Update On Adult Leadership Standards

[Rick_in_CA]

I see nothing in his statements that shows he understands that the local option allows units to continue to discriminate against gays. He seems to think the local option will end the ban. He also seems to have "moved on", so if BSA thinks opening up to gay leaders is going to start in influx of new leaders (as opposed to a outflow of leaders), they haven't won this guy over.

He clearly does understand:

Executive Board is on the verge of ending the national organization's ban on participation by openly gay adult leaders. (More precisely, the decision will be placed in the hands of local troops, which can continue to discriminate if they choose. Still, it represents significant progress.)

So you first presented this guy as someone that "local control" won't satisfy and that will continue to harass the BSA until even local control is taken away. Now he is simply someone that has "moved on"? OK.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Rick_in_CA

[Gone]

He clearly does understand:

 

So you first presented this guy as someone that "local control" won't satisfy and that will continue to harass the BSA until even local control is taken away. Now he is simply someone that has "moved on"? OK.

 

But then he says "On July 27, Boy Scouts of America's Executive Board can vote to make sure that never happens again, and help fix the Scouts' chronic shortage of good leaders at the same time."

 

At best his writing is unclear.

 

He's moved on from volunteer involvement, but this statement does little to convince me he won't give up until the ban is permanent across all units:

 

 

 

And much more importantly, the board can guarantee that prejudice never again deprives boys of "good moral examples" who can Be Prepared, Do a Good Turn Daily, and teach them to fight for the right thing.

[Oak Tree]

I couldn't find your quoted statement in either of your linked sources.

 

However, while the first appears to be saying that the BSA doubts any legal challenge to a religious charter org's anti-gay policy will most likely fail (and they couldn't find any examples of such a lawsuit that didn't fail), they imply that the same cannot be said for non-religious charter orgs. So maybe that is the basis of the not allowing non religious charter orgs local control on this?

 

But I still haven't found a clear statement from the BSA that local control won't be given to non religious charter orgs. To me at least, the language of the proposed change appears to grant local control to ALL charter orgs.

 

Page 3, Lines 14-16  at http://scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Religious-Organization-Protections-Memo-062915.pdf   That is, unless the web site is detecting who is logging in and providing a different document to different users...which would be overly clever and bizarrely confusing.

 

I agree with you that the text of the actual resolution is ambiguous at best. But the FAQ and the legal analysis both state that units chartered to non-religious COs may not discriminate.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Oak Tree

[Rick_in_CA]

But then he says "On July 27, Boy Scouts of America's Executive Board can vote to make sure that never happens again, and help fix the Scouts' chronic shortage of good leaders at the same time."

 

At best his writing is unclear.

 

He's moved on from volunteer involvement, but this statement does little to convince me he won't give up until the ban is permanent across all units:

Actually the whole quote is this:

On July 27, Boy Scouts of America's Executive Board can vote to make sure that never happens again, and help fix the Scouts' chronic shortage of good leaders at the same time.

 

By simply confirming the recommendation of the Boy Scouts' president and executive committee, the board can ensure that qualified adults are never again kept from an opportunity to give of themselves.

 

And much more importantly, the board can guarantee that prejudice never again deprives boys of "good moral examples" who can Be Prepared, Do a Good Turn Daily, and teach them to fight for the right thing.

bold emphases is mine.

 

Which I read as being in favor of the current proposal. But you are right in that it can be read differently, and isn't crystal clear. And even if he isn't one of them, I am sure that there are people out there that will be unsatisfied by this change (just as there were scouters that were unhappy that the BSA allowed Muslims). You can't please everyone.

[Rick_in_CA]

Page 3, Lines 14-16  at http://scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Religious-Organization-Protections-Memo-062915.pdf   That is, unless the web site is detecting who is logging in and providing a different document to different users...which would be overly clever and bizarrely confusing.

 

I agree with you that the text of the actual resolution is ambiguous at best. But the FAQ and the legal analysis both state that units chartered to non-religious COs may not discriminate.

Thanks. I'm not sure how I missed that.

 

One thing I am wondering, maybe National was originally thinking of only giving local control to religious COs and then changed their mind? So the final language of the resolution reflects that change? Or maybe national just can't write?

Edited July 23, 2015 by Rick_in_CA

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Looks like the BSA still has a blind spot where discrimination against atheists is something other than religious discrimination:

 

http://scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Religious-Organization-Protections-Memo-062915.pdf

 

All other leader requirements, including “duty to God,†would remain in effect for all chartered organizations.  

...

The decisions concluding that the BSA is not a place of public accommodation all predate the decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, and the most recent decision is from 17 years ago. The conclusions in those decisions are largely result-oriented and from a time in which the courts viewed homosexuals and the BSA in different lights. Some of the jurisdictions have since been very critical of the BSA, including branding it a “discriminatory†organization.14 A court could conclude that the BSA is a place of public accommodation based on the size and inclusiveness of the Scouting program. And it is possible that some jurisdictions could reconsider whether to subject the BSA to place of public accommodation laws if presented with the question in the future.15 

...

[talking about a hypothetical lawsuit against a church CO for excluding a gay adult leader]

It is hard to imagine how a suit would survive against the BSA, which might be a place of public accommodation but whose policy is not at issue, or against a religious chartered organization, whose policy is at issue but which is not a place of public accommodation.

 

If the BSA is a public accommodation, they can't exclude people based on their religious views.

 

Also, of COURSE the BSA is a discriminatory organization; no scare quotes are needed.

[Peregrinator]

My religion teaches that some sins are more serious than others. The term "gravely sinful" would not apply to every sin on your list.

 

My religion also recognizes a difference between repentant sinners and unrepentant sinners. I don't believe it is at all hypocritical or "cherry picking" to draw these distinctions.

 

My last point is that not every sin is relevant to the topic of this thread.

 

We can also distinguish between public sinners (e.g. two men living together claiming to be married), and private or occult sinners (a married couple using contraception - who would know unless they make it public?). The former give scandal, the latter don't.

[Peregrinator]

If you have any married friends with less than 10 children, then I will guarantee they are using contraception.

Most people aren't that fertile. We have friends with 10 but most of the married folks we know have between 5 and 8.

[BadenP]

If a small private group wanted to they could easily and quickly set themselves up as a so called religious organization online. They could call themselves ABC Ministries, have one adult get ordained online as a Reverend and they would be good to go as a " legitimate religious group" under the new BSA rules. This would give their CO the option to reject any and all LGBT leader candidates unlike their non religious counterparts. I wonder if the BSA even thought of that before coming up with these ridiculous new rules?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

We can also distinguish between public sinners (e.g. two men living together claiming to be married)

 

What if they are married, not just claiming to be?

[NJCubScouter]

If a small private group wanted to they could easily and quickly set themselves up as a so called religious organization online. They could call themselves ABC Ministries, have one adult get ordained online as a Reverend and they would be good to go as a " legitimate religious group" under the new BSA rules. This would give their CO the option to reject any and all LGBT leader candidates unlike their non religious counterparts. I wonder if the BSA even thought of that before coming up with these ridiculous new rules?

Maybe the BSA did think of it. I certainly have. Does this group own (or is otherwise able to provide) a suitable meeting and storage space? Do they have an EIN number (or whatever religious organizations have) so they can open a bank account? What shall we call it, Congregation of the Local Boy Scout Troop? Hurry, the DE's already in his car on his way over to get the charter paperwork signed. Sounds like win-win-win to me...

Edited July 24, 2015 by NJCubScouter

[Oak Tree]

Maybe the BSA did think of it. I certainly have. Does this group own (or is otherwise able to provide) a suitable meeting and storage space? Do they have an EIN number (or whatever religious organizations have) so they can open a bank account? What shall we call it, Congregation of the Local Boy Scout Troop? Hurry, the DE's already in his car on his way over to get the charter paperwork signed. Sounds like win-win-win to me...

This thought occurred to me as well.  And presumably if the group is already sponsoring a troop under some other name, they would already have access to the meeting space. Getting an EIN (and yes, this is the same for all organizations) is trivial.

 

But at some level, I start to think, if a group is willing to go to all this effort to pre-emptively exclude gay leaders, maybe they should just go join Trail Life, which seems to be set pretty much exactly for this purpose.

 

In terms of actual logistics, I'm not sure if the BSA would be so eager to charter troops to random unaffiliated pseudo-religious groups. They will not, for example, provide charters to Wiccan groups (so I've been told), and I'm sure there are other religious organizations that they would not want to be associated with. I would guess that they also would not want to set themselves up for lawsuits regarding whether or not a group was a bona fide religious organization.

 

I did a quick search to see what the courts have said about whether a group is in fact a bona fide religious organization. There appear to be various state and federal laws and courts that have ruled on this. Some of the requirements can be fairly significant.  The EEOC says that courts have determined that for compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act -

Under established case law, this Title VII exception applies only to those institutions whose “purpose and character are primarily religious.â€That determination is to be based on “[a]ll significant religious and secular characteristics.â€Although no one factor is dispositive, significant factors that courts have considered to determine whether an employer is a religious organization for purposes of Title VII include: whether the entity is not for profit, whether its day-to-day operations are religious (e.g., are the services the entity performs, the product it produces, or the educational curriculum it provides directed toward propagation of the religion?); whether the entity's articles of incorporation or other pertinent documents state a religious purpose; whether it is owned, affiliated with or financially supported by a formally religious entity such as a church or other religious organization; whether a formally religious entity participates in the management, for instance by having representatives on the board of trustees; whether the entity holds itself out to the public as secular or sectarian; whether the entity regularly includes prayer or other forms of worship in its activities; whether it includes religious instruction in its curriculum, to the extent it is an educational institution; and whether its membership is made up of coreligionists.

 

If you are already worried about a gay person suing to become a leader in your organization, then I suspect that holding up a fig leaf of some hastily thrown together religious organization is not going to be all that protective. You would be better off to go find an actual church to sponsor you.

[Stosh]

One does not need an "actual church" to have religious beliefs. The Constitution is supposed to be protecting my individual rights, not those of some "actual church" (whatever that means).

 

As society becomes more and more polarized, and people become more intolerant to those around them this decline will become more obvious.

[Peregrinator]

One does not need an "actual church" to have religious beliefs. The Constitution is supposed to be protecting my individual rights, not those of some "actual church" (whatever that means).

That's cute how you believe that those in power (of whatever party) have any respect for the Constitution.

[Stosh]

I guess I'll have to figure out a way to show dripping sarcasm with a new emoticon of some sort. I seem to be losing my touch.