Northern Star Council - Inclusive

[fred8033]

Extremely well written and well thought out.

 

http://www.northernstarbsa.org/AboutUs/Leadership/Inclusiveness.aspx

 

[Spiney Norman]

Good for them! I do believe they have held this position for a while. We shall see what does or does not happen now.

[FScouter]

Do they accept gay leaders?

[moosetracker]

FScouter - What they sounds like local option.. They state they are inclusive for a list of things. In that list is sexual orientation, but they also stress they leave it up to the CO to decide who will make good leaders.

 

There was a link posted a few days back, in one of the umpteen gay threads going around a news artical where Northern Star restated it's inclusive practice will continue even though National had stated it would stay discriminatory.

[Lisabob]

The Council website indicates that their process for screening adult volunteers is not new. Presumably, unit sponsors who vehemently disagree will have jumped ship long ago.

 

Are there still LDS/Catholic COs in Northern Star Council? (checks - yes, there are quite a few. In just one district, just looking at cub packs, I count 8 packs with LDS COs and 4 packs with Catholic Church or KofC COs.)

http://northernlights.nsbsa.org/District/UnitListByType.aspx?UnitType=P

 

Hmmm. Maybe the notion that all the LDS and Catholic COs would abandon ship is just so much hand wringing on some folks' parts.

[Fehler]

NSC Cubmaster here, with a Catholic Church CO, and I've pointed out this page to many parents that have had questions about the policy. Has it helped? Sure. Those parents who have questions are leaning towards scouts anyways, and just need reassurances. Those parents without questions would have rejected scouts with or without the statement.

 

I find it a bit confusing myself, but the way I read it, it says "A unit can set its own policy, for or against having openly gay leaders, and the Council will defer to the COs. However, the Council will not reject openly gay District or Council level volunteers or employees."

 

Being in the top 10 councils in membership, I don't know what National thinks it could do to us. Revoke the Council Charter? Deny participation in Jamboree or other national events?

[moosetracker]

So Fehler, with local options for inclusion of homosexuals are there any dooms day happening that our conservative group are predicting?

 

Obviously you membership is up..

Obviously if your CO is a Catholic church, the Catholics are not pulling out.

What about a whole flock of sissy boys invading your troop with gold lemay outfits, limp wrists and Yoohoo calls? Or maybe they don't invade your troop but formed a troop of their own that you had to camp next to this summer.. Flirting with your scouts every chance they got?

How many of your youth are molested at every troop meeting and every camporee?

 

I am sure some of the reason your council has more acceptance as it in in the Northern part of the country.. I have been wondering if we would have had this ban on homosexuals had BSA's home office stayed in New York, rather then moving down to Texas. I also wonder of those who post of a doomsday, how many are from the south.. Because I just don't see the issue being from the north..

 

Maybe a better indicator of where in the country the predicted doomsdays will happen is if your State is primarily Republican, Democratic or independent.

 

[NealOnWheels]

I see nothing in that statement that indicates they would allow a gay leader.

 

The only time sexual orientation is mentioned is:

 

"Scoutings commitment to its members, leaders, employees and the community with regard to ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, age and/or sexual orientation."

 

That is not even a complete sentence. It conveys no information.

 

 

[Oak Tree]

It is not a complete sentence, but it appears to me that it is the sub-title for the section.

 

Under that, it then includes a number of statements that would seem to fall under the umbrella of the sub-title.

 

- "Northern Star Council continues this tradition in our second century, in our inclusive leadership selection practices."

- "Northern Star Council welcomes all people who can help to further Scoutings mission."

- "Scouting is a private organization for the purpose of maintaining the right of parents and chartered organizations to choose their own Scouting leaders, trusting them to select talented adults and to join in holding all leaders accountable for appropriate behavior."

 

Everything about that says that they are letting the CO choose their own leaders. I suspect that their lawyers have carefully worded the page so as to avoid any direct contradiction with a National policy, even though it clearly intends to violate that policy.

 

National has all kinds of levers it can pull to get the council to change this position, if it chooses to do so. But for now, the policy is still up there.

[moosetracker]

NealOnWheels - don't believe Fehler who comes from that council either? How about the news article on the subject..

 

(You may need to close an ad that pops up before the article.)

 

http://m.startribune.com/?id=162817346

 

 

Green with envy I am.. Unfortunately our Council isn't brave, but I wonder if the Minute Man council and the one in Philadelphia can follow their winning formula and try again..

 

12 years, I wonder if part of their success was they challenged it and one, That was before any law suits.. Before they put on this bravado front of "We will do what we want.. To H__L with all of you".. Now other defecting councils would be a sign of weakness.

(This message has been edited by moosetracker)

[NJCubScouter]

Sounds like a great way to get council leaders off the hook and start civil warfare among a lot of units.

 

"Civil warfare" over what, Seattle Pioneer? Between who? You mean there might be disagreements within units over whether to permit a gay person to be a leader? How is that different from now, with regard to whether to have a female Scoutmaster, a leader who is known to have cheated on his/her spouse, a leader who has been divorced five times, a leader whose weight may not make them a good role model for healthy living, etc. etc.? All of these things may cause controversy within a unit. But ultimately it would be up to the CO of each unit. And if we're worried about controversy (a better term for this than "civil war", in my opinion), well, there's controversy now. It would just be different controversy, and it would go away fairly quickly. Maybe some people would switch units, but the dust would settle before too long.

 

Having said that, I agree with NealOnWheels: This statement from Northern Star Council may not mean exactly what some people are assuming it means. It is indeed very carefully written, and it is not completely clear to me from this statement what the council would do if a CO selected as a leader a person who was openly gay, and the person's openly gay status became "generally known."

[moosetracker]

NJCub scouter see my message just above yours, we must have crossed post. The news article is 100 specific they will all the CO's to choose openly gay leaders.

[Basementdweller]

Moose....your forgetting that this is not about gay youth, but gay adults.

 

The BSA views youth a asexual.

[NealOnWheels]

Thanks moosetracker,

 

The news articles are much more specific than the statement on the website.

[Fehler]

Long term, I have no idea how this played/plays out. I've only been tuned in for three years. The general public doesn't know what a "council" or "chartered organization" is, they believe that the policy is national until they hear otherwise. The "lost" units I'm aware of were due to the normal CO drama, nothing related to open leadership (CO wouldn't let the Pack use its classrooms for den meetings anymore, so they merged en mass with a neighboring unit/CO that would).

 

Our District Membership Chair wears one of those "Scouting For All" rainbow knots. Not that anyone would recognize it for what it is. My very liberal Democratic State Senator is a Den Leader.

 

We have trouble getting into the public schools for recruiting. The Minneapolis School District has a policy for sending home flyers, and if we don't follow it to the letter, the flyers don't go out (and often not even then, as principals can veto anything in their school, and teachers seem to "lose" the flyers on occasion). The "No Outside Groups" entering the schools for programs/open houses policy cuts both ways, however, so we aren't at a complete disadvantage with other groups. Changing the national policy, in my opinion, would help get some of those flyers home, but that alone wouldn't translate to higher membership numbers.

 

Charter schools are even harder to get into, since they are led by a more "My way is the best way for education, and your group would dilute our program" attitude. A policy change wouldn't improve anything there.

 

We have LDS units, Catholic units, Methodist units, etc. No uniformed scouts are marching in the Pride Parade, no one is advertising a blog as "The Gay Scoutmaster". I attend Roundtable as often as I can (every other/third month) and the topic simply doesn't come up. But again, I've only been here 3 years.