packsaddle

Seems to me like we should be trying to help these boys instead of figuring out how to 'come down' on them. BDPT00 has a point that there is a LOT we don't know about this and yet those boys are already convicted. Wow. I guess we've been lucky not to have had to confront something like this as an occurrence during a unit event. But even if arrested outside of the scouting realm, this community has been supportive of turning them around rather than dealing harsh punishment. I do understand that we seem to be unique in this but in this community, PTI has worked quite well. Of course that's only available under limited conditions.

I just have to comment that yours is, so far, the best avatar ever! Now I think I'll just stop and think about Linda for a while.....sigh

AZMike, me too on that liberal conservative thing. "...like starting a fire with friction,maybe we should still practice it because it might be fun..." I remember fondly the gasps as the boys watched my daughter produce flames with her spindle and bow in less than a minute. Then they all pounced on this challenge to become as skilled as that little girl, lol. I don't spare my students either, using polar planimeters and similar non-electronic methods to solve practical calculus problems. It takes a little longer but they sure learn the strategy of how it all works.

Carnival Cruise Lines probably has a position open just now.

AZMike, as you well know, EVERYTHING that goes onto the internet is part of your 'Permanent Record', lol. BTW, good luck on finding that photo of me and my buddies in embarrassing Halloween costumes from 1979. As for the complaint desk, that is a good comment and I hope you repeated it to the appropriate thread for those things....if you could get it to 'work'. My solution has been to hit the 'Post' button and then do something else for about 5 minutes. Then I just hit the 'refresh' button on the browser and usually the post is right there where I expected it to be. I do sympathize with the bewildered feelings of navigating this new site. But isn't that part of the adventure?? P.S. Your family sounds interesting. Do they come armed?

Oops! (Hey, I just found out that a message has to have more than 10 characters!)

Folks, I don't really know what 'flagging' really does so I just flagged the last few posts to experiment with it. It seemed like a good time to try it out.

Heh, heh, why the good members of these forums of course, lol.

Just to note: color, per se, doesn't really exist. Color is merely the way humans (and evidently some other animals) interpret different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. It is a human (animal) perception. We don't really even know if what Merlyn 'sees' as red is the same 'red' that Eagledad 'sees' when both of them observe the same wavelength of electromagnetic radiation.

This decision is a pre-emptive move to avoid the public embarrassment that is coming because Arpaio and Trump are investigating to find out if his long form birth certificate was faked.

I have posed the transgender thing a couple of times previously, with no connection to the potential policy change. To me this is really interesting. If a man decided to undergo the surgery and hormone treatment to outwardly appear female, would BSA 1) categorize him as a homosexual or heterosexual and 2) if that transgender person subsequently married an existing scout leader, would this be viewed as a homo- or heterosexual relationship? Moreover, without karyotyping applicants, how would BSA know in the first place? What business of BSA's would it be FOR them to know?

No. As a matter of fact I expect an increase in membership. Plus at least one troop and pack has NOT been formed because of the existing policy. None of the other troops in this area are going to quit and some of the leaders have already written letters to the SE in support of the change.

Think that would be 'Omniscience', Twocubdad.

I am fascinated by persons who claim that without the dictates of a supernatural power, they are unable to figure out a moral code on their own. As far as the rock god goes, I'm ok with people worshiping a rock. I'm especially glad that BSA approves membership for those who do. But should anyone point to a rock on the ground and try to convince me that THAT rock is a greater source of morality than human intellect, I'll have to make the distinction that while it may be true for 'their' intellect, it isn't for mine.

Beavah writes: "Yeh don't come into someone else's house...." And I agree. If I visit someone and during the visit I learn that they are racists (this still happens from time to time) I don't go on a quest then and there to change their mind. I leave. However, the unit I serve is NOT the house that belongs to BSA. As you and plenty of others have stressed over the years, the unit 'belongs' to the CO if not to the boys and families involved with the unit. I agree with you. If BSA had charged into this unit when a gay leader had been 'outed' and revoked their membership I would have felt terribly betrayed. The CO would have felt betrayed. The DADT approach can logically ONLY lead to this conclusion. And there is no other policy that BSA could logically have since 'detection' is impossible if a gay leader doesn't 'come out' or isn't betrayed by a friend or acquaintance. I agree that some people will be so worried about the possibility that at summer camp or at a camporee, their child might come into contact with a gay person. GUESS WHAT? That happens already, thanks to DADT! Their sense of security is an illusion and if you claim that the loss of their fantasy world can make them leave, I concede that this is possible. Is that really the reason?

Please PM me if anyone knows what happened with the 'edit' that Beavah mentioned. I'd like to know as well. Packsaddle

The seeds of this event were sown long before the BOR, mostly likely. Chances are that the boy was part of the 'setup' but if so, then so was the leadership for failing to recognize his weaknesses and strengths. By the time of the BOR everything was set. When I first entered this unit a similar situation had been brewing. The boy sat for a BOR and he basically was unresponsive at the review. No uniform, no book, complete inability to recite either oath or law, basically clueless about scouting. The BOR realized that this represented a monumental failure for both the boy and the program. But rather than fail him, the board 'continued' the review and left the process open to give him some time to prepare and try again. Considering what I later learned about the history of that whole situation, in retrospect it seems a fair decision. The boy never returned. He was within days of the time limit which would still allow him to complete the Eagle requirements and from what he told me later, he had been pushed by his parents ever since first class. He really didn't want to be a scout anymore and to me THAT was the basic problem. He aged out a little more than 6 months later with the rank of Star. The solutions to problems like these are to avoid setting them up in the first place. Otherwise the boys and the program suffer the consequences later.

Thank you Cambridgeskip, When I read the OP my first thought was that the beauty of local option is that we don't need to worry about what other units will do or how they will respond. We can now devote our attenction to our own local unit. I tend to agree, though, with the basic theme you mentioned, "You will probably be surprised at just how accepting the scouts will be." Referring to the OP again, I think most of the problems will be with the adults and the adult perceptions. All this worry over tenting, camporees, adult appearances, etc. seems to be mostly a search for problems as opposed to solutions. This unit was introduced to a gay leader and the boys and the adults just shurgged because 'gayness' wasn't part of the introduction. No one new to the introduction had any idea, nor did they until somehow it just filtered in through the 'grapevine' (that mysterious, nebulous, seemingly everpresent source of 'truth'). And by then,....no big deal. As far as the boys are concerned, sex, applied to leaders, is about the most distasteful thing they could ever think about (I mean, like, EUUUWWW!). As far as THEY are concerned, the boys in this unit seem already to have sorted things out with regard to homo- and hetero- things. As you say, "You will probably be surprised at just how accepting the scouts will be." Unless, I add, they are somehow influenced by the adults to think in other terms. But then again, for the time being, looking at this unit, that is not a problem for us.

The boys already confront those issues any time they 'choose sides'. They've been doing it since they first started forming competing groups.

My advice to DeanRx is to remember that he does not serve the organization. He serves the unit and the boys and families which compose the unit. Otherwise, "I can feel his pain". (sorry, that just slipped out) With only one or perhaps two exceptions that I see, it looks like forum members on both sides of the issue at least can unite in disgust with the 'leadership' displayed yesterday. Kudu, some of your biting commentary on corporate leadership development would be well-received just now. But there is another point to take away from this (you know me, always looking for the bright side of things) - We can all ask ourselves the question with crystal clarity now, no matter how we feel about gays: "Are these guys REALLY the reservoir of wisdom and the central authority whom we want to dictate membership policy to ALL of us?" Is there anyone in these forums who does NOT think they could make a better moral decision for themselves than the BSA leadership has just demonstrated? CAN THERE BE a clearer demonstration for the need for LOCAL OPTION than what we've just witnessed?

It is an internet poll on a discussion list. Tons of ways this could be manipulated either way. Just takes someone with some time on their hands. Now, if there was a way to lock down by IP address so that only one vote per IP address you might have a different story. But who knows. Love the avatar!

Not too many years ago, I suspect the result would have been the opposite with a vast majority in favor of the current policy.

Someone has smuggled a short bit of audio from their meeting: http://www.audiomicro.com/tracks/dialog/512628

OK, using Firefox, I can't seem to be able to send a private message. I wrote a message to OGE and everything looked good. When I tried to send it, an error message said that I had tried to send to one recipient but I could only send to zero recipients. So I deleted OGE from the recipient list. The next error message informed me that I had no recipients and that I needed at least one recipient. I tried it one more time to make sure I wasn't 'seeing things' and it did the same thing. So, either it's me or its Memorex. OGE, in case you read this, here's what I wrote to you (and tried to include eamonn and other moderators before I realized that it wasn't working): "Hello OGE, while we all figure out how to do things, and because there are a lot of new moderators, I thought it would be good to establish some minimal guidelines for moderator etiquette. For example, now that we seem to have the ability to freely edit posts, seemingly without it being identified as 'moderated', would it be polite for all of us to identify the fact that we made a change? Would it be polite to identify ourselves as to who made the change and why? Since you and a couple of others seem to be the most experienced of the 'older generation' of moderators, what do you think about my suggestion? The new moderators might benefit and I sure wouldn't mind it, personally, either. Thanks" For the rest of forum members, this peek into the mysterious world of the 'moderators' was brought to you by Packsaddle. Edit: Smileys still are not working as well, at least not for me.

Do you think it WOULD go back to the Supreme Court? Or are they required to hear new challenges?