What does one need to do to avoid being proselytized to at district-level events?

[Eagledad]

13 minutes ago, seattlecyclone said:

Nah, those folks excluded themselves. They decided they didn't want to associate with an organization that would have openly gay people as members. They could have decided otherwise. This is not equivalent to the BSA telling people they can't join. LDS individuals who want to join are still welcome to do so.

What many folks don't understand about the LDS is that scouting is part of their youth program. For them, the doctrine of scouting is an official doctrine of their church. Or so I'm told. So, they had no option but to back out. We had several LDS familes in our troop.

 Many churches are struggling with the gay issue for the same reason. It's one thing to accept homosexuality as a sin among sins and still love and respect your neighbor, but to accept the sin as a doctrine of normalcy challenges how they can accept one part of God's doctrine of sin, but not others. In that context, it's not about respect or fairness of loving your neighbors, it's about turning away from their god.

Barry

[seattlecyclone]

1 hour ago, Eagledad said:

Things only got messy when adult gays nationally wanted to be registered role models.

You speak as though they were wrong to ask for that privilege. One of my pack's assistant Cubmasters is himself an alumnus of the pack. He continued on to a local troop and earned his Eagle rank. He's everything anyone should want in a Scout leader. Also he's gay. He and his husband (who holds no uniformed leadership position) contribute a good deal of time and effort to helping the pack go.

What kind of lesson would we be teaching their sons to say their dads aren't fit to be Scout leaders, based on nothing more than who is in their family? It's not a positive lesson, that's for sure. Maybe it's a lesson that is perfectly in line with the teachings of your church, but it's very much contrary to what I learned in mine.

[Mrjeff]

Hard line opinion:  if someone wants to join a baseball team,  they agree to play by the rules, period.  If someone wants to join Scouting then play by the rules.  The BSA is a private organization that requires an application and a membership fee.  Its not something that everyone has a right to join so follow the rules or go find something else to do.  To allow everybody to be a member infringes on the rights of those who become members BECAUSE OF THE RULES.  I have never seen a club that changes the rules to please everybody and make everybody happy without regards to the desires of the members.  The more that things like the Scout Oath and Law are interpreted to fit individual needs, the less value they have.  This in turn devalues everything else, not only for the participants, but also for their predesors. 

[Eagledad]

1 hour ago, seattlecyclone said:

You speak as though they were wrong to ask for that privilege. One of my pack's assistant Cubmasters is himself an alumnus of the pack. He continued on to a local troop and earned his Eagle rank. He's everything anyone should want in a Scout leader. Also he's gay. He and his husband (who holds no uniformed leadership position) contribute a good deal of time and effort to helping the pack go

Strange, I just gave a similar example of our experience. We also had several atheist Eagle dads who gave their time without a uniform. 

Scouting is about teaching the values that lead to character and integrity. Character and integrity are earned by the actions given towards other people, not actions received. 

1 hour ago, seattlecyclone said:

What kind of lesson would we be teaching their sons to say their dads aren't fit to be Scout leaders, based on nothing more than who is in their family? It's not a positive lesson, that's for sure. Maybe it's a lesson that is perfectly in line with the teachings of your church, but it's very much contrary to what I learned in mine.

Fit? What is that? Strange you pick out one behavior. Unit leaders are challenged with many. Our unit asked several adults to step back because of their alcoholism. Safety as much as anything, but the scouts knew what they were doing. We had to asked several known abusers to step away. Do you not think we didn’t consider how their son and grandson would feel? One leader had mental illness and another had a foul language problem. All these parents (some women and grandparents) are respected by the community and family, but were not role models our parents wanted for their kids.

I can assure you that these situations (any situation) was not taken without a great deal struggle of doing the right thing. They were handled with the utmost discretion to protect everyone from judgment as much we could. 

That was a different time and maybe all of the adults in those situations would be considered adult leader material today, but we all have life experiences with all kinds of behaviors and to judge who is role model worthy for other parents kids out by themselves in the woods requires a great deal of humility and courage.

I’m an engineer by trade and I know of several scouts who admitted the choose the field of engineering because of my influence. I don’t recall talking much about engineering, but Behavior is very powerful and can change and influence the dreams of those around us. We ought to be choosy.

Barry

Edited April 28, 2023 by Eagledad

[Mrjeff]

I agree with everything you say.  But, Scouting is not a universal platform for teaching the lessons of life.  There are many fine organizations that do the same things without Scoutings specific guidelines.  If anyone feels uncomfortable following these guidelines they are free to go elsewhere.   Its foolish to change the rules to meet the needs of the individual;  it's up to the participant to follow the rules.

[KublaiKen]

Which is why Pop Warner still uses the Flying Wedge and disallows the forward pass.

[seattlecyclone]

50 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Strange, I just gave a similar example of our experience. We also had several atheist Eagle dads who gave their time without a uniform. 

Scouting is about teaching the values that lead to character and integrity. Character and integrity are earned by the actions given towards other people, not actions received. 

Yes, you mentioned some parents serving without a uniform, as though limiting their participation due to their religious beliefs or sexuality is a perfectly normal and justifiable thing to do. Such limitation is soon to include a prohibition on attending Scouts BSA camping trips.

 

46 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Fit? What is that? Strange you pick out one behavior. Unit leaders are challenged with many. Our unit asked several adults to step back because of their alcoholism. Safety as much as anything, but the scouts knew what they were doing. We had to asked several known abusers to step away. Do you not think we didn’t consider how their son and grandson would feel? One leader had mental illness and another had a foul language problem. All these parents (some women and grandparents) are respected by the community and family, but were not role models our parents wanted for their kids.

Removing a leader for untreated substance abuse disorder is not equivalent to removing a leader for homosexuality. One is something that is a potential danger to youth. The other is not. I would hope the children of these people understand the difference.

27 minutes ago, KublaiKen said:

Which is why Pop Warner still uses the Flying Wedge and disallows the forward pass.

Exactly. One mark of a good leader is to examine whether the rules in place are facilitating the goals of your organization and its members: not just its current members, but the next generation of members you'll need to recruit to keep the organization alive going forward.

That's something the organization seemed to be uniquely bad at during my own youth. Its continued insistence on excluding gay people gave the organization an extremely bad reputation outside of the most socially conservative circles, a reputation that it is still suffering from today.

So yes, rules are rules. When you find such a large portion of your membership uninterested in strictly enforcing a given rule, and a large portion of your potential membership turned off because of that rule's existence, maybe it's time to evaluate whether it's still serving its purpose.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

1 hour ago, Mrjeff said:

Hard line opinion:  if someone wants to join a baseball team,  they agree to play by the rules, period.  If someone wants to join Scouting then play by the rules.  The BSA is a private organization that requires an application and a membership fee.  Its not something that everyone has a right to join so follow the rules or go find something else to do. 

That's also why BSA should follow the WOSM rules and guidelines that it has committed to, which includes 

"Scouting reflects the societies in which it exists and actively works to welcome all individuals without distinction of any kind. This diversity should not only be reflected in the membership, but also in the methods and programmes used within the Movement."

So, we should welcome all individuals without distinctions of any kind.

If the BSA absolutely cannot abide this, it should exit WOSM and leave the field free for another organization to become the WOSM-aligned NSO in the US.

Scouting is so much more than BSA, whether all its members think about that or not. The BSA is not free to define scouting by itself. We have signed up to follow the WOSM constitution, which we also have input on in a democratic process. I understand that this may not be how many here emotionally relate to the scouting movement, but if we're saying to follow the rules of the organization you sought to join then that logically includes following WOSM's rules.

[KublaiKen]

I also hope strict adherence to rules would apply to any forthcoming directives from the BSA concerning the use of Native American traditions. 

[FormerCubmaster]

On 4/28/2023 at 12:21 PM, Eagledad said:

What many folks don't understand about the LDS is that scouting is part of their youth program. For them, the doctrine of scouting is an official doctrine of their church. Or so I'm told. So, they had no option but to back out. We had several LDS familes in our troop.

 Many churches are struggling with the gay issue for the same reason. It's one thing to accept homosexuality as a sin among sins and still love and respect your neighbor, but to accept the sin as a doctrine of normalcy challenges how they can accept one part of God's doctrine of sin, but not others. In that context, it's not about respect or fairness of loving your neighbors, it's about turning away from their god.

Barry

From the LDS standpoint—I don’t know that I’d phrase it *quite* that way.  The LDS stayed in the BSA when it was announced that it would admit LGBTQ boys; it was when it announced that it would admit LGBTQ leaders that the church drew the line.  Even then, I think this was less of a “red line” in and of itself than a straw that broke the camel’s back after a number of perceived problems and slights including:

—perceived shabby treatment by the BSA national leadership, which had apparently promised the LDS that certain agenda items would *not* be brought up at board meetings that the LDS delegates couldn’t attend and then rammed those items through in the absence of the LDS delegates;

—a perceived pattern of dishonesty by BSA national leadership by, for example, assuring GSUSA that the BSA wouldn’t start accepting girls and then doing it anyways;

—a resultant inability to trust BSA National’s assurances that Mormon units would still be able to set the conditions for membership and/or leadership in their own organizations;

—the BSA’s long-standing practice of treating the LDS like a cash cow (many councils would impose quotas on LDS troops for the annual Friends of Scouting drive, knowing that—when push came to shove—Mormon bishops would ask their congregants to open up their checkbooks, and that Mormon congregants would pay up);

—perceived BSA bloat, financial profligacy, and mismanagement (for example, the BSA national leadership were paid over ten times the annual salary of the LDS Church’s global leadership, whose salary is a little less than your average council executive.  And how on earth could shirts, patches, and booklets be THAT expensive?!?);

—the overall financial costs of the Church’s BSA involvement, especially as compared to the relatively low costs of the Church’s in-house program for its elementary- and teenaged girls (and uncomfortable questions about why the Church was spending so much more on its boys than on its girls); and especially in conjunction with the perception that the Church’s programs for girls were just plain more effective at engaging and retaining youth into adulthood than the BSA was.

—with the benefit of hindsight over the past 5 years, I wonder whether the Church felt it was going to be expected to subsidize claims against the BSA arising from non-LDS units, claimants, and/or perpetrators.

—broad frustration with council red tape and nit-picking of local programs and the incessant recruiting demands for numbers, numbers, numbers; and the way local initiatives were frequently stymied by council-level naysayers.  It was a popular sentiment among den leaders that the council was where good ideas went to die.

I think the LDS and BSA could have worked through the LGBTQ issue if there was a modicum of trust among the stakeholders, and if BSA involvement was still fundamentally “working” for the LDS Church generally.  But, those core elements just weren’t there anymore.  

Edited June 14, 2023 by FormerCubmaster