AwakeEnergyScouter

Barry, I assume you're talking about me in the discussion about affinity groups? If so, you have misunderstood what I was saying, and you're going beyond the frames of civil discourse that in that you're not sticking to the issue (saying that girls shouldn't be in the BSA, especially with bitterness or vitriol, hurts the scouts it's aimed at and thus the BSA) and that you're telling how I feel and what my motivations are - and you're wrong about those. Please stick to civil discourse in the future. I have explicitly explained my motivations several times. Let me know if you need links to those posts. Perhaps you didn't read them? As for your grandchildren - they should be welcome. If they do not feel welcome, then we need to understand why. If it's because someone isn't following the Scout Law, then that's something to correct. Can you give us an example of what hostile environments you or they have been in in the BSA, so that we can understand the issue better?

Perhaps this is a product of us being effectively in different social spaces (especially thinking of us being from different countries here), but I don't know that society is debating whether it's okay to be violent towards women because they're women. I've never, ever, in my life heard anyone, male or female, young or old, any attribute or other you could choose, say that it's ok to hit women because they're women. In the path I've taken through life on this planet, that's completely outside the Overton window of every society I've been part of. No debate at all. It's universally condemned as far as I know in the US. The WOSM statement went beyond just gender-based violence, of course, but I also don't know that society is debating whether women are equal in human value to men, either. I've never heard a person IRL say that. Have you? If you have, I'd love to hear more about that. I've seen people on the Internet try to shift the Overton window on this issue, but I've still never met anyone who's willing to say out loud that they think that men have more intrinsic worth than women, or something closely related like that they think that men should get paid more than women for doing the same job with the same qualifications. It seems wildly uncontroversial to say that women and men are equal in value to me. Like, "I support democracy" or "killing is wrong" politically uncontroversial. Up there with white walls and beige couches. Gender equality is a basic building block of at least European political culture (EU value 4). Saying that men and women are not equal in value and dignity is also outside the Overton window of every society I've ever lived in, best I can tell. It's just not something that's debated. There is, as far as I can tell, wide agreement on this issue. Have you met anyone who thinks that men have more inherent worth than women? A lot of the gender equality the UN and WOSM is concerned about is from countries where it's much worse than here. What does seem to be going on in countries with globally high levels of gender equality is that there are individuals who do secretly think that it's ok to hit women because they're women and that men are have more intrinsic worth than women and act like it, but avoid stating these opinions out loud because they recognize that these opinions are outside the Overton window. In scouting, we have the Scout Promise/Oath and Scout Law as a common value foundation to operate off of. We are not a debate society. If it's outside the Overton window, I don't think we have some obligation to entertain it as a debate subject in our movement. Like you say, we've got better things to do, like getting on with the scouting. It's just not our role to debate ideas, especially ones that alienate some scouts and were outside the Overton window to begin with.

100% everything you just said, @FireStone! Bravo! And for any scouts and prospective parents reading this, there are units out there that are in fact on board with the scouting movement's commitment to feminism as per @RememberSchiff's post above. I and my scout have been nothing but welcomed by our pack and council IRL, and one of the male leaders was so thrilled to see girls sweep the speed podium at our Pinewood Derby this year that he talked about it throughout teardown. There are male allies in the BSA.

I suppose you're right, I don't know for a fact that the scouter in question meant it as a political show of support for Ukraine in the war. They could be Ukrainian and wanted to give a nod to their other country. But political support for Ukraine in the war is a very psychologically available interpretation for many, which is what makes it dicey in terms of not taking sides in armed conflicts even if that wasn't what the scouter meant, and the Puerto Rican scouts are all both from Puerto Rico and members of the BSA at the same time all the time in a way Ukrainian scouts aren't scouting with the BSA. (Which is why I wouldn't move the Swedish flag patch from my old scout shirt onto my BSA shirt, that's not the role I take when I put on the shirt.) The dissonance and near certainty that others will see it as political is a problem. Not a giant, Earth-shattering problem, but a problem nonetheless IMO. But you're also right that we'll never know probably. As long as not that many people see it (no media coverage, etc) it also isn't a big perception dent. I don't have strong opinions on the PR flag on BSA uniforms TBH, but the fact that PR is a territory but Texas is a state makes a bit different IMO. Although, I did a quick search on this, and it looks like the official scouts website for PR has scouts in uniforms with US flags. https://www.scoutingpr.org/cubscouts/ They have their own, separate website, but if there isn't actually anything officially different in terms of uniforms then that's it, I suppose, although since PR isn't a belligerent in an armed conflict and the scouts are actually from PR no one is going to think scouts with PR flags are doing it as a foreign policy political statement, even if it's a uniform code violation. Either way I'm not bent out of shape about it.

This could be me not culturally getting it, but why would US American young men be more prone to sexual assault than European young men? What does it mean, exactly, to not be Scouts UK? How is the BSA significantly different to Scouts UK? (Why Scouts UK in particular?) I will share an off-the-cuff reaction someone in our pack had to how my patrol camped, everyone including leaders in a single big canvas tent. "That's probably much safer [than BSA YPT]". And I think they might be right, because the audience for any CSA is literally everyone there. That's pretty darn hard for a perp to pull off. I used to gripe about the weight when we were backpacking, but in retrospect that might have been minor compared to a perp being able to isolate you in a tent. TBH it didn't occur to me. Don't get me wrong, the last thing scouting in the US needs is more lawsuits, but I'm honestly not sure how scouting together raises the risk of that, or even more importantly, there being harm to sue about in the first place.

I wish they would. In fact, I bet I'm not the only old WOSM scout in the BSA who's scouted in another NSO where everyone scouts together and has for many decades. Totally doable.

Ah, here is where it gets actionable for us scouters. I agree completely. Advancement can become "scouting materialism", in the sense that you're talking about. If scouts weigh their own worth as a human being based on their advancement, something's not quite right, but we're the right folks to look for that and correct as necessary. If nothing else, if others around us don't see the problem, we can just straight up point out the misunderstanding to the scout. Their essential worth as a human being does not depend on scout rank or advancement at all, and never did. Just being together and having wild fun is where the fun memories are at, anyway. 🏕️🏞️⛰️🎒🥾

There's nothing like proof of concept to pull you out of a spiral of self-doubt someone is trying to suck you into. Well, except your own experience. It's really hard to take someone who's saying you can't do what you've already done seriously. But for girls, who haven't had time to do all that much yet because of age, proof of concept is very helpful when it comes to deciding whom to listen to. How wonderful that the scouts got to meet a live "Rosie"! Can't be many left.

I think you're right on the money here. Part of the reason things have turned out fine generation after generation is that the youth were guided skillfully enough by elders who didn't give up. The youthful perspective is important, but so is that of the elders. Both are needed. So it's important to rouse wakeful energy and confidence when they start wanting. We can make a difference, there is a point, even if youth don't show it as you do the helping! Also, youthful mistakes as well as parenting mistakes tend to correct themselves with more reality feedback. Can't imagine people who being parents to job interviews get many offers, and most likely get told point blank it's completely inappropriate eventually. Rough and unfair in a sense, but... From a larger history POV, probably corrects itself.

Even with a red passport in addition to a blue one, I represent US scouting with the BSA when I'm in the BSA uniform. The Swedish flag goes on the Swedish scout shirt, the US flag on the US scout shirt. Puerto Rican flags make sense for Puerto Rican scouts. So unless they're in Scouts Ukraine in a Ukrainian scout shirt...

Well, considering that the youth of today have been terrible since the days of Aristotle, I'll say it could have gotten much worse 😂 Are you familiar with the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling? He's got a few TED talks that are lowkey inspiring in terms of building a better world. We in high-income countries don't feel it day to day, but the world is actually a much better place now than in the past. Even here, things are better in a lot of ways. It's good to remind oneself sometimes.

In my view, a bigger problem than that it's a uniform rule violation is that it's taking a side in an armed conflict as a scouter. Even if everyone else there agrees with the position. Whether you or anyone else can address it with the person skillfully or not is a somewhat different question. A scene a la GSUSA threatening the scouter with the Palestine bracelets with legal action isn't a great first step. Do you know the person in question?

Yes, all scouting is local. But scouting has a particular value foundation (Scout Law and Oath) that forms the shared ethical and moral framework within which we scout. The types of approaches and styles in scouting that vary from place to place can be substantial, but can't really include whether the pack or troop is doing their best to follow the Scout Law and Oath. Assuming that they are should always be correct. Why is this relevant? Because being untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, uncourteous, unkind, disobedient, sour, wasteful, cowardly, dirty, and irreverent for any and all reasons is something to correct if you're a scout. Doing it frequently, and even worse, on purpose, is a problem to address and solve. We discuss how to address and correct bad scout attitudes here on the forum sometimes, so I believe that we all agree that's a problem if it occurs. Since the reason for not following the Scout Law and Oath is only important in determining how to address the problem, it then follows that being untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, uncourteous, unkind, sour, or cowardly towards girls, LGBTQIA+ folks, black people, brown people, blue people, pink people, Jews, Muslims, Janis, and members of any other group of people because of them being in that group is a problem that needs addressing and solving. In other words, if we see scouts being untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, uncourteous, unkind, sour, or cowardly towards girls, LGBTQIA+ folks, black people, brown people, blue people, pink people, Jews, Muslims, Jains, and members of any other group of people we need to do something to stop that behavior and correct it. If you disagree, could you please explain why? We have several reports of female and LGBTQIA+ scouts being met by untrustworthiness, disloyalty, unhelpfulness, unfriendliness, lack of courtesy, unkindness, and/or sourness specifically just for being female and LGBTQIA+, respectively. So how are we going to solve the attitude problems that the scouts not living up to the scout law are having? What are we going to do? It's not an easy question to answer, but because we are committed to following the Scout Law and Oath we are going to help these scouts that are repeatedly running into other scouts that are one or more out of untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, uncourteous, unkind, and sour towards them. Right? If you do not think that we should do something to help, please explain why. One way to help answer is to survey scouts about their experiences to try to systematically get at the scale of the problem. Not sure what's in the survey national is sending out, but I think we can all agree that surveying both girls and boys is not discriminating against boys. Right? If someone thinks it is, could you please post an explanation of why you think that? Another method to help find the answer to what to do is affinity groups. Like with the survey, the details matter in whether it is effective and whether there are undesirable side effects. Not entirely separate from these two is developing an understanding of whether there are patterns in why the scouts being untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, uncourteous, unkind, and sour. This could lead to additional insights into how this problem can be solved. It's a problem whether I like people's opinions, or how they express them, or the way they pose an idea or question or not. Focusing on me is not focusing on the issue. This is a problem for which the solution fundamentally comes out of the Scout Law. Be loyal, show that you care about your fellow scouts (and scouters). Be helpful, volunteer to help others without expecting a reward. Be friendly, be a friend to everyone, even people who are very different from you. Be courteous, be polite to everyone and always use good manners. Be kind, treat others as you want to be treated. Be cheerful, try to help others be happy. This stuff isn't just for children, you know. It's stuck around for so long because there are timeless, universal values in there. I do not appreciate your analogy implying that I am inappropriately appointing myself "hall monitor". I find it condescending. I also interpret it as implying that breaking the Scout Law is fine and that nobody needs to do anything about that, like nobody should be "hall monitor" and ruin the fun, no matter what happens. Anybody intervening in stopping bad behavior in the hall is sticking their nose where it doesn't belong and should mind their own business. Is that what you meant? I hope not. Anarchy is not a good way of running a society. Societies need rules, and the society has to enforce the rules for them to matter in practice. Which brings me to the problem with "not pay attention to posts on a website that is not official". Do you honestly think that everyone follows all rules and policies and the spirit thereof at all times? That all you need to do to prevent fraud is to make it illegal? That you can fix racism by making it illegal to discriminate? That all you need to do to create equal opportunities - not even equity, but equal opportunities - for women in the workplace is to outlaw discrimination? If so, I think you are a bit unrealistic about how to solve social problems. Littering is illegal where I live, but it's the dirtiest place in the West I've ever lived in by far, and it's clear just upon quick examination that there's some kind of mindset/culture difference that creates the litter problem. People here as a group don't find littering to be all that bad, evidently, since they do it so much. Why don't they? Probably important to answer if you want to convince them to litter less. They also pop fireworks en masse in densely populated areas full of veterans with PTSD who politely ask people to not do it every 4th of July and New Year, despite the fact that there is an ordinance against it. The veterans with PTSD are ignored, sometimes very rudely. The people being rude clearly don't think there's a problem - understanding why they don't is key to getting them to change their behavior. In the same way, you have to change patterns of thought leading to behavior if you want to actually create a meritocracy in an organization, a society with equal opportunities for all, a society with justice for all, etc. A policy or rule is a start, but never the finish. I poked around the Internet and contacted the pack we ultimately joined several times to try to gauge the likelihood of it containing people who might put my scout off scouting permanently. My suspicion was that if my scout gets the cold shoulder after joining because of their gender and/or not being Christian, they're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and I may not even be able to convince them to try again. Would it be most unscoutlike for them to be met that way? Of course. But it's happening somewhere, as reported in media and fellow scouters here, and it's no surprise that it is given the fierce and fiery resistance to girls in the BSA. We have folks right here who think girls are preventing the boys they scout with from developing the best character, and that boys can't get a fair shake in the BSA anymore. Official policy matters, but also what the proportion of people you will interact with who actually agree with and follow the policy in letter and spirit are. Searching the Internet is a default thing to do, whatever else people are doing. I mean, would you send your child to a summer camp from which you can find video online showing leaders ranting about how children like yours shouldn't be there because they will ruin everything even though the official policy is that they may attend? Maybe that leader is a freak and won't even be there. But maybe they all feel that way and this guy just said the quiet part out loud. How would you know? It will make you hesitate, and if you're not a priori convinced it's a great camp you might not bother to sort it out. Even as a scout that loved scouting it gave me pause for a year. I sincerely doubt I am the only one. Prospective parents, especially ones that weren't scouts, are going to be far more sensitive to perception of potential harm than people already involved with scouting. This is also why we talk so much about how safe scouting is now in recruiting, right? We recognize that the CSA scandal put a lot of parents off BSA, no matter how many scouts were not abused and had a great, life-changing experience. Every and any new case of CSA in the BSA is going to be bad for recruiting. Hopefully I don't need to go through why in detail. It's the same for perceived misogyny, homophobia, etc. What you mean may not even have been that but confirmation bias is most definitely a thing. We're not going to fix the recruiting drag by telling parents their doubts are just confirmation bias even if it's true. I disagree that OP provided evidence of harm. I did not read their post to say that they felt harmed at all, just angry about "wokeness". (Whatever that means to them.) Another example of how it wasn't productive because it was too angry and too vague to start a real conversation about solving problems. We inferred different things from it. But even if you're right and they did mean it as evidence of harm that we should accept at face value and address, then we must also accept feelings of being excluded by online rants about girls in the BSA as harm that we should accept at face value that we should address. Just feeling aversion or offense isn't sufficient evidence of harm for society as a whole to act upon. Friends can reasonably comfort, but it's not reasonable to never be offended. Now, if the offense is caused by scouts and/or scouters not follow the scout law, then it reduces to the case above. But each individual does also have a responsibility to manage one's own emotions to ensure that one isn't overreacting. (This calibration is, in fact, part of the usefulness of affinity groups. It's a quick way to find useful people to check your reaction with.) Not every negative emotional reaction is warranted. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding. Denial of opportunities, more challenges to overcome, a lower reward rate for the same effort, harassment, or other actual obstacles thrown up for some folks but not others is the level of harm you need to show to justify action on a policy level, such as closing affinity groups. In the case of the BSA, if it turns out that scouts are systematically mistreating straight, white men then we would need to figure out how to put a stop to that. But OP definitely did not show that they are systematically mistreated for being straight, white, and male, and didn't relate any incidents of the Scout Law being broken towards them. That's what all the questions digging for more information are about. Maybe we're finding something on that front. Still, more detail is needed here, like what person and what did they do exactly. Not everybody will know this background. What happened in detail?

You're right, I expressed myself imprecisely. Negative affect of some kind. I read downvotes as negative, for example. I believe you do too. Laughing at sincerity I also read as some kind of negative affect. But so is reading what I wrote in such a way that you thought I was trying to dismiss OP. I mean, I presume that you think that dismissing people is bad. When that wasn't at all what I was trying to do, clearly something went very wrong in the communication there, which you also acknowledge. I just want to be clear that it's not you asking questions that makes me think negative affect. I don't even feel like you've asked that many TBH. This is also hard to make heads or tails of. I am not offended, I am frustrated that we're probably putting people off Scouts BSA. Which I have said many times at this point. So ignoring this does absolutely nothing to help protect scouting, or the scouts who are likely to (ironically) find more value in affinity groups. Like I already said in response to the suggestion previously. Do you not care that some scouts are likely to read the OP and wonder if they really belong in the BSA, or some prospective scouts or parents being likely to say "yeah, let's not, we're not really welcome"? yknot has said this, more or less, many times before and nobody seems to respond to that either. We can't all be part of every community, of course, so there's value in saying "hey, this thing is going to be viewed poorly and/or misunderstood by some". What does this response mean overall? Are you uninterested in civil discourse as defined by these different academic resources, some of which you provided yourself? Was that more important than the actual issue here of the value of affinity groups? I've been in a lot of long conversations with people I disagree with online, and they didn't feature this normal people doing normal things and then bam quality. We played by the same debate rules (civil as per all the stuff that came up when I looked for a reference) and actually responded to what the other person said about the issue. And real mutual understanding arose. So I know it's possible. On that issue - I joined SWE when I encountered real, clear resistance to my place in my lab in grad school. A labmate started blocking my access to our shared equipment when I didn't want to go on a date with him. My advisor threatened to fire us both if we couldn't "get along". So I joined SWE for emotional support while beating his blocking game and figuring out what else I could do than talk to our advisor. It was very helpful in that SWE is a pool of other engineers who are women to discuss and think through the problem with, people in the same general situation so they understand the context. (Talking to male engineers just turned into a grilling of what I might have done wrong and checking on whether "I had an axe to grind", so I stopped talking about it with them. ) From what I've seen here, some scouts out there are encountering resistance to them being in Scouts BSA, and that's a problem! A problem that affinity groups are there to help. That's why I'm pretty sure that if a scout who's being mistreated by fellow scouts and maybe even scouters (as has actually been reported by scouters here as happening in the case of gender) based on demographics reads what OP and you said about affinity groups, it's going to hit them hard emotionally and not in a good way. I've been there. And these scouts are younger than I was - they're going to have a harder time taking for granted that they do belong. It's just another form of bullying. Nobody has managed to produce a shared of evidence that the BSA scout affinity groups came with the potential downside of excluding nonparticipants or that people not in the demographic of the affinity group being actually excluded. You've claimed it does, but that's just argument by assertion. There's no proof for your claim, it's just a lot of claims without backup. And that makes it look even worse to any scouts in a jam reading this. We really need to move forward as an organization. Women are allowed to join, LGBTQIA+ folks are allowed to join, black people are allowed to join, Latinos are allowed to join... but are they welcome? They should be! Ranting about "wokeness" is such a strong culture war flag that it sends the message that they aren't by general cultural association. And it doesn't get better when there's no evidence for that there's even a problem. Just rewrite what you mean by "wokeness" in specific and neutral language and we can talk about it without putting anyone off Scouts BSA or making bullying worse!

As I have already stated, I do not find the start of the conversation civil (as defined in the definitions of civil I previously provided because several elements of it are ideological, the statements are imprecise, and the tone seems angry). In structural dynamics terms, the OP was a move in affect, not a move in meaning. A move in affect can't lead to civil discourse because, as the student primer on civil discourse says, civil discourse is all about sticking to the issues. If there was no issue presented, or the issue is so unclearly presented that the discourse cannot proceed around the issue because insufficient detail and/or too much histrionic incivility (definition below) was presented, then the whole thing is a non-starter for civil discourse. This is why American University called out ideological posts as uncivil. It's just unproductive and nobody enjoys it, there is no real conversation being had. Just like in this thread. It doesn't matter who posted or on what topic. I didn't want to immediately go through and label all the reasons I thought that, because that could seem somewhat aggressive and would just result in a move-oppose-move-oppose pattern that did nothing to improve the situation. I just wanted to bring it back to the domain of meaning in order to avoid putting off more scouts off Scouts BSA. But since we're here now anyway, let me show you exactly why I did not think it civil and why I think it was harmful to scouts and scouting so that you can see exactly where I think the problem lies and why. The problem isn't being conservative or critiquing actual DEI policies and practices. The problem is not seeking mutual understanding and the effect that seeing this kind of stuff from scouters is likely to have on scouts. I won't go over what I already said about it not being sincere, internally possibly inconsistent, having unclear references to current events, and the question not being seriously asked. I will add that the whole post fits what Bryan Gervais categorizes as histrionic incivility in his paper Incivility Online: Affective and Behavioral Reactions to Uncivil Political Posts in a Web-based Experiment. He's got it up on ResearchGate if anyone wants to read it. I heard OP say that woke is an acronym, but since that is not supported by any dictionaries and they made the claim by assertion without citing any sources that hasn't been shown to be the case. So, my judgement was that answering the question does no good, because the post is uncivil in a histrionic way indicating anger and as such the following section of your civility primer immediately applies: So, I tried to end it immediately by asking how the post was helpful. I could have done better in immediately pointing out that ideological screeds from scouters are going to put scouts off, in retrospect. I assumed it would be obvious but it may not be. More replies from OP with histrionic incivility but without responding to my question about the purpose of a post mostly about non-scouting events in a snide negative tone, confirming the likelihood of that the first post was intentionally written that way and that it wasn't just my misinterpretation: This one also fulfills Kenski et al's definition of Lying accusation-type uncivility (examples: "Americans have been screaming at the top of their lungs that this government is wrong, is corrupt, is lying, is deceiving the people, and is violating our constitution." and "We need to get everyone out of office and start fresh. Make it so that lawyers cannot run for office in the executive or legislative branches of government. They lie and should not be trusted.") More histrionic uncivility (claims that LGBTQIA+, black, brown, pink, purple, and blue people plus those who think they are cats are attempting to force OP to accept ideologies that they do not agree with, hard to take at face value especially without any support of anyone in any group attempting to force them to accept ideologies they don't agree with) but not the facts needed to evaluate the core claim (in the service of civil discourse, I'm picking the strongest possible on-scouting-topic claim I can make out the outline of here) of that the affinity group meetings at NOAC and possibly the last Jamboree does nothing to strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion in scouting. This is because, as was already pointed out, that the specific nature of the events, the attendance rules (if any), and whether they changed the scouting experience for non-attendees all need to be considered to answer. The question cannot be properly answered generally, because to rule out potential ill effects on DEI like pushing scouts that aren't members of the groups that the affinity group meetings served you need more details of what exactly happened, what was the formal setup, what was the reason given for that, how did the participants experience it, and how did the non-participants experience it? A bunch of the questions that not just I but others also asked and got no answer to (so radio silence from OP on the actual issue civil discourse requires sticking to) until HashTagScouts (not OP) answered I also perceive the first part of OP's response above as speaking down to me, but because it is uncivil to get into a back and forth about "you're uncivil!" "No, YOU'RE uncivil!" which surely is just as off-putting to scouts as the original post I let that go. We are here for the scouts. The answer I got to asking all these clarifying questions for consideration of the strongest possible claim - standard debate practice - was So again no actual answer from OP, but with a side of dismissal. Again uncivil. So, still trying to get a real conversation around mutual understanding going since this thread is plowing forward, I bystand with what I'm seeing and why I'm asking all these questions - to stick to the issue in the most charitable reading of the original argument in context of the later posts. No response to my direct statement that I want to engage in civil discourse and therefore want to hear what OP personally thinks and why (but civilly, of course). So, you're right, I never answered the question. In part because others already said what needed to be said on the issue of the value of affinity groups in general and the reason for having them. But if I had - do you honestly think that it would have been received in such as way that it furthered mutual understanding between me and OP?Maybe here it is I who am too jaded. If so, I apologize. Perhaps they really were open to a solid facts and evidence-based discussion on the pros and cons of affinity groups and whether the BSA is implementing them in an overall net positive way, had I only answered the question immediately. I really don't think so, but it would be wonderful if I were wrong. (This is an invitation to MrJeff to tell me I'm wrong and explain how I misunderstood his intentions with the post, by the way, if that wasn't clear.) I also want to address your examples of alleged uncivil discourse on my part. (And only my part, I note. Care to explain that choice? I've explained why I focused on OP - to show that the start of the conversation was uncivil and that it did in fact continue that way from OP's direction, proving my point that starting that was was going to be unproductive.) 1. I didn't actually mean to imply that people here are conspiracy theorists, and that isn't actually what the quote says if you re-read it carefully. What I meant to say was that, like others have mentioned obliquely since you wrote this, when normal scouts and scouters are doing normal things and people come out of the woodwork to be upset about it in culture war terms ("Upstander is a made up woke term. Let's pull in conservative terms to balance the debate. ") and start implying that normal scouters doing normal things are part of some kind of vanguard to destroy the BSA it's a little weird. Like, a lot weird. And it's going to look weird to any scouts reading it. Those who were previously barred from membership in Scouts BSA are going to be particularly sensitive to how much trouble they might expect if they join. If adult scouters are repeatedly posting things that make it seem like they can expect active resistance to their presence, well... that's going to make it harder to recruit. Even if that wasn't what you meant - if that's what they hear... and I think there's a 95% chance that they will. That's why I'm bothering to speak up. I am convinced that aggressively complaining about "wokeness" (especially with no definition of that given) is incredibly likely to put scouts off joining. Personally, it's weird when it happens because not only am I no such thing, I've gone out of my way to specify what I do think about potential hot-button issues (taking a clear position, intended as civil) and why I think that (creating the setup for mutual understanding). But the "offer" of responding in kind with a calm, fact-based rebuttal and an explanation of why someone else thinks differently is rarely if ever taken. If there is a direct response at all, it's often uncivil and argument by assertion. I've seen survivors explain over and over again that they personally don't want to destroy the BSA, yet the idea that the lawsuit is just to destroy the BSA keeps popping up over in the CSA court case threads. It's not just OP and not just this thread. Normal scouts and scouters are doing normal things and posting about it and then things get uncivil when other scouters start telling the scouters doing normal things who they are and what they think. (American University, last bullet point under What Civil Discourse Is Not) I've certainly been told I'm all kinds of things (never good things in context) and want to do this, that, and the other (never good things), and I'm definitely not the only one. Latest case in point is just above. 2) I'm not trying to derail the OP. I am trying to steer this conversation into more productive ground, although I am definitely not succeeding. But as Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, gentleness is armor. All I can do is be open and honest and do my best to maintain civility. No doubt I haven't been perfect, but that doesn't mean that I'm not honestly committed to it and trying, nor does it mean that your (or anyone else's) perception of my motivations and intentions is correct. It most certainly hasn't been in the past, either. When I'm not sure I'm reading someone right, I ask them what they meant. I could be wrong! So I ask to make sure I don't judge someone over a misunderstanding. 3) I did not try to dismiss OP by asking tangential (and sometimes unrelated) questions in order to undermine the supposed premise of why he asked the question in the first place. Had you asked me some questions, we might have sorted that out. I already detailed my intentions with my replies to OP in this thread, as well as why I ask people clarifying questions in general, so I won't say more on that since this is already very, very long. yknot is right on the money when he says "Some of the things people argue the existence of on this forum are very hard to process, and this is just the latest that has left me blank." It's not just that someone is wrong on the internet. It's just.. confusing. Normal people doing normal things. And then bam, someone's being accused of wanting to persecute scouts and scouters with no evidence provided. There really is some kind of communication gap here. To be clear, I like you, InquisitiveScouter. You are not my enemy. You were kind to me when I joined here and we have a lot in common. I don't really understand why you take so much offense at some things I've said here, but we're never going to sort it out without a real conversation. OP isn't my enemy, EagleDad isn't my enemy, etc. I don't have enemies at all. Have you frustrated and confused me? Yes. But so has my husband. That's not at all the same as being enemies. We may never bridge this odd communication gap, but I want to be clear and explicit on that I am willing to have a conversation for mutual understanding. We should, IMNSHO, try.

I did not write the top post in this thread. I am sincerely trying to advocate for a return to civil discourse about issues where scouts and scouters might disagree. If you don't believe I am, well... Not sure what more to do about that. I have shared a lot about where I'm coming from in the service of that, making sure to mention things that don't fit the culture war narrative so that we can leave it behind and get to scouting instead of fighting political battles.

I agree completely. Let's do that instead of starting conversations with culture war rhetoric with little connection to scouting.

Of course, but that's why you need to remember the assumptions that went into it and the domain in which it was created. Can't get any sense of even a good model too far outside its domain. At some point, it's just not telling you anything. No model is useful in all situations at all times.

Just read something someone said on social media that seems quite relevant here. "The issue with a culture war based epistemology, where all things are seen through the lens of cultural war. Will always lead directly to conspiracy theories. For when you see normal people doing normal things, through that lens, it must take on all the misaligned power of a conspiracy against you personally. This happens to both the right and left side of politics. Yet more frequently on the right. Anyone's vision of a "correct" culture, will always fail. For culture is never isotropic." We are all here in our role as scouters. In that role, our loyalty is to each other and the scout movement.

I doubt I am interpreting what you said here the way you meant it, because I just heard "Yes, atheists that don't belong to an organized religion are still being excluded from scouting with the BSA, and so we should remedy that".

I know I certainly don't feel excluded or pushed out by the existence of all the affinity groups that aren't for me, which is most of them. Be welcome, have at it. Just like I don't feel slighted when a meeting opens with a round of applause for veterans but not me, a non-veteran. Exactly because I haven't seek the tiniest inkling of special favor a la sauna dealmaking.

Mine too. All of them. One of my bosses responded rapidly to a somewhat problematic situation with a co-worker and I never had to deal with that harassment again at one job. HR helped a few folks a level below me with harassment issues, one of which had also raised eyebrows quite widely and so was quite important to deal with. The nonwhite nonstraight nonmale workers that were excellent at their jobs were recognized as being such and promoted at least at most of my employers. (An exception comes to mind.) But I have never heard anyone say that we should give an iffy candidate a chance because of DEI. I have also never thought it. Have iffy candidates been hired? Yes. Were they hired because of their gender, sexual preferences, or skin color? Nope. (One was literally the hiring manager going "I am too tired to interview more people".) My current company is very into literal DEI - including for disabled people (primarily veterans) and ex-military folks. My company goes out of its way to hire ex-military personnel and military spouses. The idea is clearly to make sure meritocracy reigns; that's what they're trying to do and that seems to be working. So my personal experience with DEI policies is positive and doesn't even confirm to the view that "liberals" approve of "DEI" and "conservatives" oppose "DEI". I know that's a narrative out there, but I'm not convinced it describes reality that well.

I am attempting to engage you in civil discourse, rather than jumping to conclusions of what you're actually trying to say, your motivations, and your opinions. I am asking you to articulate clearly and factually what you think. This is because without you stating your position clearly and factually, civil discourse is a nonstarter and this thread is, at least in response to you specifically, not going to be civil and as such lacks value for scouting. I am not asking you questions because I cannot find information and form an opinion of my own on it, I am asking you questions to ensure that I understand your point in relevant detail. What I cannot find on the internet or by being an active scouter is your personal view of things. I am asking you to tell me what you think so that I can listen to understand. All I'm really clear on right now is that you are very angry, and I am hoping that my best understanding of why is incorrect. At the very least, you should have a chance to clarify... or two, or three, or four, or five... Just to be clear, what I mean by 'civil discourse' is the view found at Civcs for Life, American University, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse. Since you decline to articulate, again and again, the message I get is that you aren't actually interested in civil discourse. You even explicitly say you have "no desire to word joust and no requirement for further clarification". So, I must ask again, if you are not interested in civil discourse to further understanding among scouts and scouters of differing opinions, what was the point of starting this conversation? How is this helpful to scouting? The internet doesn't need another flame war. Even people who generally agree with your general POV aren't sure what exact argument you're trying to make. This sounds plausible as a possibility, but there are so many possibilities and/or you're making five or six different but related arguments with nothing but argument by assertion to back them up that everyone who has responded has had to make an assumption about what you mean based on commonly made (by others) arguments rather than what you're actually saying. Some of these offshoots are in fact civil discourse; but how about we make this conversation as a whole about developing better understanding as a result of deep commitment to civil discourse instead?

I actually took the rules to mean "no adults that haven't been background checked staying overnight". In part because that makes total sense. If the red flags are already up, use them. It's necessary, if not sufficient.

Our pack is planning to lean into Earth Month this April and make the pack meeting centered on the Outdoor Code and Leave No Trace. We already have a number of LNT materials, games, and such, and there is more online. The question isn't how to find activities, it's how to select good ones for such a range of patience levels and abilities. Would anyone who's used LNT training materials (or similar) with cub scouts be willing to share what worked well and what didn't work so well?