BSA inclusiveness: how long coming?

[RememberSchiff]

I think local CO rule to permit some degree of inclusion will occur before the World Jamboree at the Summit. Local exclusion is already allowed to CO's, so the flip slide will be quietly introduced. It will be a PR move, an "experiment" maybe, to soften criticism before Jambo and/or to reverse falling membership.

 

I don't think it will have anything to do with diversity, unless we suddenly get diverse leadership at National...many more than just two corporate CEO's.

 

My guess anyway.

 

 

[Oak Tree]

I agree, it will happen, and then it will seem like much ado about nothing. I see that military members are now allowed to march in gay pride parades in uniform, and it's no big deal.

 

I also agree with Eamonn, that the BSA is between a rock and a hard place here.

 

I find it hard to predict exactly how long...there will be no progress, no progress, no progress, and then all of a sudden it will reach a tipping point. But I'm on the shorter end of the spectrum. Maybe 4-5 years.

[howarthe]

BSA created this policy in response to its members. When they review the policy, they poll the members. At least they claim to be polling they members. I predict that they will change the policy when the members want them to. That's why resigning my membership in protest will not help the cause. It will only deny my son the scouting experience. I don't really have a guess as to how many years such a change will take.

[Brewmeister]

Proponents of themes types of changes aren't seeking inclusiveness, they are seeking the destruction of an organization they do not truly value.

[Horizon]

It took 19 years from when the first State (California) ended their anti-miscengenation laws to the Loving Decision by the Supreme Court in 1967 ended those laws in all 50 states.

 

For private organizations, Bob Jones University was still prohibiting inter-racial relationships as late as the year 2000. That would mean 52 years from the first change in state laws until one of the last private groups renounced their policies.

 

So if we draw a parallel, Gay marriage started in Massachusetts in 2004. 19 years from that takes us to 2023 for all 50 states to accept, and 52 years from that takes to 2059 before one of the last institutions stops forbidding it.

 

I expect Local Control in the next 10 years. The Marines were marching in the San Diego Gay Pride Parade this weekend after all.

 

[AZMike]

How long before acceptance of polygamy?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Biblical polygamy? Or something more egalitarian?

[Trevorum]

AZ, well now, THAT might be easier for the LDS continent to accept ...

[BrentAllen]

It's not going to happen anytime soon - as in 30 years. The folks in Irving are looking at national trends. North Carolina recently became the 30th state to pass an amendment to their state constitution banning same-sex marriage. It passed by a huge margin, and the other side actually thought they were going to win. Liberal Christian churches are losing members in droves. Where is the successful business plan that would encourage the BSA to make this change?

 

Go back in this forum and you will find posts where people predicted the change in 5 years made 8 - 10 years ago.

[Trevorum]

hmmm ... I missed typing a "g" and Utah becomes it's own continent!

[shortridge]

Brent, cherry-picking instances of opposition isn't support for your point. It is far more instructive to look at broad public opinion on similar issues.

 

Reports the New York Times' polling expert: "Support for same-sex marriage has been increasing, and opposition to it has been decreasing, at a relatively steady rate of perhaps two or three percentage points a year since 2004." It's now at about 50 percent, with opposition at 45 percent and the remainder undecided. So if we extrapolate, it'll hit 60 percent by about 2017, and 70 percent by 2022. Would that be enough of a majority for you?

 

# # #

 

Just because openly gay members are not applying to join doesn't mean that's the only membership factor involved. I know many, many heterosexual parents of young children who don't even consider BSA as an option for their sons because they see the organization as bigoted and intolerant. I know one couple - the dad's a surgeon, the mother's an attorney, both would be excellent Scouting leaders [and likely FOS donors] - who refuse to let their son join Cubs in large part because they have a very close family friend who is a lesbian. Their kids call her aunt. How can these families join a group that says their family and friends are not morally straight? How can they explain that inconsistency to their children?

 

Once the ban is lifted or a local option allowed, those families will begin to join. But it will take a significant amount of time for that to happen, and it's too late for almost an entire generation of young people whose parents also feel this way. We have shot ourselves in both feet in bowing to religious institutions which in 50 more years will admit their own mistakes and join the modern era.

 

Change is coming, but will it happen fast enough for Scouting to survive?

 

# # #

 

Yes, Brewmeister, you're right. You caught me. I want BSA to change in order to destroy the organization that made me who I am today, to raze my council camp where I learned to rely on myself, and to deny outdoor adventure and opportunities to tens of thousands of other young people. Liberal conspiracy exposed!

 

I couldn't possibly believe that Scouting will become stronger by changing to become a more tolerant, accepting organization that actually lives up to its espoused values and is governed not by narrow religious doctrine but by the broader principles of brotherhood.(This message has been edited by shortridge)

[Fehler]

I believe within 12 years. Unless something big drops, like this "Secret Committee"'s actual members, testimony, and procedure get exposed as an absolute fraud, then drop the timeline to 6 years. An organized pro-LGBT movement within the LDS church, with a non-token number of adherents, could shave off another year or two.

[BrentAllen]

If 30 states is cherry picking, then so be it. Believe what you want, but the BSA is watching other groups that have gone left, and all they see is failure. Look at the Episcopal Church and others that have followed their lead.

 

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-can-liberal-christianity-be-saved.html

 

"Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Churchs dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the churchs House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase."

 

"Practically every denomination Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance."

 

Is liberal Christianity signing its own death warrant?

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/19/12811129-is-liberal-christianity-signing-its-own-death-warrant?lite

 

"I see other mainline denominations that are fairly liberal, like the Presbyterians and the Methodists, just really being very careful about jumping over this hurdle," David Hein, Hood College historian and co-author of The Episcopalians, a history of the church, told NBC News, "because it really wreaks havoc with the denominations for the national headquarters on down, the institutions, the seminaries, the parishes when you start to lose huge numbers of members.

 

Is The Episcopal Church Near Collapse In America?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cross-dressing-clergy-these-are-the-reasons-the-episcopal-church-could-be-near-collapse/

 

The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, writes Christian author Charlotte Allen, in which large parishes and entire dioceses are opting out of the church, isnt simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.

 

Anyone here thinks the BSA wants to follow that model?

[shortridge]

Thirty states does not mean the population of 30 states. It means the legislatures of the 30 states. Again, you cherry-pick by refusing to look at national public opinion.

 

Your examples of churches suffering schisms are hardly indicative of what could happen to the BSA. Scouting is not a religious organization, nor is it even religiously based. It is a religiously pluralistic organization that has at its core a general belief in a higher power. Many members do not count religion as a driving force in their Scouting experience. So comparing what is fundamentally a secular organization to religious denominations with very fierce doctrinal wars is a faulty examination at best.

[BrentAllen]

shortridge, I'm amazed at how you continue to fool yourself. None of what you wrote matters. What matters is which organizations are chartering the most units, and those organizations are conservative Christian. They hold sway at BSA national. It's like presidential candidates in the election - they are interested in winning the big electoral vote states. The big chartering organizations aren't changing anytime soon, and neither is the bible. When the huge majority of institutional heads and CORs are members of religious organizations, I don't see how you can just push aside the religious aspect of the program. Those IHs and CORs are the decision makers for the vast majority of BSA units. You don't think they are watching what is happening to liberal Christian churches, and they don't think the same thing would happen to the BSA? Would that be your argument before the BSA national board? Good luck with that.

 

North Carolina was a population vote, not a legislature. And I'm surprised you would even bring that up, since the only states that have gay marriage had it forced on them through the courts. No state has actually voted in favor of gay marriage. Every state that has put the vote to its citizens has voted against it.