Peregrinator

I find it interesting that TLUSA does not give approximate membership numbers (like rounding to the closest 1,000).

Well, yes, along with actually including other resources, not merely referencing them as they had agreed to do. I am not arguing that the BSA wasn't those things.

Hi Rick, I apologize but I'm still not following you. Are you saying that the supplemental material consisted only in the references to other publications? Is this article (pro-UUA, by the way) mistaken, then, in its description of the supplemental material (top of p. 54)? http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6200&context=expresso

Scouts Canada has one paid employee for every 332 members (296 employees, 98,142 members). I don't know what the ratio is in the BSA, but in order to achieve a ratio similar that of Scouts Canada, the BSA would have to have over 10,000 paid employees. http://www.scoutscan.com/issues/membershipstats.html

Hi Rick, I'm not sure what that bolded part of your post is supposed to show.

OK, the reason that the religious emblem was "unaccepted" was not because the UU disagreed with the BSA policy but because they included that disagreement in the manual for the religious emblem. They then removed the material the BSA found objectionable from the manual, getting the emblem "accepted" again, but included the disagreement in supplemental material included with every copy of the manual. But that wasn't underhanded or cowardly.

The only way that it could really be categorized as "growth" would be if it were greater than expected from LDS demographic trends or if the growth is being realized in non-LDS troops.

Since Smokey is a bear, it is quite correct to call him "Smokey the Bear" even if that is not his name.

What does that even mean?

Why, because you're under the impression that they actually follow Baden-Powell's original program and principles? Because they don't. Look how they have changed the Law: http://members.scouts.org.uk/supportresources/2943/scout-promise-law-an I see several of Baden-Powell's original (1911) articles (useful/serving others, friend to animals, obedient, clean) missing here, along with a general dumbing down.

I mean as a general principle, nothing to do with the Promise or the Law.

It's God - Family - Country and in that order. Duty to God takes precedence over duty to country.

They probably don't want to deal with the possibility of same-sex-married couples tenting together.

I don't see much difference between the GSUSA "law" (which seems to be a combination of a scout Promise and Law) and the BSA law combined with the oath. "On my honor I will do my best ... to obey the scout law etc."

The Founders listed the Quebec Act (which, among other things, allowed Catholics to hold public office in Quebec) among the Intolerable Acts in the Declaration of Independence. So one shouldn't make too much of the Founders' adherence to the principles of religious liberty.

Baden-Powell contemplated them, and wrote against them in Rovering to Success.