Gay and Lesbian Marriage....

[Rick_in_CA]

Instead, you need to drag out your checklist and make sure that both parents have legally adopted the child or at least have legal guardianship papers so that they will be allowed to accompany the boy to camping outings. Oh, yes, if they do not have the legal documents they can't go, and their boy can't go either.

 

What? This doesn't make sense. The only rule is that gay adults are not allowed to be registered leaders. There isn't any rule about "legal guardians" that I am aware of. Tigers are required to have an adult partner, and it explicitly allows non-parent relatives and "friends of the family" - no legal guardianship or blood relationship required. YPT just prevents non-parents from tenting with children, it doesn't keep them from attending an event.

 

And I am not aware of any rule that requires all participating adults to be registered leaders. At the cub scout level, most adults are not. Cub camp (around here at least) requires a four to one ratio of adult volunteers to cubs for a pack to attend. There is no requirement for them to be registered leaders. So yes, a gay parent could volunteer to help out at cub camp.

 

[Stosh]

 

What? This doesn't make sense. The only rule is that gay adults are not allowed to be registered leaders. There isn't any rule about "legal guardians" that I am aware of. Tigers are required to have an adult partner, and it explicitly allows non-parent relatives and "friends of the family" - no legal guardianship or blood relationship required. YPT just prevents non-parents from tenting with children, it doesn't keep them from attending an event.

 

And I am not aware of any rule that requires all participating adults to be registered leaders. At the cub scout level, most adults are not. Cub camp (around here at least) requires a four to one ratio of adult volunteers to cubs for a pack to attend. There is no requirement for them to be registered leaders. So yes, a gay parent could volunteer to help out at cub camp.

 

Of course it makes sense. If a percentage the boys in your troop have homosexual parents, then that percentage of one's potential leadership base is immediately reduced. Sure they can attend events and even chaperone, but I do make it clear I was referring to a camping activity. Does anyone want to get to the event and then find out that all the boys want to bunk in with their parent and the boys with out legal adoption/guardianship of their child will simply have to go home. That I'm sure would make a very awkward situation for all concerned especially any Cub Scout caught up in the situation at no fault of his own.

 

" I do think JBlake makes a good argument for local option on adult leadership, though I suspect that is not what he was trying to do, unless I have misunderstood his position all these years." Whatever position one thinks I might have on the subject would be an assumption on their part. I have never made a comment that would state my position one way or the other. There's a lot of assumptions floating around on forums these days, what's one more here or there. All I'm saying is one needs to be learned and vigilant in what they are doing. If not, your career in Scouting could be over in a heartbeat and it would be good to have a good lawyer handy as well.

 

Stosh

[NJCubScouter]

Whatever position one thinks I might have on the subject would be an assumption on their part. I have never made a comment that would state my position one way or the other. There's a lot of assumptions floating around on forums these days' date=' what's one more here or there.[/quote']

 

Stosh, I was not making any assumptions, though I MAY have been "misremembering", in the words of one of our former presidents. My recollection was that at some point you had said you thought the BSA's membership policies should remain the way they are. Perhaps you said that about the "atheist issue" but not about the "gay issue." If I recalled your position incorrectly, I apologize.

 

As for the scenarios you are talking about, well sure, there are a lot of "awkward" situations these days. We just have to deal with them. I cannot say that I have (or expect to have) much contact with these situations anymore, as they arise primarily on the Cub Scout level, where I have not been for many years (despite the fact that I never changed my user name in this forum.) But I do recall back to when I was Assistant Cubmaster and co-in-charge of Cub family camping trips for our pack. I am pretty sure we never asked to see anyone's marriage certificate, and we never asked to see documents proving that a person (such as a stepfather) had legal custody or parental rights regarding a child. For that matter, we didn't really inquire as to ANY "parent's" parental rights. If people said they were married or presented themselves as a family unit, they were not interrogated. There COULD have been violations of YP (of the "sharing-a-tent" variety) that we never knew about, because we didn't make people prove that they were actually related or had parental rights. And that was all BEFORE same-sex marriage. I don't see how the issues would be any different now that the persons presenting themselves as parents may be of the same gender.

 

Do YOU ask to see marriage certificates, or court orders granting custody or parental rights? Does anybody? Has the BSA advised anything like this?

[Stosh]

 

Stosh, I was not making any assumptions, though I MAY have been "misremembering", in the words of one of our former presidents. My recollection was that at some point you had said you thought the BSA's membership policies should remain the way they are. Perhaps you said that about the "atheist issue" but not about the "gay issue." If I recalled your position incorrectly, I apologize.

 

 

Do YOU ask to see marriage certificates, or court orders granting custody or parental rights? Does anybody? Has the BSA advised anything like this?

 

AND NOW you understand why I would say, keep the policies the way they were. The more cans of worms BSA opens the more complicated it becomes. It has nothing to do with how I feel about the subject matter, it has to do with the dynamics of changing policies. The more that gets brought out into the open, changed and then realize it's complicated the more confused everyone's going to get. Homosexuality, religion, etc. etc. all the, keeping up with a changing world isn't always a good idea. Once one starts swimming in uncharted waters, the more chance there is of something going wrong.

 

Like my dad always said, never buy the new model of cars, wait a year or two until they have worked all the bugs out. Same holds true for purchasing Software 1.0 Good luck with that.

 

No need to apologize, I may not have been clear in what I was trying to say. As a minister I probably have skin in the game with both the homosexual as well as religious issues. But as a former minister, I can choose not to participate in any of the politics of the issue.

 

All I'm saying for sure is that after 40 years of working with youth organizations, if one goes into the fray confused, one may not be coming out in one piece.

 

Stosh

[DuctTape]

I get what NJCS is saying. Unless the BSA has asked for documentation to prove the legal parental relationship before, there is no expectation to provide it now for non-traditional marriages. I think Stosh is concerned over the policy change that it would make the confusion worse (please correct me if I misunderstood).

 

I see no problem with the policies nor a contradiction, nor confusion. If a parent brings their child to a campout then the BSA has always assumed the parent to be the legal parent. The marriage situation has no bearing on this assumption. If the issue is liability, the unit would open itself up to more risk if it attempted to discern the parental relationship due to a possible error (or they missed one). By ultimately placing the responsibility for the "tent sharing with a parent only" on the parent this would limit the unit's liability.

 

Now, I am no legal scholar, so don't take my analysis as legal advice. My opinion is that I think an attempt to use the tent sharing with a parent policy as a reason to dissuade or argue against non-traditional marriages is a red herring.

[scoutldr]

I long for the good old days when all we had to worry about was heterosexual noncustodial parents with restraining orders.

[NJCubScouter]

I long for the good old days when all we had to worry about was heterosexual noncustodial parents with restraining orders.

 

Scoutldr hit the nail on the head, and made me laugh as well. "Awkward" family situations, that leave a Cubmaster or other leader in the spot of having to figure out who has the right to who and to be where, and when - which is really not part of the job description, even if the leader happens to be an attorney - were with us long before same-sex marriage entered the picture. I don't know why it would be a surprise that gay people present some of the same issues. Same species, same issues. And wait till some married gay people start getting divorced, get into custody disputes, etc., I can hear it now: See, SEE, gay marriage doesn't work. To which the response would be, I guess heterosexual marriage doesn't work either, since so many straight people get divorced, have custody disputes, etc.

[CalicoPenn]

I predict that we will see the following question asked in a thread at some point in the future: "I just received an invitation to the same-sex wedding of the Eagle Scout I mentored when I was his Scoutmaster - what should I do?"

[Stosh]

Whatever one think is right for them. How hard can that be?

 

And yes I knew the boy to be homosexual and an Eagle before the BSA's ruling. And yes I wear his mentor pin.

 

Stosh