from your post and it's not the first time I've heard those claims." If kids don't know about a pivotal trial/civil liberties case in American history, I may well have been wrong when I said that kids had learned that in school. Apparently, they don't anymore. Certainly, many teenagers and young adults who are atheists are familiar with the topic and bring it up on the Internet, but that may be because they read it in Dawkins or Hitchens or a similar atheist apologetic work. It would appear that the other people who told you the same as I did were also taught about the subject in school or college (as CalicoPenn was), I suspect under similar circumstances as mine. In my case, it was as a block of a multidisciplinary class that combined history as seen through literature - we wound up spending about a week reading through the 1955 play that was loosely based on the case ("Inherit the Wind," which had about a 2-year run in Broadway and has been periodically revived since then), saw the Academy-Award winning movie to which Moosetracker referred (starring Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, and Gene Kelly, and the husband from Bewitched as the Scopes stand-in), talked about the discrepancies between the Hollywood/Broadway version and the reality, then reviewed the legal cases that had arisen on teaching evolution over the years, and finally had both a physical anthropologist and a creationist address the class. Not a bad way to address a topic at the high school level, but as I said, we were given a somewhat erroneous view of Darrow's beliefs and reasons for opposing Social Darwinism. I doubt that it was that unusual an experience as you suggest, as my own informal survey at work and at an adult leader meeting tonight reflected that most everyone was familiar with the basics of the trial (the issues concerned, and a majority had a sense of who the players were, and could name at least one) because they were shown the film or read the play in high school, or because the trial was discussed in their history or social studies class in highs school, or later in college. (On the other hand, I hang out with a lot of lawyers, for many of whom Darrow is considered a secular saint.) I suspect that it was so popular in high school because a teacher was one of the heroes, and teachers tend to like movies that show them in a heroic light. Darrow did not do as well representing the cause of atheism in later public debates, incidentally. He famously got his, um, hat handed to him in a debate with G.K. Chesterton, because Darrow apparently failed to adequately prepare to debate one of one of the most quick-witted and able Catholic apologists of the last century. As a reviewer at the time said, "At the conclusion of the debate everybody was asked to express his opinion as to the victor and slips of paper were passed around for that purpose. The award went directly to Chesterton. Darrow in comparison, seemed heavy, uninspired, slow of mind, while G.K.C. was joyous, sparkling and witty .... quite the Chesterton one had come to expect from his books. The affair was like a race between a lumbering sailing vessel and a modern steamer. Mrs. Frances Taylor Patterson also heard the Chesterton-Darrow debate, but went to the meeting with some misgivings because she was a trifle afraid that Chesterton's "gifts might seem somewhat literary in comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the famous trial lawyer. Instead, the trained scientific mind, the clear thinking, the lightning quickness in getting a point and hurling back an answer, turned out to belong to Chesterton. I have never heard Mr. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when that relativity is to Chesterton, he appears positively muddle-headed." Although the terms of the debate were determined at the outset, Darrow either could not or would not stick to the definitions, but kept going off at illogical tangents and becoming choleric over points that were not in dispute. He seemed to have an idea that all religion was a matter of accepting Jonah's whale as a sort of luxury-liner. As Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and the latter kept sparring with a dummy of his own mental making. When something went wrong with the microphone, Darrow sat back until it could be fixed. Whereupon G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his natural voice, "Science you see is not infallible!" Whatever brilliance Darrow had in his own right, it was completely eclipsed."(This message has been edited by AZMike)

"AZMike, I noticed the above from your post and it's not the first time I've heard those claims. So I took the opportunity to talk to our guy who teaches a course on Evolution and Religion. I asked him to let me see the results of his 'entry' surveys with regard to the Scopes trial. I also surveyed approximately 150 students this morning with regard to it. By combining both sets of results I am able to construct a sample size of greater than 1000 observations, after the international students are removed from the sample (interestingly, some of them have heard of the Scopes trial, I didn't ask further). Out of all of them, only about 47% have even heard of the Scopes trial, much less formed any strong opinions about it. Out of the total of over 1000 responses, 43 students could identify who Bryan was but could not articulate clearly what his argument was (a few actually had the two guys reversed). Only 37 of the respondents had ever heard of Darrow, much less knew what his argument was. Not a single response from my survey had ever thought about either guy in terms of being a 'redneck hick'. Not a single student in my survey identified either guy as a civil libertarian. Now these students are college students ranging from freshmen through seniors. They come from nearly every state of the union and like I mentioned, other countries as well. So I think my informal study is a fair characterization, or at least a first cut at one, for what students who go on to college get from school. I'd like to think that the college-bound students are more likely to remember school lessons like this as well. I could be wrong about that but it makes sense at least to me. The sentence, "Most kids are taught about the Scopes Monkey Trial." does have some ambiguity. It could mean that a majority of students are confronted with something about the Scopes trial and immediately forget it or it could mean that they actually LEARN something about the trial. I am willing to concede that the first option might be true but if so, if my survey is correct, whatever it was that was taught was not effective, at least if the intent was to portray Bryan as a 'redneck hick' and Darrow as the civil libertarian. I am willing to consider that some of these students are not from what you term, 'modern' schools, whatever those are. However, given that the students from NJ, NY, MA, MN, IL, and the west coast seemed to be as clueless about this as the Southern students, I'm inclined to wonder if ANY of them are products of a 'modern' school system, at least based on your claim. I could be wrong. So, where do you get your evidence for the claims you made? Do you have some citations in support of those claims? I'd like to know where I went wrong. " While I'm flattered that my comments resulted in an addition to your class syllabus (tell them Arizona Mike says, "Hey"), it sounds like what you're really saying is that your students are really, really poorly educated. That's not a big surprise, frankly, and it's no slam on you as an educator (from your class size, I would guess you teach at a college or university level, unless you're a teacher in a high school with a totally insane student-to-teacher level). We are raising a generation of students who are quite knowledgeable within specific career fields, yet who totally lack a historical perspective or critical thinking skills. It sounds like you have heard about the trial, and I would guess most adult posters are at least familiar with it. Did you originally learn about it at the high school level, and is it not taught anymore? We had at least a week's worth of discussion on it, and my high school wasn't that hot. Is it being skipped now?

CalicoPenn: "This whole eugenics thing is interesting but lets keep in mind that it's one thing to discuss it, it's quite another to put forth policies that will lead to it, like vouchers for healthcare. Yes, like the Obama voucher program that will push 2 million poor seniors from Medicare into voucher programs... As CalicoPenn has astutely pointed out in his post, Obama's Health and Human Services Department took only one date after his campaign speech to launcn a pilot program that would shift up to 2 million of the poorest and most-vulnerable seniors out of the federal Medicare program and into private health insurance plans overseen by the states, unlike the Ryan plan that made the vouchers optional, and allowed seniors to choose either the traditional government-run Medicare plan or opt for a private insurance plan from a federal exchange of approved insurers. The Ryan plan allowed all seniors to choose, and didnt force the poorest seniors to take the voucher option. It took Obama about a day after his campaign speech to flip-flop on vouchers, and require a state-managed rather than Medicare-managed plan. http://nationaljournal.com/healthcare/obama-more-flexible-on-medicare-than-rhetoric-suggests-20120908?page=1 Obama's science czar, John Holdren, famously advocated for Eugenics in his 1977 book "Ecoscience" which he co-wrote with Paul and Anne Ehrlich . He has since claimed that his comments should be considered in light of his belief at the time that overpopulation required extreme social control measures on the part of the government to prevent catastrophe - you know, like global warming, now. "One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoptionespecially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society." He also wrote that forced, surreptitious sterilization of the American people would be okay, as long as it didn't affect men or, you know, animals: "Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock." Holdren seemed to think that women should be expected to bear a greater burden of the involuntary sterilization program than dudes: "Involuntary fertility control ... A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. ... The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births." I guess I would be considered a natal criminal in Holdren's future: "In today's world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?" It gets much, much worse, if you can find a copy of Holdren's book, but suffice to say that the 1930s view of Eugenics as a desirable imperative is apparently alive and well in the Obama White House. (This message has been edited by AZMike)(This message has been edited by AZMike)(This message has been edited by AZMike)

The Utilitarian idea of an ethical imperative is the one most frequently advanced by atheists (notably Sam Harris) as a response to the need for a grounded moral philosophy. "The greatest good for the greatest number" sounds good in theory, until we realize its inherent moral squishiness - who is to decided what is the greatest good, and which minority members may have to suffer in the name of "human flourishing?" The use of euthanized patients' organs for transplants, whose organs are much fresher and less likely to be rejected, is seen as a positive good and is becoming common in Belgium. http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/belgian_surgeons_welcome_euthanasia_organs The creation of human-animal hybrids (chimeras) in (for now) embryonic form, such as human/cow hybrids (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6121280.stm) and human/sheep hybrids (http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/crossing_the_species_boundary) is seen as useful to many scientists. A recent article in Wired Magazine in which scientists were asked what experiments they would like to do if there were no medical ethics boards elicited a strong desire to create a human/simian hybrid, in the name of scientific research that would aid the many. As Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris - a member of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee - said: "If human benefit can be derived by perfecting therapeutic cloning techniques or from research into subsequently-derived stem cells, then it would actually be immoral to prevent it just because of a 'yuck' factor." The creation of cloned humans as personal organ transplant banks, or to allow gay couples to have children, has also been proposed under the utilitarian imperative. The desire to euthanize the aged, the sick, and the apparently useless becomes much stronger for the government once the government start paying more of the bill for health care. In the Netherlands, they have created mobile euthanasia parlors to make the process even easier (http://www.spiegel.de/international/controversy-over-dutch-mobile-euthanasia-teams-in-the-netherlands-a-822484.html). In the name of compassion (aided by monetary incentives), the need to place the needs of the many over the few can seem rational. It sure did in "Soylent Green." The interesting thing about Utilitarianism is how closely it corresponds to the psychopathic mind. From: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/daleks_are_utilitarians_but_are_utilitarians_daleks Does the linkage between utilitarians and psychopaths sound extreme? Perhaps, but two American academics have recently published a paper in the peer-reviewed psychology journal Cognition which correlates anti-social personality traits with utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. This is not an ad hominempiece that says utilitarians are losers but it is statistically significant evidence that people lacking in moral character traits are overwhelmingly utilitarians. In the words of Daniel M. Bartels, of Columbia University, and David A. Pizarro, of Cornell University: We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non-utilitarian options against each other. Participants who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and life meaninglessness. These results question the widely-used methods by which lay moral judgments are evaluated, as these approaches lead to the counterintuitive conclusion that those individuals who are least prone to moral errors also possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider prototypically immoral. ... There is a lesson in this. Of course, the fact that utilitarians tend to be psychopaths is not necessarily an argument against utilitarian ideas. But it should make us cautious about endorsing utilitarian arguments simply because they yield neat, all-end-tied-up answers. Doctors, nurses, administrators and politicians often have to deliberate agonising dilemmas. They should beware of utilitarian advisors who smirk that no dilemma is really agonising its just a matter of counting up the plusses and minuses."

We're not really out of the woods yet on Eugenics. Some bio-ethicists (I should probably put that in quotation marks) have argued that parents should be allowed to kill an infant up to one year after birth, if not doing so would impact the quality of life of the mother or father: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ethicists-argue-in-favor-of-after-birth-abortions-as-newborns-are-not-persons/ After the journal article that originally argued for this claim was published, it produced such vehement response (some of which was understandably over the top), that the journal editor published an article saying, hey, what's the big deal? As he points out, some of the most prominent bio-ethicists have advocated for such a policy: "The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion." http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2012/02/28/liberals-are-disgusting-in-defence-of-the-publication-of-after-birth-abortion/ The aforementioned Singer, formerly a professor at Princeton,has also argued that the aged should be euthanized, even against their will, if they no longer are a benefit to society, and also advocates for zoophilia in some cases. Singer was a member of Obama's health care reform team, so it's hard to argue that he lacks influence.

Beavah, I'm all about the high-handed pomp.

Apparently, Rednecks are one of the few groups its safe to exclude in the name of inclusion, as The Daily Show demonstrated: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-5-2012/hope-and-change-2---the-party-of-inclusion

Yep, not one of America's brightest moments. Eugenics was a big element of the Progressive political movement in America and Germany. A good, albeit controversial look at the political currents that led from Progressivism to the Fascist movements in Germany and Italy is Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism," available in most libraries. One of the things that doesn't often get taught in schools: Most kids are taught about the Scopes Monkey Trial, with the idea that the noble civil libertarian Clarence Darrow represented "Good" in supporting the teaching of evolution and redneck William Jennings Bryan represented "bad" in opposing the teaching of Darwinism. In fact, the truth wasn't so cut and dried. Darrow himself could be a pretty vile individual, who regularly bribed jury members in trials and famously said that dissent during wartime (at least, during FDR's war) should be punished by imprisonment. Bryan wasn't the redneck hick modern schools often depict him as. He was actually a political liberal,, a pacifist and anti-imperialist (the character of the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz was a satire of Bryan by L. Frank Baum), a trust-buster, a supporter of women's suffrage, and a Democrat, but unlike many of his fellow progressives opposed the eugenics movement. His opposition to the teaching of Darwinism in the school was based partly on his biblical literalism (although he wasn't a strict literalist - he believed the "days" of Genesis could be metaphors for geological epochs), but also on his belief that Darwinism, expressed as Social Darwinism, would be used as a tool for the rising fascist movement and provide a veneer of scientific authority to racism - which in fact, it did.

"This is my husbands side of the family.. Both mother/father-in-laws and brother/sister-in-laws though Catholic, disagree with the Republicans stance on Pro-life.. Both groups are pro-choice.. " So, they are in disagreement with a fundamental teaching of Catholicism, and which has been a fundamental teaching of Christianity since the time of the Didache, but still claim to identify as Catholics. "This was before I hit them with the question of what the Republicans planned to do to feed/house/educate and raise all the unwanted babies, that women were forced to birth and then gave up because they are either disabled (think of all the babies born from drug or alcohole addicted mothers, besides families who just would not have the finances or time and patience to raise).. Think about the fact these families will not get any government aid to raise these children.. The only option they will have is to disown them. Then there will just be the women not ready for a family who will be angry over not having a choice. They will refuse to raise these unwanted children, simply because they will be angry that their freedom to decide for themselves was taken a way.. "I didn't want this baby, you (government) did.. Here you go.." " That's very compassionate of you. I know many adults whose mothers were poor, or alcoholics, or didn't receive government aid. I can't tell you how many times all those people have told me they only wished that their mothers had aborted them. Everyone who had a poor parent or an abusive mom? They all wish they had been aborted. Better not to have any option to live rather than face the daily pain of growing up with a bad mom. The people with Down's Syndrome? Yep, they wish their parents had aborted them. They say it all the time, in fact. You should see their suicide rate. Well, actually it's almost non-existent, but don't let facts get in the way of a good prejudice. The people with inheritable diseases? Yeah, they also wish that they had been aborted. Better never to have lived than have to deal with the crummy hand they were dealt. Those who grew up poor? EVERY poor person wishes they were dead, or better yet, had never been born. I grew up dirt poor, and I used to ask my Mom every day why she never aborted me instead of making me have to work all through high school to help bring in family income. Really, My life would have been a lot better if I hadn't had one. Because after all, life never improves and you can never improve your lot in life, once you're born unwanted. We live in America, after all, where people's station in life is fixed and unchanging. And yes, all those mothers who decide that they just aren't cut out to be moms will drop them off at the nearest government office, and say, "Here, YOU raise him!" They will then walk out, without feat of being tackled and arrested for child abandonment. Their infants will be turned over to faceless government bureaucrats (as the Catholic orphanages are all going out of business because of outmoded ideas that children should be raised by a mom and a dad), then grow up in the massive gray stone orphanages that cover the American countryside, growing old and working away at some big kind of dangerous millstone apparatus, or something, because everyone knows that no one wants to adopt a baby. Babies are kind of icky, after all, and get in the way of one's life-plans "Sure some of the healthy babies will be adopted. People wanting to adopt will not have to go out of country.. But, there will be more babies born then couples wanting to adopt.. Think about making the ability to spay or neuter cats and dogs.. " I AM thinking about making the ability to spay or neuter cats and dogs. And I still have no idea what you are talking about. "So how will America warehouse these unwanted babies? How will they pay for raising them? And once they reach adulthood, how much of a burden on society will these unwanted babies continue to be?" Well, once they're adults, I guess they would be expected to get a job and earn a living, like the rest of us, and help pay down the national debt, which by then will be so large we won't even have a mathematical term for it. Or we could just allow their moms to kill them and term it a very late-term abortion. Because the odds are so stacked against them. (This message has been edited by AZMike)

She may have to pay a Pole Tax. If your art form causes denim friction burns on the underside of your thighs, you're probably not practicing an actual art form.

Second on the Steramine tabs. Much lighter and easier to pack than bleach (liquid bleach also deteriorates over time once opened). You can get 'em cheap on Amazon, 3 stacking washpails and you're good.