"Straight." Does the institution need to change?

[GernBlansten]

Gosh Merlyn..err..Brian,

I feel like Batman's mask has been torn off to reveal Bruce Wayne. Don't know that I like it either. I'm sure that there are those on this board who are searching the BSA roles to find my name, but I've cleverly misspelled it just enough.

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Eh? I've stated on a number of occasions in Issues & Politics that I'm Brian Westley from Scouting For All. I can understand if some people within scouting who have been critical of the BSA don't want their real names revealed, but since I haven't been a member since cub scouts about 40 years ago, it doesn't matter if I'm anonymous or not. I've just used "Merlyn LeRoy" as a netnickname since the early 1980s, so that's what I usually go by.

[BrentAllen]

Well, Brian, Scouts Canada sure isn't proving to be a good case study for your side. Whether or not the decline is due to the change in policy, it is certainly clear allowing girls and gays in has not brought in the droves of new members, as had been claimed. I'm curious what lesson(s) you think the BSA should take from Canada.

As far as the PTA's, bring it on. If they aren't allowed to sponsor us, we'll go down the street to one of the churchs or a business. I'll fill out a New Unit Application form, which will take all of 2 minutes, and nothing else will change. We will continue to meet at the school for Pack meetings and recruit there.

The fact that we had to move our charter from the school to the PTA has actually helped with our fundraising. When we tell the story about what the ridiculous, evil ACLU is trying to do, the checkbooks come right out! So I guess I should actually thank you! How long before the PTA issue comes up? Can you schedule it in about 12 months? We could probably use another fund raising issue about then.(This message has been edited by BrentAllen)

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

BrentAllen writes:

Well, Brian, Scouts Canada sure isn't proving to be a good case study for your side. Whether or not the decline is due to the change in policy, it is certainly clear allowing girls and gays in has not brought in the droves of new members, as had been claimed.

 

I certainly haven't been claiming that.

 

I'm curious what lesson(s) you think the BSA should take from Canada.

 

What lessons do you think the BSA should take from the loss of school charters?

 

The fact that we had to move our charter from the school to the PTA has actually helped with our fundraising. When we tell the story about what the ridiculous, evil ACLU is trying to do, the checkbooks come right out!

 

Oh, preventing public schools from practicing unlawful religious discrimination is now "evil"? And you're supposed to be teaching ethics to kids? Yeah, right.

[packsaddle]

At our local level, the lesson I have derived from past experience is that after the DE preached about gays and atheists at our Blue and Gold, our membership did a nosedive. Years later, after we no longer allow a DE to speak publicly at our meetings, and after we openly ignore religious and sexual orientation limitations, our numbers are thriving. It's almost as if families who do think the scouting program is important, don't think those issues are. Can't argue with success.

[BrentAllen]

packsaddle,

Your posts do intrigue me. After reading your last post, I located other posts you have made.

For instance, "Also, I happen to know that BSA already HAS gay leaders and other gay members. You just don't know who they are and I'm not going to 'out' them."

And "This issue reminds me of something I learned several decades ago during a citizenship merit badge: ignorance of the law doesn't excuse breaking it."

And finally, "Stop breaking the law."

Is it just me, or are these statements just a little contradictory?

I'm curious what part of the country you're in, if you can give some indication without revealing your true identity. In my part of the country, if the BSA allowed gays and aetheists in, there would be a stampede out the door. Of course, I'm in a red state.

 

Brian,

Sorry, but I don't share your twisted view that a school chartering a Cub Scout Pack is tantamount to religious discrimination. Did the Supreme Court actually decide that, or did the BSA agree not to accept charters to put an end to the lawsuits? Sounds to me like your beef is with the individual public schools - they are the ones agreeing to charter.

I'll tell you the lessons the BSA should take from Canada Scouts - stick to your guns! Don't let a tiny minority of leftists try to intimidate you. Compromising your values will be the death of the organization. Continue to do what you are doing - ignore them.

 

[packsaddle]

Brent, I'm practically in your back yard. I think the difference is that this unit primarily serves a community around a university and in that sense, it is unlike most of the rest of this 'red' state. Your assessment may be correct about your unit and the larger area. I only stated what I observed for our unit and immediate area.

 

As for the contradiction, there are two things to remember. First, the worst thing we risk with the unit is to get bounced out of the organization. When government breaks the law regarding BSA, a lawsuit may result.

Second, I have always promoted personal responsibility and personal freedom. Regardless of whether in the face of big government, or the thought/morality police in BSA. If a person signs on the line, then that is on them as far as I am concerned, and it is not part of my responsibility to investigate further. When the responsibilities of volunteer leadership are written to include 'outing' fellow good scouters who may happen to be gays or atheists, I will have to rethink the whole thing. But not until then.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

BrentAllen writes:

Sorry, but I don't share your twisted view that a school chartering a Cub Scout Pack is tantamount to religious discrimination.

 

How is that a "twisted view"?

 

A school that charters a pack "owns and operates" it as their own youth group, according to the BSA's own description of a chartering organization.

 

Members of that youth group can't be atheists.

 

That's religious discrimination. It would be religious discrimination if a school ran a (supposedly private) club that didn't allow Jews, or excluded trinitarians.

 

Did the Supreme Court actually decide that, or did the BSA agree not to accept charters to put an end to the lawsuits? Sounds to me like your beef is with the individual public schools - they are the ones agreeing to charter.

 

As I've pointed out before, BSA supporters NEVER blame the BSA, always the schools. The BSA knew about other schools that had to drop charters due to these same issues - yet they continued to issue charters to other schools. The BSA knew about school officials who testified that they thought atheists could join their scout unit - but they continued to issue charters to other schools.

 

The BSA was finally called out on their dishonest policy of chartering discriminatory BSA units to government entities, and the BSA had to cave in. They've never run from a legal fight they thought they might win, but even they could see that they couldn't win this one.

 

I'll tell you the lessons the BSA should take from Canada Scouts - stick to your guns! Don't let a tiny minority of leftists try to intimidate you. Compromising your values will be the death of the organization. Continue to do what you are doing - ignore them.

 

Did you say that when the BSA made Exploring open to atheists and gays? I don't remember that program losing thousands of members. Did you say that when the Girl Scouts decided not to exclude atheists and gays? Their membership has increased since they made that change.

[BrentAllen]

packsaddle,

Emory? Are we in the same District?? I'm not playing detective, just curious.

 

Brian,

I'm curious where you got your Girl Scout numbers. I'm having trouble locating them. I thought I had heard the opposite, but can't say for sure.

I haven't studied this, but wouldn't a high school boy's basketball team belong to the school? Since they don't let girls be members of the team, isn't that sexual descrimination? How about all those high school football teams? Is this type of descrimination by our schools ok? What about schools that sponsor Fellowship of Christian Athletes clubs?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

I got girl scout membership figures from http://www.kyanags.org/pdfs/020.pdf

It says that 1992 membership was nearly 3.5 million in 1992, and says in 1999 membership exceeded 3.7 million. They voted to allow girls to substitute other wording for 'god' in the promise back in 1993.

 

I haven't studied this, but wouldn't a high school boy's basketball team belong to the school? Since they don't let girls be members of the team, isn't that sexual descrimination? How about all those high school football teams? Is this type of descrimination by our schools ok?

 

Yes, it's legal for public schools to have sex-segregated sports. They still have to stay within Title IX requirements.

 

Notice it would be completely unlawful for a public school to have a high school basketball team that said Jews couldn't join the team. Or atheists. Or Catholics.

 

What about schools that sponsor Fellowship of Christian Athletes clubs?

 

Schools don't sponsor them. FCA is a private organization that promotes their particular view of christianity. They can meet and have members in public schools on the same terms as any other outside organization. And atheist groups get to have the same access, too.

 

If schools sponsored them in the same sense that a school sponsored a cub scout pack, the school would be in charge of selecting leadership for the group. And, of course, these schools would be hit with lawsuits for trying to teach its students that christianity is the "correct" religion for them to follow, because the FCA does that. A public school can't run a club that has religious requirements for membership.

[BrentAllen]

Brian,

I guess I look at the numbers and draw a different conclusion.

1981 - 2,829,000

1990 - 3,268,630

1992 - 3,500,000

1996 - 3,340,000

1999 - 3,700,000

2004 - 2,800,000 (from Girlscouts.org)

 

Hard to draw any real conclusions, but it looks like numbers dropped after the 1993 policy change. They turned back up around 1999 but have dropped back below 1981 levels. I wonder how they explain nearly a 1 million drop in membership in 5 years? Are these numbers supposed to support your case?

 

If Title IX calls for equal opportunities for the sexes, I don't see why the same can't apply to schools chartering Scout units. As long as a school offered to charter any "Scouting for All" unit, there shouldn't be a problem. All we need is an Title IX-type law for religion - one that simply calls for equal opportunities. Am I wrong? If so, how?

[Prairie_Scouter]

If we were to take out the Learning for Life numbers out of the BSA totals, where would they sit in the membership race? Aren't BSA numbers down quite a ways from their heyday? Don't numbers for all these kinds of organizations bounce around quite a bit?

 

One thing you could take from the Scouts Canada story is that they made a mistake by *requiring* units to accept gays, etc. If they were to have taken the "local option" that's been discussed here many times, the results could have been quite different.

 

I really don't know of there's any accurate numbers that could clarify whether the number of "leftists" in BSA is "tiny". BSA numbers are suspect because we don't really know how the questions in the surveys were asked; at least I don't. Also, they didn't segregate by age group in the publicly released numbers, although I've been told that the numbers of pro-policy responders were skewed towards the older Scouters.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

BrentAllen writes:

Hard to draw any real conclusions, but it looks like numbers dropped after the 1993 policy change.

 

You're mixing two different sources for membership figures; how do you know that the source I cited wasn't including adult membership? It doesn't say, and if you compare total membership from 1999 to the GSUSA's 2004 annual report, membership is still over 3.7 million.

 

Plus, of course, if membership dropped due to a 1993 policy change, why isn't that seen soon after 1993? Why not blame the 9/11 attacks for a supposed membership drop?

 

If Title IX calls for equal opportunities for the sexes, I don't see why the same can't apply to schools chartering Scout units. As long as a school offered to charter any "Scouting for All" unit, there shouldn't be a problem. All we need is an Title IX-type law for religion - one that simply calls for equal opportunities. Am I wrong? If so, how?

 

Yes, you're wrong. Public schools are prohibited by the US constitution from discriminating on the basis of religion. The BSA argued in court that it was a private, discriminatory, religious organization - public schools simply don't have the authority to own & operate private, discriminatory, religious youth groups.

 

A lot of BSA supporters seem to want both the right to discriminate AND government support. You can't have both. This really isn't hard to understand.

 

(plus you seem to be under the impression that Scouting For All is a youth organization similar to the BSA - it isn't, it's an advocacy organization made up mostly of scouts and former scouts who want the BSA to change its membership policies)

[ohadam]

As a cubmaster, the gay/straight issue is not pertinent to the kids so I ignore it. If my kids become boy scouts and the issue comes up, I'll invite them to abide by the scout law as interpreted by their conscience, not by the dictates of either the right or left.

 

I will advise that "obedience" does not mean obeying the established leadership but rather accepting the consequences of disobeying it.

 

I'll explain that the BSA's position is that homosexuality is not clean or morally straight (see www.bsalegal.org) but that BSA refuses to explain this position or support it with evidence. (Which makes me suspect the position is adopted not in the interest of values but in the interest of membership.) I will let them decide for themselves whether BSA's position deserves their support. By that time, I hope to have trained them to examine the issue intelligently and make an informed, mature decision.

 

Maybe it's a pipe dream.

[packsaddle]

Brent, not the same district. Perhaps my 'backyard' metaphor was the wrong one. In the same general region would be more accurate. Your bullets can't quite reach here.

But we are close enough to see and know the community attitudes around us...and in that we have much in common. The communities are just different.