Scouts evicted over gay descrimination

[CaptainChewbacca]

As far as I know, you don't have to believe in the Judeo-Christian God to be a scout, you just have to believe in A god. Just seven years ago when I was still in scouts, BSA had religious awards for every faith and denomination from Anglican to Zoroastrian. We said the pledge every meeting, and we'd pray before group meals. I can't recall if we prayed to close meetings, but we might've on occasion. They also had an optional wednsday church service at Scout Camp that I went to, but out of a camp of 500 boys, probably fewer than 60 went.

As for gays in scouts, there were a couple of guys in my troop who were rather light in the hiking boots, but as long as nobody made an issue of it or made out with other scouts, nobody cared. I'd guess a surprising percentage of eagle scouts are gay, truth be told.

[The_Saint]

Scout's out here still have "... do my duty to my God..." in the Scout Promise but I haven't met anyone yet who take's it seriously enough to the point that everyone gets checked for "faith".

Something that surprised me was that while tweaking things to be less military-like (apparently it's bad pr) and more friendly to non-scouts they made the "... duty to the Queen of Australia..." bit which immediately follows the duty to my God bit, optional. You can choose whether you want to be a republican but not whether you're an atheist... irony to that is that the only times I've heard people change the line is when they drop the duty to God bit and leave in the duty to the Queen bit.

[Flagg]

They effectively turned the "Morally Straight" part of the oath into "no fags or atheists". Which I find rather amusing since that was never how it was used until the issue came up.

[Flagg]

Ghetto Edit:

I would have quit scouts had I been a member when that ruling came down. I never had a problem as a pretty open atheist in my troop, aside from the fundies and a few Mormons giving me shit, which I never let phase me. But I quit a few years prior to that due to too much fucking politics with the parents getting involved in places it had no business. I actually had a Bush/Gore pulled on me when I ran for 'Senior Patrol Leader' and the vote was actually redone based on some bullshit reason when it turned out I had won. I was told flat out by several people that some parents leaned on their kids to vote for the other guy because I wasn't particularly well liked by some of the more hardcore parents. Plus I was a smartass.

But when that SCOTUS ruling came down, I did what alot of former scouts did and mailed my uniform and badges to Scout Headquarters in protest.

I'm a pretty low-key atheist when it comes to my place of employement, but I'll be damned if I'm going to observe a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in my recreational activities.

[FSTargetDrone]

The Mormon connection doesn't shock me at all, as I look back. Like some others here, the Troop I was in was very tolerant and liberal; no shit was given over God, or sexuality, or even me not reciting the Pledge(Long story).

Yeah, it shouldn't surprises me, especially these days. It's just looking back to when I was in scouts in the 1980s, it never seemed overtly religious.

That said, the larger events we attended got progressively more and more religious as I went through my tenure. From mandatory religious services on Sunday at the week-longs(Ask me, sometime, how I got lost, wound up at the Catholic Mass, and nearly choked on the little wafer things.), to more and more overt religious displays, let me tell you, it got uncomfortable.

Whoa, wait a sec. They made you (as definitely a non-Catholic) take Communion (the little wafer things)?? Or did you take Communion because everyone else was nd you didn't want to stick out? When I was in Catholic School , the teachers and priests made a point of how non-Catholics were not supposed to receive Communion, ever until you were baptized into the Church as a Catholic. Communion is a very important tenet of Catholicism.

[Surlethe]

Two of the saddest and most frustrating things about the BSA are its refusal to admit openly gay leaders and its insistence on making belief in God necessary for scouts. The best thing is, the tactics on the latter issue are exactly the same as the tactics of right-wingers who try to shoehorn God into the government: make vague generalizations on morality and guote Lord Baden-Powell like there's no tomorrow. Last I heard, there's a new book out with quotes from B-P, some of which affirm this belief that religion should be at the heart of scouting: the other scoutmasters in my troop were quoting it at our last campout.

Does anyone know for sure where the actual "birthplace" of the Boy Scouts of America is? ... When I was in Boy Scouts, we all heard the story of how Baden Powell was indeed the inspiration for W. D. Boyce who then founded scouting in the US. I've never heard that Philadelphia had any special connection to Scouting in terms of founding. I believe the first BSA office opened in New York City?

According to my Scout Handbook, London is where a scout helped Boyce find his way through the fog to his destination; after refusing payment, he vanished into the mist. This inspired Boyce to bring Scouting to America. So, I'd say the birthplace of the BSA is London.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Ghetto Edit:

I would have quit scouts had I been a member when that ruling came down. I never had a problem as a pretty open atheist in my troop, aside from the fundies and a few Mormons giving me shit, which I never let phase me. But I quit a few years prior to that due to too much fucking politics with the parents getting involved in places it had no business. I actually had a Bush/Gore pulled on me when I ran for 'Senior Patrol Leader' and the vote was actually redone based on some bullshit reason when it turned out I had won. I was told flat out by several people that some parents leaned on their kids to vote for the other guy because I wasn't particularly well liked by some of the more hardcore parents. Plus I was a smartass.

But when that SCOTUS ruling came down, I did what alot of former scouts did and mailed my uniform and badges to Scout Headquarters in protest.

I'm a pretty low-key atheist when it comes to my place of employement, but I'll be damned if I'm going to observe a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in my recreational activities.

Back in the late 90s when I joined my old troop on my first meeting, my neighbor who was our scoutmaster made a trimphant pronouncement that the courts, by the grace of God had granted them victory over the gays, girls and godless and upheld their discrminatory policy. This set the tone for my scouting career. While "Brother Dixon" despite his prejudice would never let anyone actually be mistreated, that was not the case for my troop when I graduated into the older troop.

I was Hazed out of my troop. I was an obviously gay(though hadn't come out to myself yet) non-mormon. I got everything from dirt clods in the face to my tent being collapsed in the middle of the night and carried into the lake with me in it. The new scoutmaster didnt do a damn thing for two reasons

1) The prime instigator of the hazing had his last name and Y chromosome

2) My non-mormon rights were not morally considerable.

Frankly, even if the courts rule in our favor, the mormons will not follow the court's orders. They didnt care about the rights of non-mormon pioneers in Mountain Meadows, they continue to turn a blind eye to the forced marriage and expulsion of teenagers in their state, they completely ignore the separation of church and state in Utah. They have so much power within Scouting that they will find a way to circumvent the courts ruling, even if it takes torturing a 13 year old atheist.