David CO

Nobody, so far, no one has mentioned the Order of the Arrow. Is the OA going to be inclusive? As I've said in earlier posts, my unit doesn't do OA. Some OA supporters have, in the past, tried unsuccessfully to make me see the error of my ways. Thank God I didn't listen to them! What a mess this is going to be! Of course, church-owned units can cease running elections for OA, but what of existing members? Can a church-owned unit remove their boys from OA? We have discussed how this policy will effect the general membership, but what about OA?

Eagle77, Are you talking about respect or courtesy? Respect is no longer something members of BSA can expect of each other. The policy change has seen to that. The very most gay inclusive units have the right to expect is courtesy, and even that will be given grudgingly.

Do you believe that all religions deserve equal respect? I don't. The history and tradition of my religion is not one of according equal respect to all religions, historical or current. Did we accord equal respect to the worshipers of Baal, designers of the golden calf, the practitioners of witchcraft, or the residents of Sodom? No. Certainly not. In our Sunday School classes, we teach that the practitioners of these religious beliefs were evil. No equal respect. No mincing of words. No beating around the bush. They were evil. Why would Rick, or anyone else, be surprised that traditional religious conservatives do not accept the concept of religious equality. Religious freedom, yes. Religious equality, no.

For a traditionally religious conservative, having a gay inclusive unit available is the same as having no unit available at all. The highly populated coastal "blue states" are overwhelmingly liberal. It is entirely possible that all of the units in a "blue state" neighborhood are gay inclusive. Supporting gay inclusion, of course you would prefer that Scouts join inclusive units rather than Lone Scouting. But that's not the question. NJ, if this gay inclusive policy passes, would you rather have boys join Lone Scouting or leave Scouting entirely?

Lone Scouting still exists as an option for a small percentage of Scouts who cannot attend regular unit meetings and activities. Councils rarely approve Lone Scout applications. Most adult leaders strongly oppose Lone Scouting. Ironically, even adult leaders who claim to support giving Scouts more choices and freedoms will oppose Lone Scouting, which offers the greatest amount of choice, freedom, and flexibility than any other program in BSA. Lone Scouting has suffered from the same sort of opposition that home schooling has gotten from public school teachers. The arguments against it have been much the same. I suspect that most of the people on this website, pro and anti inclusion alike, would prefer that Scouts quit altogether rather than have the option to register as Lone Scouts. I don't mean to steal this thread to talk about my favorite topic, Lone Scouting, but it was implied that I offer no solution to the polarizing effect of the gay inclusion issue. You may not like Lone Scouting, but it does offer a reasoned, rational alternative to the other controversial and contentious solutions.

NJ, I took the kids to a Civil War reenactment yesterday. They had infantry, cavalry, artillery, the whole works. We had a great time. With 600,000 lives lost, the Civil War may not have been the most elegant way to settle an impasse. To answer your question, I have already said that I would like BSA to allow Lone Scouting again. Let boys join BSA as Lone Scouts and let them choose for themselves who they wish to associate with.

Some people may be surprised to hear that conservative, traditional religions don't teach that bad people come with hideous features; fanged teeth, cloven hooves, and horns sticking out of the tops of their heads. Neither do we teach that bad people take on the behavioral characteristics of cartoon villains with hissing, sneering, cackling, flamboyant gestures, and rudeness. We teach exactly the opposite. We teach that evil and disorder can come in forms that are pleasing to the eye and soothing to the senses. Not all that glitters is gold. If I have heard the gay inclusion story once, I must have heard it a thousand times. The story teller goes on to say how, upon discovering that gay people, aside from being gay, look and act much like the rest of us, a conclusion is reached that it must be OK to be gay. There must be a script. The normalness of someone's appearance and demeanor doesn't validate their disordered behavior.

My mistake. I am not a lawyer, and I should avoid getting into legal arguments. I was thinking of the Catholic Charities vs State of Illinois adoption case.

Initially, this decision will polarize Scouting into regular units, which follow BSA guidelines, and church-owned units, which are exempted from the guidelines. Those who are caught in the middle might not, contrary to what some have claimed, be able to join and fully participate in a church-owned unit. Recent court cases make it pretty clear that when church organizations open their doors to accommodate non-members, they put the ability to exercise their own religious freedoms at risk. Down the road, this will prove to be an untenable, no-win situation. Church-owned units will either have to entrench, which defeats both the purpose and spirit of Scouting, or disband their units. Packsaddle and NJ are 100% wrong. This will not add to our choices and freedoms. It is not a good thing.

Our policy regarding restrooms and showers at our church/school is that you use the correct sex-segregated facility that corresponds to your anatomy. Even though we are very conservative, we don't completely ban gay people from our buildings. What restrooms and shower facilities ought they to use other than the ones we direct them to? Scouter99 says that gay youth and adults have no business using our restrooms and showers. The only way to do that would be a total ban from our church, and that is not going to happen.

Scouter99, it may surprise you that at in my conservative, traditional, church and school, we occasionally have co-ed sleepovers. We don't feel that is immodest for kids to see each other in their pajamas. We also don't feel that the kids are in any danger of loosing either their self-control or moral compasses. To the best of my knowledge, no serious incidents have occurred at any of our sleepovers. The kids enjoy the sleepovers, and I intend to continue to authorize them. Yes, you are correct when you point out that BSA's youth protection policy is based on an entirely different assumption. We could not allow events similar to our sleepovers to take place under the umbrella of our Scouting program. Unlike BSA, we do not think it is always inappropriate for people of the opposite sex to share sleeping facilities.

Miami Chief is partially right. We do not separate our kids from every person who might find them attractive. We don't do so at church. We don't do so at school. We don't do so at Scouting. Why would we? We also don't separate our Scouts from every person they might find attractive. Our kids want to be attractive. They like it. They like the feelings of being attractive and having attraction to other people. Attraction is a God-given normal part of life. It is a good thing. It can be a blessed thing. Attraction also has a dark side. It can be disordered. My religion teaches me that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, so I have to differ with Miami Chief when he tries to equate normal attraction with disordered attraction. I can agree, as I often have, that gay youths and adults are able to exercise the same amount of self control over their attractions as are the rest of us. I have no hesitancy in agreeing to that. I will never agree that gay youths and adults are not seriously and intrinsically disordered. I will never consider their attractions to be morally equivalent to the attractions that I, and most people, feel.

My Scouts are not so isolated that they unaware of what takes place at gay pride parades, raunchy rock concerts, and the like. For Pete's sake, the pride parade goes right through the middle of town and right past our church/school. It is on the news. We've all seen it. I'm not happy about it. I don't condone it. But let's face it people, our Scouts already know about it. Good or bad, this is the world they live in. Yes, we do not discuss sexual issues at Scouting activities. Scouting is the wrong time and the wrong place for discussions about sex. But don't let this confuse you into thinking that we, as conservatives and believers in traditional religious based morals, never talk to our kids about sex. We talk at home. We talk in Religion class. We talk in Health class. We talk. Listening to the kids, I get the impression that they are not nearly as shocked and traumatized by the popular culture as we might think, or want them to be. They mostly take it in stride. This sometimes worries me. It worries me that the kids will become so conditioned to what they see and hear in the popular culture that they will come to view such things as normal, or even worse, morally acceptable. This is certainly what the organizers of gay pride parades have in mind. My kids assure me that this is not the case. They know the difference between right and wrong. And though they may be somewhat amused by the bizarre antics and spectacles they see, their values and morals are not changed by them. Thank God.

The First Amendment right to freedom of assembly pretty much covers it. You can assemble with whomever you please with or without any formal organization. Since freedom of assembly is an enumerated right, no judicial activism is necessary.

Hmm. Maybe your right.

Stosh, I don't think religious CO's are being even the slightest bit hypocritical. It is not so much a matter of freedom of association as it is a question of ownership. Freedom of association doesn't give individuals the right to pick and choose the membership of units they do not own.

No, Rick, I think Scouter99's main point was that homosexuality itself is evil.

I would not personally recommend to a non-religious CO that they sidestep the rules on membership. Of course it can be done, but it doesn't feel to me like the Scouting way of doing things. A neighboring Troop created a new name, avoid-a-sphere, to sidestep a ban on dodge ball. Sure, the ban on dodge ball, like the bans on water guns and water balloons, is silly. But what kind of example are we setting for the kids if we sidestep the rules we disagree with, especially if we make a joke of it. A couple of years ago, on this forum, we had a lengthy discussion about ethics which raised the question of when it is ethical to break the rules. While we don't need to repeat that thread, I do find it interesting that it keeps reappearing on other topics.

There are indeed two different sets of rules. Both the Supreme Court decision and the recent BSA policy changes will draw distinctions between religious and secular, churches and businesses. For some of us, it is very difficult to distinguish a church from its ministries, even if those ministries can be similar to existing businesses. Is a church owned school, hospital, or nursing home not a ministry just because other people operate similar institutions as a business? Does the existence of commercial wedding halls in a community mean that a church's sacramental wedding ceremony should be seen as a competing business activity, and regulated as such? Some CO's are churches, some CO's are ministries of churches, and some CO's are made up of church going people. Which of these three groups are entitled to exercise their freedom of religion? We live in an increasingly polarized society. These decisions only act to further polarize us. I suspect that this will be true in Scouting as well. We may well be seeing the start of a future in which there will be two groups of Scouting, religious Scouting and secular Scouting.

Evil and predatory are two different things. One can believe that an activity is immoral, sinful, or evil without it being predatory. Evil can be consensual.

To answer Eagle 77, yes, a good Scoutmaster of a church owned unit does pass on his prejudice and bigotry, only we like to call it faith and morals.

It seems that both sides like to use safety concerns to bolster their arguments. Pro-gay advocates often claim that traditional religions incite violent assaults and teen suicides. Anti-gay detractors often portray homosexuals as likely pedophiles. I think neither argument is true.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will once again say that it is the Chartered Organization who owns the unit. It is their unit, lock, stock, and barrel. It is understandable that some may come to feel a sense of "ownership" in their unit. They are entitled to their feelings, but they are not entitled to any real ownership in the unit. The unit still belongs to the CO. Registering and participating in a Scout unit does not give you any ownership in the unit. Nor does it give you the right to have your religion, values, or morals represented in the unit, if they conflict with those of the CO. BSA has not given individuals a blessing to install their values into units they do not own. Nor is it right for people to describe a unit as "our youth program" to disguise the clear fact that they have no ownership in the unit. It is very generous of CO's to allow nonmembers to register and participate in their units. One should not reward such generosity by claiming ownership in the unit or by undermining its values and goals.

In light of this decision, I think BSA should now allow all Scouts to choose Lone Scouting.

I would disagree with those who say that BSA sells a program to the public, and should therefore follow the practices of business who actually do sell to the public. I would maintain that if BSA sells a program to anyone, it is to Chartered Organizations, not to the public. I would also point out that CO's are not supposed to be merely customers of BSA, they are voting members. Since BSA is comprised largely of altruistically minded CO's, it should follow their example and reflect their practices. BSA should not act as though it were a business.