Scouter99

Really? I'm beginning to wonder whether you read this thread at all. As long as you continue to insist that the only scenario in which sex between scouts/leaders is non-consensual or predatory, there's not much point speaking to you about it. As I said, you're determined to have gay leaders and your paradigm permits no space for anything else.

Again, here is the depth of your indoctrination on full display. It is not for you to interpret and you are not "giving" me anything if you get your brain in line with reality. Pedophile is a word that means something specific, and what it means is set by the American Psychiatric Association. If you have misgivings, take it up with them, I'm sure they're very interested in your thoughts on the matter and what you're willing to "give" them. Do you even realize the irony of your comments about Christians being unwilling to compromise while you stick your fingers in your ears and assume your position on a political issue determines what a pedophile is or isn't? Are you being funny on purpose? That's very black and white for such an open-minded person as yourself. If Pascal Tessier, the self-styled "first gay Eagle Scout" (haw haw), who is 18, was dating a 16-yr-old when he turned 18, is he a rapist the day after his birthday for doing the same things he was doing the day before? Not in your world. In your world he's a "pedophile" because you have your own definition of pedophilia. But let's say in the real world. What does MooseTracker call an 18-yr-old high school senior who's sleeping with a 16-yr-old? A rapist? Harsh. A rapist in which state, though? You're talking, of course, about statutory rape. But in some states statutory rape does not even exist as a legal concept. And the age of consent is different in every state. Let's go back to Pascal in New York, where the age of consent is 17. He can sleep with youth legally. In Virginia, a person can give consent at 15. Maybe the BSA should peg youth and adult membership status to age of consent in each state. More Freudian slips, again. See the heading "Why You're Confused" in my OP. You're pivoting to the big, scary word "rape" because your idea of potential problems is 50-yr-olds seducing or manhandling 14-yr-olds. I noticed you ignored the fact that you were completely and utterly wrong about the book, but did you notice that 2 of the 3 gay men were quite young, 23 and 32. One of my former Scouts is 18, he's a Senior, he's dating a 16-yr-old Junior, they have sex, is he a rapist or a pedophile, MooseTracker? Should I vilify him? When he was 16, he was dating an 18-yr-old college freshman, was she a rapist? If he were gay, and BSA allowed gay adults, and his boyfriend was also in the troop, should I kick him out if they don't break up? I can see the headline now, and you can too if you're honest: "BSA Kicks Out Scout Leader for Love" We're so hateful. Let's keep him straight. Should I refuse to register him as an ASM or College Reserve because he's a rapist and/or a pedophile? You haven't thought about any of this, you're using a sledgehammer instead of a paintbrush. It's because you don't care. You don't care about the actual implications of admitting gay men as leaders—you just want it. You want it without regard to anything. So in arguing for it, you will say anything that makes it work in your head. You call perfectly nice gay men "pedophiles" because then you can say "pedophiles will get in regardless"; you call perfectly normal sexual behavior rape because then you can say "rapists will rape regardless ~be afraid~!" I'm not afraid, I'm perfectly clearheaded. I'm not always good at expressing myself clearheadedly but I am. Just as Athenian homosexuality grew out of the gymnasium culture; just as the Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name grew out of boarding schools, in the intense, long-term relationship system of Scouting, there will be affairs, seductions by leaders of youht and youth of leaders, and there will even be some rapes. That is happening now because some gay men join without regard to the membership policy, it will happen much more once the policy is changed. When they happen, you will refuse to accept that the men involved in them are gay men, you will call them pedophiles or rapists to deny the reality of the ideological stance you've taken. It's callous and cruel to the young men it will effect. But you haven't thought about that, either.

There does not have to be any limit on editing; I can edit posts from 5 years ago on the other IPB forum I frequent.

Not n'more: And so on with the path to not awarding the fraudulent MB. It pays to read the books. Page 52 http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/33088.pdf

And then tear it immediately down. We have a great little forest behind our CO and I've tried doing just that. A mother hen is always there to say "alright, now leave no trace." Boys have no interest in sweating it all day, or for a few days, to immediately rip it all up and toss it to the wind, and I haven't got any interest in that, either. It probably also has a lot to do with the fact that Greenbar Bill's handbooks contained instructions for how to make war bonnets and chaps, but no other kinds of dress. And why should it have? The point is not history, but inspiration of ideals and adventure. The idea of costumes is a little off in itself. If we're completely honest, in the temperate and hot parts of the country, the Native American dress looked pretty much the same regardless of tribe: Bare butt. http://books.google.com/books?id=jsuwk3gy8lwC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=qMsi_tVhJXUC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA12#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=wfUIHchKA94C&lpg=PA1&pg=PA38#v=onepage&q&f=false Greenbar Bill's idea of an Indian weekend looks like a load of fun, and several of my scouts think it would be a load of fun, but we couldn't have any skin—the boys aren't allowed to camp alone anymore, and the adults might be predators. Cutting down all that green growth for wicker beds and authentic shelters? You ought to be ashamed, Earth-killer! Wide swaths of a Pioneer weekend would look pretty much the same Too racy even for New York. But not too racy for British Scouts of the 1950s (warning: hiney) We also have to keep in mind that boys of past generations dressed up like Indians for fun, not because they were interested in Native culture. And the most fun thing to dress up in are the flashy giant headdresses of the plains Indians. Boys today don't seem to really give much of a rip about Indians at all, so it matters even less. Yes, yes, we can use the OA to educate them about the rich history of local natives, if the locals will help or allow it. Many refuse on both counts. Many can't help if they'd like to; Native tribes are losing their own cultures to themselves. Many use the same inaccurate Plains stuff that we use for the same reasons we do (they don't know what their own people wore, they simply prefer the flashy plains stuff, too) And as for the offense of misrepresentation, the natives don't seem to mind as long as money is involved. Go into any every shop in Cherokee, NC and you will find those irksome totem poles, headdresses, chaps, etc. It's just not that big of a deal.

I wonder what you'd be saying about the competition of ideas if the Southern Baptist Convention decided to switch all its units to BPSA and amend BPSA's policies to exclude gays.

Again, we already have an example of the trajectory: From The Debate the Refuses to Die LGBT activists have made it clear from day one that tolerance is not acceptable, it must be 100% acceptance in 100% of places or destruction of the places that don't capitulate. If the local option is the route BSA takes, within a year a gay man will try to join a scout troop that does not allow homosexuals, and Lamda Legal or the ACLU etc will sue. The First Conservative Church of Anytown, USA will not have the money to defend the suit, BSA will punt, and the 5-30 boys in the troop will lose Scouting when the church shuts down the troop. The following recharter season, COs around the country will drop their charters, or switch to Trail Life.

Those concerns ("fear" is a diminutive used to rob opposition of reason) are already extended to women, and here is precisely where even the BSA runs into PC bizarro-land logic. We are told that females cannot share tents with males, that they must use separate latrines or have blocked out times for the same building, that they cannot be alone with males, etc. Male crew leaders must have a female leader present if a female youth is present. Why? Because males are attracted to females and vice versa. But when BSA admitted openly gay youth we are told that no special accommodations are mandated, and indeed no special accommodations should be made, because that would imply that gay boys are sex fiends who can't control themselves, and that would be homophobic institutional bullying. If there is no reason to separate gay boys and men from the sex of their attraction, there is no need to separate females from males. BSA deliberately gives gay males access to men that they do not give women. Exactly, and does anyone believe that they suddenly fell in love the day after he turned 18? I do not have a philosophical problem with an 18-yr-old exercising their own wishes in their own life. But BSA is not the place where gay men should be meeting gay boys. Mainstream homosexual activists insist that gay youth need to see gay adults in positive roles for good self esteem; gay men who are frank about it tell it like it is: "If the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world." -Harry Hay. Showtime's TV series Queer as Folk was a landmark for homosexuals in its depiction of them as serious people rather than comic relief queens or the various other "problematic" stereotypes. It was adapted from a British series. In both the US and British version, a main story arc is the relationship between a 15-yr-old (UK)/high school senior (US) and an advertising executive. The boy was voted #3 in top 25 gay TV characters. This was the #1 show on Showtime's roster and was fawned over. It is all about inculcation. Pride centers have already tried to form troops http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/01/17556143-boy-scouts-utah-gay-pride-center-cant-sponsor-troop?lite

My man, do they not have figurative language over there? Our trusting friend SSScout, and our various pro-gay pals say none of this will lead to discussions of sexuality and sex within Scouting, but the simple fact is that the example is already there.

More naïveté. Britian's Scout Association is close enough to a Sexality Merit Badge, it has published a guide to coming out: https://members.scouts.org.uk/factsheets/FS185082.pdf Over and over. Everything you guys say won't happen has already happened. It's like bizarro world. It would be funny if it weren't so dire.

In the politest terms, neither of you has the slightest idea what the words you're using mean. I have replied to you here: http://scouter.com/index.php/topic/27240-homosexuals-are-not-pedophiles/

Now, as for the Moosetracker's charge that the book I cited, and the specific incident it outlined were "pedophiles", here is the passage. Anyone who wants to argue that the men described here were not gay, but pedophiles, can save their breath and send a letter to the American Psychological Association, because they are arguing not against me but against the definition of homosexuality and pedophilia and making a boob out of themselves. Where the author says "boys" you are reminded again that we are talking about Boy Scouts, boys 11-17, virtually all sexually mature. His language is sloppy—the victims were not children, they were 15. The gay men were not creepy old perverts, Harry Cramer was 23, Woodall was 32. In the end, as I said at the start, this anti-BSA book shows exactly the full scale of the issue, but it seems to have no idea because, like Moosetracker, Cambridgeskip, and so many of the rest of you, he has simply ignored the actual meaning of the words he's writing in favor of political campaigning that excommunicates a certain kind of gay person in defiance of reality. In his case it is not to advance gay rights, but to paint BSA as an organization that callously accepted "pedophiles" into its ranks. But these simply are not pedophiles. They are gay men. You can read the BSA Perversion Files of all three men at http://documents.latimes.com/harry-cramer/ http://documents.latimes.com/richard-stanley-halvorsen/ http://documents.latimes.com/raymond-woodall/ And in the LA Times database of Perversion files you will find hundreds more gay men and opportunists. Their victims' ages obliterate all efforts to mislabel them pedophiles. Chapter 6: A Perfect Place Lewis Sialle listened to his friends and grew nervous. He was sitting among several men who, like himself, were gay. A couple of those men, however, also liked boys. They talked about boys now, and the conversation took an odd turn. Someone suggested forming a Boy Scout troop. People create troops for all sorts of good reasons, but Sialle knew that the motive here was to "provide them with boys . . . for their sexual pleasure."1 He warned his friends that they shouldn't get involved, with the Boy Scouts, because it was "an American institution and I knew there would be trouble." Raymond Woodall told Sialle he was paranoid.2 That fall they helped create a troop at a local Presbyterian church. Many of the boys were just the type that Baden-Powell had hoped to reach. At one point, only 4 of the 18 troop members had fathers living at home. Their families were poor. Few of the parents had the time or desire to help run the troop. Sialle's friends easily took control. Woodall and another friend, Harry Cramer, became assistant Scoutmasters, while Richard Halverson became Scoutmaster. Sialle joined the troop committee and stayed nervous. The leaders quickly made Troop 137 a fun place for needy boys. "They went into the homes, talked to the parents, invited the young boys to become Scout members," says New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick. "They were very careful in selecting children who came from homes where they were in great need of activities. They provided things for these children that their parents could never give them—bicycles, uniforms, trips."3 They also introduced some boys to sex. Halverson, Woodall, and Cramer routinely had sex with at least four of their Scouts, usually at the men's homes. They took pictures of their escapades. They teamed up with pedophiles on both coasts, swapping photos, stories, and sometimes boys. They turned the troop into a child sex ring with national connections.4 Pictures are perhaps the most dangerous of all possessions for pedophiles—and the most coveted of all evidence for police. In case of arrest, pictures are irrefutable proof of abuse, and often lead to child porn charges and heavy sentences. Most adults who have sex with children either avoid memorializing the events on film, or they hide the pictures well. But pictures turn up in the oddest places. In 1977 a Colorado troop leader got in an accident and took his car to a garage for repair. The repairman found lurid photos of children in the car and called police. The Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster were arrested.5 At the least, picture-takers usually use Polaroids so they don't have to go someplace like Fotomat to develop the film. In August 1976, Harry Cramer brought a roll of film to Fotomat. Thus began the destruction of Troop 137. The employees who developed the roll quickly saw trouble: pictures of a 15-year-old boy having sex with two men. Fotomat called the police. The police got warrants to search the men's homes. There, among the Scoutmaster handbooks, they found magazines with such titles as Naked Boyhood and Boys for Sale. They also found hundreds of pictures of nude boys and boys having sex, along with card files bearing the names and addresses of boys and of men who were interested in boys. Halverson, it turns out, kept "neat, orderly files." Those files got a lot of people in trouble: seventeen men were eventually charged, including an Episcopal priest in Tennessee and a millionaire in Massachusetts. All four of the New Orleans men were convicted on sexual assault charges.6 The New Orleans sex abuse scandal was the first to become a public relations disaster for the Boy Scouts. Troop 137 disbanded. For years other troops in the area had trouble drawing and keeping Boy Scouts. The media covered the case heavily, with headlines referring to the "Scout Sex Case" and "Gay Scout Ring." One local Scout volunteer wrote to a local newspaper complaining about the coverage, saying, "It has been a most frustrating time for the great number of people involved with Scouting in our area, as we've had to watch the other media groups here . . . malign this tremendously worthwhile character-building youth movement by the way in which they've handled the reporting of this matter. It seems to me they had to be able to see what they were doing to Scouting."7 Connick, a former Scout, tried easing public fear by explaining that "this was an isolated incident. People shouldn't use this an an example of what the Boy Scouts stand for."8 In reality, the media were often gentle when a Scout leader was arrested for abuse. Newspaper editors, like Scout volunteers, saw these incidents as aberrations in a wonderful youth program. When an Oklahoma Scoutmaster was arrested in 1971 for sodomizing a member of his troop, the media didn't mention his Scout connection, prompting the local Scout executive to write to national: "We can report that no news release by radio, TV. or newspaper used the movement for sensational purposes. We have personally expressed our appreciation to them."9 Playing down the problem was a common tactic when abuse cases hit the news. In the Colorado case, which broke open with the photos found in the wrecked car, a local BSA official told a newspaper that it was only the second such case he'd heard of in Scouting in eight years. "It's not widespread," he said.10 He probably didn't know it, but that year, 1977, 44 of the 64 adults put in the Confidential Files were put there for allegedly molesting children.11 Of course, the BSA had several hundred thousand volunteers, so those figures may still not have met the man's definition of widespread. Yet the problem was far more common than anyone was admitting. The New Orleans disaster showed Scout officials what men who are attracted to boys had long realized: packs, troops, and posts are great places to find sex partners. Scouting gives the men a legitimate excuse to be around boys they find arousing. The Boy Scouts isn't the only children's group that is so vulnerable. [From here, the author moves back to arguing his thesis of the evil BSA now that he has given the anecdote]

What is Pedophilia Pedophile is a specific condition with a specific definition. It is the exxclusive sexual attraction of a person to "children," that is to say, biological children who have not yet reached puberty. The DSM, which governs the definition of pedophilia, sets that age to 13. The physical reality is that girls have been entering puberty at an increasigly younger age for decades, and boys have now been observed to be following suit. A "minor" is a child in the vernacular and legal sense, but once a person enters puberty, they are not biologically a child. A person who has entered puberty is of no sexual interest whatever to a pedophile. Pedophiles are attracted to pre-pubescent children precisely because they have no smell, no hair, no fluids. A pedophile is no more attracted to an adolescent person than you and I are to a pig. Once puberty begins, a person is sexually mature, whether they are 18 (or the local age of majority) or not. If you see a wispy mustache on a boy's lip, you may presume he is already producing semen and sperm. I know 5th graders with that benchmark. What is a Homosexual A homosexual is a person whose primary sexual attraction is to sexually mature members of the same sex. A pedophile is not a homosexual, a homosexual is not a pedophile. Confusion (and outright intellectual dishonoesty among partisans) often occurs in discussions about sexuality when we talk about sex acts between people of the same sex. If a female pedophile engages in sex with a male boy, the act was heterosexual, the woman is a pedophile, not a heterosexual. A man whose sexual attraction is to males that are pubescent (13+) and/or post-pubescent is not a pedophile, he is simply a gay man. Some want to create a new classification, ephebophiles or hebephiles. This is contested and highly controversial precisely because it is the ironic opposite of de-classifying homosexuality as a disorder. Sexual attraction to sexually mature people is not biologically disordered, it is socially unacceptable, and the move to carve it out as a new diagnosis is cultural rather than scientific. Pederasty is sex with a young man, not a pre-pubescent child. The etymology is shared and confusing, but a pederast is not a pedophile. It's just one more word for a certain type of a homosexual sex act. Opportunism Sexuality is irrelevant to opportunism. Some people just want to get off—I'm sorry there's no scoutlike way to phrase it. A heterosexual man might take advantage of any opportunity for sex. His sex acts might be homosexual, but his sexuality is still heterosexual. He might couple with a 16-yr-old young man, he's still heterosexual. He might couple with a 10-yr-old boy, he's still a heterosexual. Some people are sadistic and just want to hurt people, and sex is one way to do that. A heterosexual psycho could engage in homosexual sex acts without any sexual attraction to men. If the male victim is sexually mature, the psycho isn't gay, he's a psycho. If the male victim is a child, he's not a pedophile, he's a psycho. What is a "Boy" You see the difficulties of language that surround this issue. In the 1910 sense of the word, a boy was what we call a young man or teenager: a young male entering puberty and thus manhood in the age before a concept of adolescence with confusing striations and intersections of biological, legal, and cultural defintions of child, minor, adult, etc. As I go on, I will choose the word that makes what I'm saying most clear, which might be anachronistic forwards or backwards. Now break it down to BSA stratification: Cub Scouts: 1st–5th grade. An abuser is either a pedophile or an opportunist (of any sexuality) because virtually all of the potential victims are pre-pubescent. The few early bloomers will hold no interest to a pedophile, but would be targets of opportunity to opportunists. I say "abuser" here because sex is illegal with all people of Cub Scout age in all situations. Boy Scouts: 10/11–17years old. Virtually every member of a Boy Scout troop is sexually mature; pedophiles are not sexually attracted to males who are Boy Scout age. The leader is either a homosexual, an opportunist, or a pedophile targeting only the youngest boys and late bloomers. I say "leader" here rather than abuser because in some states, sex between an adult (18+) and someone as young as 15 might be perfectly legal. Venturing/Sea Scouts: 14–21 pending age change to 14–18. In the case of male youth, the leader is either gay/bisexual, or an opportunist. In the case of female youth, the leader is a lesbian/bisexual, a heterosexual man, or an opportunist. Why You're Confused There was no largescale organized political movement for homosexuals until after the Stonewall Riots in 1969. But there were cultural movements. In the late 1800s in England, homosexuals began to push at the boundaries of social attitudes through artistic and intellectual movements. In England, they were called "Uranians" and included many famous writers like Oscar Wilde and his lover Alfred Douglas, who penned the famous line "the love that dare not speak its name" to describe their love for young men, or the painter Henry Tuke. Others took to the British schools where they could enact their Plato-inspired ideas of mentorship coupled with sex in an environment where opportunistic sex between isolated schoolboys was already rampant. In Germany, a sort-of forerunner of Scouting was formed, the Wandervögel (migrating birds), a outdoors and character club in which sex between men and older boys, then older boys and younger boys played a large role. The poor Mediterranean towns along North Africa, Greece, and Southern Italy became hotbeds of sexual tourism, going well into the 1970s in Italy. In Germany, homosexuals made great strides unti lthe Nazis came to power. The idea was to change ideas about masculinity and the role of men in the lives of younger men as mentors through love. That ideal ran headlong into the cultures it sought to change and made little headway, continuing underground even until today. It was exactly what the naysayers must defend gay rights against even if no one brings it up first: A social campaign to make homosexuality acceptable by having sex with young men—by inculcating boys into sex with men. Not children, not pedophilia, but homosexuality. It was as improbable as it sounds, but we're talking about hopeless romantics. After Stonewall, homosexuals who sought change took to politics rather than poetry. The idea of running a successful political campaign to make homsexuality tolerated, much less accepted, by the mainstream based on sex with their sons was obviously out of the question. Still, the decision by groups to dissociate from pederasts was extremely controversial within the gay community. The founder of the first modern, political gay rights organization, Harry Hay, marched with the banner "NAMBLA walks with me" in the 1986 LA Pride parade. He was not a fringer, he was a founding father and elder statesman of the gay rights movement. The writer Allen Ginsberg, another giant of American culture, and a homosexual commented that "Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witch hunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance…I’m a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too – everybody does, who has a little humanity." But when a movement becomes political, idealism/ideology must always be sacrificed to the goal. In his book Gay Man's Worst Friend, gay writer Karl Andersson chronicles the deliberate shrinking of gay identity in order to gain political acceptance via his own excommunication from the gay community when he left the mainstream gay press to publish his own magazien about young men (the Kindle version is cheap). Gay activists excised their boy-loving ancestors to pursue the approach that has given them the poltiical gains we see today: "We're just like you." Love is love. It worked, it doesn not erase reality. But popular memory doesn't just disappear, and boy-lovers have never quite gone quietly. Everyone knows the affinity homosexuals have for the young, who are the most virile in a "community" that stresses eroticism above all else, and anyone who knows the history of gay activism knows its roots and where it will eventually end up again. Are all homosexuals pederasts? No. But all pederasts are homosexuals. And the Boy Scouts has always been and will always be a fertile hunting ground for them. When experts say that Scouting is a target for pedophiles, they are speaking in an erroneous vernacular sense of the word out of ignorance or political correctness: a 14-yr-old is not the object of desire for pedophiles. The BSA is a fertile hunting ground for gay men of particular tastes, and even for gay men who might mean no harm, because, as David Bowie so eloquently put it "love is careless in its choosing." How many of you have fallen head-over-heels without ever having set out deliberately to do so? With very few, obvious exceptions, everything I have said here is simple fact. It is the stuff of dictionaries and diagnostic manuals, and a matter of historical fact. So why are you confused? Because you want to be. It is a matter of good will that in a way can be commendable, but it is misguided. It is a childish gullibility that allows a perfectly intelligent person to say something perfectly moronic like: when given a list of men who had sex with sexually mature young men, not children. It is because of this willful ignorance that I hold those who would force homosexuals onto the BSA in particular disdain. Because they put at very real risk the lives of millions of young men, burning them on the alter of politics in defiance of reality. I do not hate gay people. I am at this very moment sat 10 feet away from a gay man, he is my little brother and I love him, always will, will never tell him he is a pervert or any such, and hope he lives the happiest life anyone can have. I do not believe that gay people should be persecuted. I have never been a macho man, I have been bullied as hard as any gay kid because as far as the bullies were concerned I was a gay kid. I am a bachelor today and as far as many of my scouts and fellow leaders are concerned I am gay because I fit too many of their stereotypes about what a gay man is. Homosexuals deserve the same privacy that anyone else deserves. But their desire for acceptance does not entitle them to infringe upon the liberties of others. I am a classic liberal and conservative. The freedom of association is fundamental to all freedoms and to the dignity of individuals. Gay activism works in direct contravention of that priniciple and that is why I find it outrageous, equally or moreso than the argument for safety. I simply understand that like the boarding school, the barracks, the ancient Greek gymnasium, the BSA is a pressure cooker, and like all of those places, gay men have already and will again use it for sex—and that has nothing to do with nature or nurture. It is not responsible to open the doors to gay men.

Yep, it's a time-out issue. And after 15+ minutes, edit disappears.

I had an edit button, but I was only able to use it once. After my first edit, the button disappeared. I don't know if this is a time-out issue as Rick alluded to, or a forum setting that is limiting us to one edit per post. I do know that IPB software has the ability to allow users to edit posts as often as they want for as long as they want. I've been using another IPB forum for 7 years, and as long as the thread has not ben locked, I can go back and edit my posts from 7 years ago, and I can edit them as many times as I like. Whether is a time-out, or a limit, it's an admin option somewhere and someone just needs to flip the switch. edit: I'm testing things now. edit 2: I'm getting a second edit, so it's not a limit on # of edits. Now I'll wait 15 minutes and see if the edit button is gone.

The twisting-turning involved in stating that marching in a gay pride is not promoting homosexuality amaze me; must've earned your gymnactics badge. The non sequitur that follows is typical and not at all impressive. I didn't say anyone is trying to turn boys gay, you felt the need to defend against that charge. Why? I think it's Freudian. After all, as an Englishman you've just had the 118th anniversary of the release from Reading Jail of gay icon Oscar Wilde, who spent 2 years there for sex with teenagers, or as he so artfully put it "feasting with panthers." Maybe you need to deny the upcoming feast with the Panther Patrol when I didn't say anything about it because you feel that's exactly what's coming. But as long as you're laughing, get a copy of the book Scout's Honor. It is an anti-BSA book which ironically enough catalogues the story of a group of gay men (gay, not married opportunists, not pedophiles, just gay) who did exactly what you're having a good laugh at: Formed a scout troop to have a stable of young men to have sex with. If you think it's so funny, let it be a young man you care about.

Both state that admitting gay leaders will not result in their sexuality being advocated within the program. Both know that is exactly what happens and will be happening. It is exactly what newly-allowed gay Scouts have been doing, it is exactly what gay leaders have been doing, it is why they pushed for the change. Scouts UK it's the same story, they have staff and events dedicated to promoting homosexuality.

This is a lie and it has been a lie for 2 years. Both of you know it and I'm happy to call it what it is. 5 seconds after gay youth were allowed, activist churches signed up gay leaders on purpose, and activist leaders took their scouts to gay pride parades where their Scouts cavorted around with men wearing as little clothing as nipple clamps and g-strings. And you're happy about it, and blistered those of us who had anything negative to say about it. A majority of Millenials think that abortion is morally unacceptable. Let's make it illegal tomorrow.

#1 Most Wanted: Bryan Wendell. $1,000,000 reward.

The odd youth is out of luck in the BSA, then, since the Boy Scout uniform section is only 14 pages long, and 4 of them are pictures of merit badges. The uniform is not complex, by for more complex are the idiotic ways in which people get it wrong, you know, "nothing is foolproof to the sufficiently talented fool" and all. Some noggin' who puts his World Conservation Award in place of his World Crest has now made more work than if he'd put it in the correct place, for example. I can't imagine the effort involved in making 12 event patches hang from one button, but by God! they find a way to look stupid if it's the last thing they do. Now, does that mean I have to tell them how dumb they look? No, and I don't. After all, we have movies to do that when they parody all of us based on those few by putting "scouts" in ridiculous flared-out shirts. There's a good reason real scouts don't want to be seen in their uniform, the sloppy few around them who inform the popular view. And, yes, it is absolutely shameful the way people gang up on youth in photos on the Bryan blog, and Bryan should grow some balls and delete those comments.

No apology necessary I probably owe Pack Saddle an apology myself! Those sentiments are the issue I see with the "privilege" line in Tahawk's link. The use of "privileging" is proof enough of the aim, to introduce wild intersectional discussions (which are propaganda) into the public schools. It means "privileging" in the sense of "white privilege", heteronormism, and other jargon my spellcheck doesn't recognize because it is part of The Backlash. It is the idea that nothing is True because anything is true for any one person, and the assertion of Truth is oppression based in privilege. It's Orwell. Separate something from it's root, then you can make it anything authority says it is. I haven't read a lot about Common Core, I haven't much CC itself, but it's that kind of language that makes it very easy for me to see why so many people are so wary. You cannot separate history from context. But it's a literature assignment. Fine, nor can you separate texts from contextâ€â€nothing is written in a vacuum, especially political war speeches. Students neither spontaneously create knowledge nor are they born with it, they cannot make accurate much less coherent literary or historical conclusions without instruction from a teacher. If I made a chemical pun I'm quite unaware of it, but I love a good pun so let me know!

My initial thoughts are: "It's party's or parties', not parties." Good questions overall.

Sea Scouts is an outdoors program. Yes, it's idiotic and basically a Mormon program. You do not understand that Exploring is not a BSA program and is not administered by the BSA, nor has it been for over 20 years. They are not Scouts, it is not Scouting. Mission creep is a term that already exists for a reason, your argument in favor of Nerd Scouts is it. (On this day I claim and retain rights to the term Nerd Scouts)