Update On Adult Leadership Standards

[qwazse]

I apologize if I seemed to imply that Qwazse (I have trouble with the spelling too) was inviting anyone to leave. I just wanted to make it clear to everyone that they were still welcome. But I guess because I replied to Qwazse I can see how it had that appearance. That was not my intent at all.

New discovery about the forums: in other topics I have a "Thanks" button. Anyway, you all can just re-imagine that +1 as needed.

 

Definitely not inviting anyone to leave. (Won't do that until I see the same kinds of smiles on kids who participate in other scouting orgs.) But we have to acknowledge that some folks have been hanging on because National had this one consession to the "restrictive" camp. They now may find reason to be called elswhere. That's the thing about the "restrictives", They have a pretty solid formula for reproducing themselves wherever they land.

[NealOnWheels]

For those of you who are worried that national will leave chartering organizations on their own to defend lawsuits:

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT:

The Boy Scouts of America will defend and indemnify to the fullest extent allowed by law
any bona fide religious chartered organization against any claim or action contending
that the chartered organization’s good faith refusal to select a unit leader based upon
the religious principles of the chartered organization is in violation of the law.

[Cambridgeskip]

Why not say?  We all know what the other G's represent. 

 

The US SECDEF just ordered a review for how to integrate openly transgender members into service in the US Armed Services.  How many times have articles referenced Gates' role in ending DADT? 

 

Now that the BSA has created, or is about to create, a religious and non-religious class of units, it will create the crack Athiests need.  Along with the abandonment of that G as a requirement in the rest of the scouting world.

 

Sometimes the honorable thing to do is just say no.  Two saying come to mind.

 

- Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement

- If all your friends jumped off a bridge would you jump to?

 

 

No need to sweep it under the rug 'Skip. Atheists have made it clear that they are knocking on the same door.

 

In fact the ban runs paralell to the ACLU successfuly appealing that public facilities cannot sponsor BSA units. Lacking advise from non-religious CO's, the board entrenched with their religious base. (That's not entirely accurate. At the time, many public institutions here had morality clauses with which the membership policy meshed well.)

 

As others have mentioned, the board can operate by caveat. However, each of its moves since 1972 has not resulted in membership gains.

 

I don't actually mean atheists at all. The reason I didn't mention any particular change is because I don't know what that change will be.Honestly I don't. 

 

When I was cub age there was huge controversy when there was a gay kiss on TV in the UK. It was considered a massive issue, it was front page news. Now we have fully gay equality in a relatively short space of time. No one could have predicted that. Similarly until 1973 it was still legal in the UK to pay a woman a lower wage than a man for the same job. Jobs were openly advertised that way, one hourly rate for a man and a lower one for a woman. 6 years later we had a woman Prime Minister. No one predicted that one!

 

In another 30 years I have no doubt that there will be some other kind of massive change in society, the nature of which I can't predict and neither can anyone else.

 

Any organisation unable to adapt to it could find themselves in serious trouble.

[eagle77]

As my friends on the left are so fond of saying, your values are your values and you shouldn't try to force them on anybody else.  The fact that you chose to stay in spite of disagreeing with the policy has no bearing on the value systems and/or decisions of others.  Your understanding isn't required, just your tolerance for those with a different opinion.  Unless of course you are trying to force people to change their value systems.

 

See above. 

 

Plus, both of your arguments suffer from the assumptions that service to the BSA is the only way to serve boys and that the BSA's program is the only way to develop young men.  Both are false.

 

The forces of change have won the day and on July 28th those forces will need to stand and deliver.  Revolution is a funny thing. Once won, the hard work of leading begins.  Time will tell how that works out.

 

 I make no assumption as to BSA service as the only way to develop young men. Young men have have been developed for a long time without BSA, I just believe it is a good way to do it not the only way. I was only quoting the phrase "its all about the boys" that I have seen used on this forum by members on both side of the line. I was in scouting when the big issue was whether women could or should be part of Boy Scout program in positions as SM and ASM and many of those that insisted that we would be "feminizing" our young men or "women don't have the ability to help young boys become men".  I have no problem with one having their own type of value system in life, mine just keys more around "include" rather then "exclude"' A value that I credit to my time as Boy Scout and learning to live and lead my life by the scout oath and law. One thing for sure is I do respect anyone for having their own set of values whether they agree with mine is totally irrelevant.

 

  Revolution is a funny thing, and I'm sure there were colonists here that were loyal to England that said the same thing you did in 1776, well 239 years and counting. Not bad. Am I proud or do I agree with all that has gotten our nation to where we are today, not 100% that's for sure.

[Scouter99]

Come on, people.  The only agenda a gay leader has is to spend time with his or her son and to help other adult volunteers provide a great program for all of the boys- the same as the rest of us!

 

Gay SM Richard Halverson, 49 yrs old (17-yr-old son) http://documents.latimes.com/richard-stanley-halvorsen/

Gay ASM Harry Cramer, 19 yrs old http://documents.latimes.com/harry-cramer/

Gay ASM Ray Woodall, 30 yrs old http://documents.latimes.com/raymond-woodall/

 

A Perfect Place

New Orleans, Louisiana

October 1974

Boyle, Patrick (2013-07-22). Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution (Kindle Locations 1134-1138).  Kindle Edition.

Lewis Sialle listened to his friends and grew nervous. He was sitting among several men who, like himself, were gay, but a couple of those men also liked boys. As they talked about boys now, someone suggested forming a Boy Scout troop.

 

People create troops for all sorts of good reasons, but Sialle knew that the motive here was to "provide them with boys... for their sexual pleasure." He warned his friends that they shouldn't get involved with the Boy Scouts, because it was "an American institution and I knew there would be trouble." Raymond Woodall told Sialle he was paranoid.

 

That fall they helped create a troop at a local Presbyterian church. Many of the boys were just the type that Baden-Powell had hoped to reach. At one point, only four of the 18 troop members had fathers living at home. Their families were poor. Few of the parents had the time or desire to help run the troop. So Sialle's friends easily took control.

 

Woodall and another friend, Harry Cramer, became assistant Scoutmasters, while Richard Halverson became Scoutmaster. Sialle joined the troop committee and stayed nervous. The leaders quickly made Troop 137 a fun place for needy boys. "They went into the homes, talked to the parents, invited the young boys to become Scout members," says New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick. "They were very careful in selecting children who came from homes where they were in a great need of activities. They provided things for these children that their parents could never give them - bicycles, uniforms, trips."

 

They also introduced some boys to sex. Halverson, Woodall and Cramer routinely had sex with at least four of their Scouts, usually at the men's homes. They took pictures of their escapades. They teamed up with pedophiles [*attraction to someone over 13 is not pedophilia] on both coasts, swapping photos, stories, and sometimes boys. They turned the troop into a child sex ring with national connections.

 

Pictures are perhaps the most dangerous of all possessions for pedophiles, and the most coveted of all evidence for police. In case of arrest, pictures are irrefutable proof of abuse, and they invite child porn charges and heavy sentences. Most adults who have sex with children avoid memorializing the events on film, or hide the pictures well. Still, the pictures turn up in the oddest places. In 1977 a Colorado troop leader got in an accident and took his car to a garage for repair. The repairman found lurid photos of children in the car and called police. The Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster were arrested.

 

At the least, picture-takers usually use Polaroids, so they don't have to go someplace like Fotomat to develop the film. In August of 1976, Harry Cramer brought a roll of film to Fotomat.

 

Thus began the destruction of Troop 137. The workers who developed the roll quickly saw trouble - pictures of a 15-year-old boy having sex with two men [*attraction to someone over 13 is not pedophilia]. Fotomat called the police. The police got warrants to search the men's homes. There among the Scoutmaster handbooks they found magazines with such titles as "Naked Boyhood" and "Boys for Sale." They also found hundreds of pictures of nude boys and boys having sex, along with card files bearing the names and addresses of boys and of men who were interested in boys. Halverson, it turns out, kept "neat, orderly files." Those files got a lot of people in trouble: 17 men were eventually charged, including an Episcopal priest in Tennessee and a millionaire in Massachusetts. All four of the New Orleans men were convicted of sexual assault.

 

This became the first public relations disaster for the Boy Scouts stemming from sex abuse. The media covered the case heavily, with headlines referring to the "Scout Sex Case" and "Gay Scout Ring." Troop 137 disbanded. For years other troops in the area had trouble drawing and keeping Scouts.

 

One local Scout volunteer lamented the damage in a letter to his local newspaper: "It has been a most frustrating time for the great number of people involved with scouting in our area, as we've had to watch the other media groups here... malign this tremendously worthwhile character-building youth movement by the way in which they've handled the reporting of this matter. It seems to me they had to be able to see what they were doing to scouting."

 

Prosecutor Connick, a former Scout, tried easing public fear by explaining that "this was an isolated incident. People shouldn't use this as an example of what the Boy Scouts stand for."

 

Fittingly enough, this all happened at a Presbyterian church, whose leadership had been warned by the council that not enough was known about the prospective leaders. 

 

Check out this HBO series called "Vice" I think you could really relate to what is happening there on episode 10 season 3. They are definately your kind of people.

Check out this Showtime series called "Queer as Folk" which is celebrated for its groundbreaking portrayal of the real lives of gay men and as a touchstone in media depictions of gay people, in which a main plot line is a gay man's relationship with a 15-yr-old. 

 

 

The sex will begin soon.  The boys who are affected are as victimized by the activists as by the men who have sex with them; they're the sacrifice the activists were eager to make.

 

I won't be quitting BSA—someone who knows what he's doing will need to keep an eye on things more than ever.

Edited July 14, 2015 by Scouter99

[Joe Gillespie]

I honestly do not understand why BSA and so many posting here feel it is important for Scouting to permit homosexual adult leaders (or youth members for that matter). Assuming at best that LGBT persons represent 5 percent of the population, does this change in BSA policy represent a flood of new LGBT members to the program? Is the influx of new LGBT members really going to outweigh the flight of faithful families from various faith traditions who will no longer wish to be associated with BSA? Further, I think it's safe to assume that LGBT as a community is likely more secular than religious, as society at large has become more secular, and most world religions struggle with how to reconcile doctrine on homosexuality with being welcoming to LGBT churchgoers. Since Scouting supposedly has a foundation in a duty to God, I would expect the numbers of LGBT persons seeking membership to be diminutive at best. I remain very confused about what BSA expects to gain.  

Edited July 14, 2015 by Joe Gillespie

[eagle77]

 

 

Now that the BSA has created, or is about to create, a religious and non-religious class of units, it will create the crack Athiests need.  Along with the abandonment of that G as a requirement in the rest of the scouting world.

 

 

 

  Now this I totally disagree with. There are some religions out there that do not exclude gays and in fact welcome them to even serve within their group. Unless you are only willing to recognize those religions that believe only as you do.

[walk in the woods]

  Now this I totally disagree with. There are some religions out there that do not exclude gays and in fact welcome them to even serve within their group. Unless you are only willing to recognize those religions that believe only as you do.

Fair enough.  Substitute "Traditional and Progressive" or "Inclusive and Exclusive" or whatever words you like in my previous thought.  Regardless of the words the BSA has created two classes of units now.  The argument still holds.  For example, the FAQ said an American Legion post could still require SMs to be vets.  Well, there are straight vets, gay vets, and atheist vets.  Only two-thirds can be Scoutmasters?

Edited July 14, 2015 by walk in the woods

[Rick_in_CA]

I honestly do not understand why BSA and so many posting here feel it is important for Scouting to permit homosexual adult leaders (or youth members for that matter). Assuming at best that LGBT persons represent 5 percent of the population, does this change in BSA policy represent a flood of new LGBT members to the program? Is the influx of new LGBT members really going to outweigh the flight of faithful families from various faith traditions who will no longer wish to be associated with BSA? Further, I think it's safe to assume that LGBT as a community is likely more secular than religious, as society at large has become more secular, and most world religions struggle with how to reconcile doctrine on homosexuality with being welcoming to LGBT churchgoers. Since Scouting supposedly has a foundation in a duty to God, I would expect the numbers of LGBT persons seeking membership to be diminutive at best. I remain very confused about what BSA expects to gain.  

How about because this is the best way the BSA can follow it's own values? You do know that there are a lot of religious faiths that don't consider being homosexual a sin? There is a church (Episcopalian) not to far from where I live that has a gay minister. Is it fair for the BSA to tell a church like them that the man they chose as their minister is unfit to be a leader in their boy scout troop? That they can't follow their own religious teachings when picking their leaders? Yeah, great way to show "respect for other faiths" (a stated fundamental BSA value).

 

The BSA is explicitly not a conservative Christians only group (or even a Christians only group - see Trail Life USA for that), but unfortunately, many (yes - not all) conservative Christians scouters don't understand that (or they do, but don't care - "Respect your faith? Not if you disagree with mine.").

[eagle77]

Gay SM Richard Halverson, 49 yrs old (17-yr-old son) http://documents.latimes.com/richard-stanley-halvorsen/

Gay ASM Harry Cramer, 19 yrs old http://documents.latimes.com/harry-cramer/

Gay ASM Ray Woodall, 30 yrs old http://documents.latimes.com/raymond-woodall/

 

A Perfect Place

New Orleans, Louisiana

October 1974

Boyle, Patrick (2013-07-22). Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution (Kindle Locations 1134-1138).  Kindle Edition.

 

Fittingly enough, this all happened at a Presbyterian church, whose leadership had been warned by the council that not enough was known about the prospective leaders. 

 

No fittingly enough this happened over 30 years ago before BSA had the Guide to Safe Scouting and background checks.

 

Check out this Showtime series called "Queer as Folk" which is celebrated for its groundbreaking portrayal of the real lives of gay men and as a touchstone in media depictions of gay people, in which a main plot line is a gay man's relationship with a 15-yr-old. 

 

 

The sex will begin soon.  The boys who are affected are as victimized by the activists as by the men who have sex with them; they're the sacrifice the activists were eager to make.

 

I won't be quitting BSA—someone who knows what he's doing will need to keep an eye on things more than ever

 

Queer as Folk has not been produced since 2005, that was its last season. Besides that it is fiction something writers came up with. On the other hand "Vice" is current and up to date. It is also a documentary type show like 60 Minutes based on more fact then writers sitting and making up.

[sierracharliescouter]

I honestly do not understand why BSA and so many posting here feel it is important for Scouting to permit homosexual adult leaders (or youth members for that matter). Assuming at best that LGBT persons represent 5 percent of the population, does this change in BSA policy represent a flood of new LGBT members to the program? Is the influx of new LGBT members really going to outweigh the flight of faithful families from various faith traditions who will no longer wish to be associated with BSA? Further, I think it's safe to assume that LGBT as a community is likely more secular than religious, as society at large has become more secular, and most world religions struggle with how to reconcile doctrine on homosexuality with being welcoming to LGBT churchgoers. Since Scouting supposedly has a foundation in a duty to God, I would expect the numbers of LGBT persons seeking membership to be diminutive at best. I remain very confused about what BSA expects to gain.  

 

You are missing the large number of heterosexual progressives who, on principle, don't want their kids in a discriminatory organization. This includes some friends of mine, who I hope will now allow their kids to join our Pack with this policy change. 

[Horizon]

It happened, and we all knew it was coming. I have wanted local control ever since I learned how this all worked from the inside (i.e. once I went from a unit only volunteer to volunteering at higher levels). My church is open, I just wanted my faith respected.

 

Now I would like to request that those of you who think that you need to leave - reconsider. I will fight just as hard for your right to choose your own leaders as I did to let my unit choose its leaders. It is your right.

 

I also treasure and need your input. Please stay, please contribute, please assist. We need you, and the boys need you. This difference should not keep your from the campfire, and there is a space for you.

[eagle77]

Fair enough.  Substitute "Traditional and Progressive" or "Inclusive and Exclusive" or whatever words you like in my previous thought.  Regardless of the words the BSA has created two classes of units now.  The argument still holds.  For example, the FAQ said an American Legion post could still require SMs to be vets.  Well, there are straight vets, gay vets, and atheist vets.  Only two-thirds can be Scoutmasters?

 

  You do know that there are religions out there that do not view homosexuality as a sin? Well now these units, if they desire can allow gays to lead their units, those that still believe it shouldn't be are welcome to not allow it. To me its more a point of respect then of creating different"classes". Not to be smart here but where I come from two thirds is more inclusive then just one third. Now as I have said in an earllier post I have no problem with what value system you choose to live by, but please don't tell me that your system is the only "right" system either. I am just couriious as to the points of view by other scouters who feel differently. There is no "right" or "wrong" simply one opinion versus another. Like I said my value system is based on the scout oath and law that learned as a Boy Scout, and nowhere in that does it say that only people that are believers or even believe as I do deserve to be treated any different then the other.

[eagle77]

It happened, and we all knew it was coming. I have wanted local control ever since I learned how this all worked from the inside (i.e. once I went from a unit only volunteer to volunteering at higher levels). My church is open, I just wanted my faith respected.

 

Now I would like to request that those of you who think that you need to leave - reconsider. I will fight just as hard for your right to choose your own leaders as I did to let my unit choose its leaders. It is your right.

 

I also treasure and need your input. Please stay, please contribute, please assist. We need you, and the boys need you. This difference should not keep your from the campfire, and there is a space for you.

 

 Couldn't agree with you more.

[Stosh]

You are missing the large number of heterosexual progressives who, on principle, don't want their kids in a discriminatory organization. This includes some friends of mine, who I hope will now allow their kids to join our Pack with this policy change. 

 

And then there's those that don't want their children in a hypocritical organization as well.  One can't have it both ways.  Sitting on the fence only keeps one from committing one way or the other.  However, to allow means they are no longer on the fence, but will offer token gestures to try and keep those others in the game.