Boy Scouts Allow Gays

[Guest 6.8 AR]

While there will undoubtedly be some children who continue to make fun of gay scouts, I don't think it will be nearly as prominent as some may think. The younger generations are far more accepting and tolerant of gays. Like it or not, it's obviously becoming more mainstream by the day. They are seeing more openly gay students in their schools and circle of friends, on TV, in society in general. Remember, not every part of the country has the same deep-rooted history of prejudice and discrimination as the south. We sometimes get caught up in our own little bubble and forget there's a whole other world out there.

Put on the jake brake for a moment, please. Now you're saying the south has culpability, or that I live in the south. Go

live in Philly for a while and let me know what you think. Go in any region of this country and tell me with a straight face

it's worse here with some factual evidence. People extend bias, or discrimination, for many more reasons than you

may realize. That doesn't mean it is bad, or it is illegal discrimination. If you get hurt by the crowd you are around, you

can always find another crowd. That's my point about the gays, and anyone who wants to force his or her way into

another's organization.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

So if I think gay boys should have never been dismissed from BSA in the first place (and therefore have no problem with their decision to change their policy) I'm just a victim of gay/the left's propaganda? ;)  :dropjaw:

If they out their sexual leanings, sure. The organization is not a sex or social club for them to go join. That

doesn't mean gays shouldn't be allowed if they keep their mouths shut about sexuality.

 

Robert, there are some things best left unsaid in a lot of situations. Politeness and courtesy apply so that others

may learn and enjoy life. Gayness is about sexuality. If they want to open the door for their sexuality in a club or

organization not intended for that kind of behavior, they should look elsewhere, instead of tearing down something

they no right to, or business being around.

 

Your premise is based on the belief that the Boy Scouts are the culprits, at least that's what I'm seeing.

 

I don't buy that.

[TripleDigitRide]

That wasn't my intent. My point was that the BSA has proven its willingness to be a discriminatory organization in the past, yet they survived the changes of the times. I doubt this ordeal will be no different.

No, the only thing it proved was it's willingness to be forced by outside political factions to bend over to
political correctness and further erode one's rights for another's. Private organizations, by their nature,
are discriminatory. Now, if you want to call that bad, I won't waste the time to argue. Go try to join the Belle
Meade Country Club. Discrimination is also found in other types of organizations like the Sons of the
American Revolution, which I am eligible to be a member of. Exclusions of groups are acceptible and are
discriminatory.

By the way you used the word "discriminatory", you make it all bad. That takes years of hearing crap and
believing it, without even realizing it. The word bias is completely discriminatory.

Words have meaning.

Yes, I was using the word in its broad sense. I figured those of us in this conversation would understand what inwas getting at.

And last I heard, the Belle Meade Country Club only recently accepted its first token black member. Oh, how the times are a changin'.

Does it always have to be a matter of caving to political pressure or correctness? Can't it just possibly be that people simply change their mind or views on any given subject? Does a person or group who change their opinion on a subject automatically make them a lesser person, or only if they don't coincide with your way of thinking on a subject you are passionate about?

[TripleDigitRide]

 

While there will undoubtedly be some children who continue to make fun of gay scouts, I don't think it will be nearly as prominent as some may think. The younger generations are far more accepting and tolerant of gays. Like it or not, it's obviously becoming more mainstream by the day. They are seeing more openly gay students in their schools and circle of friends, on TV, in society in general. Remember, not every part of the country has the same deep-rooted history of prejudice and discrimination as the south. We sometimes get caught up in our own little bubble and forget there's a whole other world out there.
 

Put on the jake brake for a moment, please. Now you're saying the south has culpability, or that I live in the south. Go
live in Philly for a while and let me know what you think. Go in any region of this country and tell me with a straight face
it's worse here with some factual evidence. People extend bias, or discrimination, for many more reasons than you
may realize. That doesn't mean it is bad, or it is illegal discrimination. If you get hurt by the crowd you are around, you
can always find another crowd. That's my point about the gays, and anyone who wants to force his or her way into
another's organization.

 

I'm simply basing MY opinion on MY life experiences. I lived up north for 18 years, the south for 18 year, and have done a whole lot of traveling. I don't have quite the years under my belt as you do, so there's always a possibility that my views on any given subject will change between now and then.

I'm a fairly hard-headed person who has some conviction. I'd like to think I'm a better person than to allow a group of people who I have little in common to brainwash me into being their pawn so I can carry out their dirty work. It appears you think otherwise.

Edited May 27, 2013 by TripleDigitRide

[RobertNashville]

This is from one website I found that, I cannot attest to its accuracy but even while written with a decided slant it seems to present a fairly accurate picture of when the policy of excluding gay boys was established; a policy I submit should never have existed at all and which I'm glad to see changed.
 
 
A Brief History of the Boy Scouts of America (how we got where we are today)

The Boy Scouts of America was first incorporated in 1910, and in its early years tried to pitch as wide a tent as possible. To some extent, this inclusiveness stemmed from the need to expand its membership base in order to win exclusive rights to the Boy Scouts name (the Hearst newspaper chain was planning a rival organization at the same time). But financial imperatives dovetailed nicely with ideological ones: The BSA's founders were concerned by a perceived crisis of youth caused in part by a burgeoning immigrant population, urban poverty, and the broader moral perils of modernity. One BSA elder complained that the nation was suffering from "City rot" and described American adolescents as "a lot of flat-chested cigarette smokers, with shaky nerves and a doubtful vitality." Scouting would train these youths - in the words of the national charter granted to the BSA by Congress in 1916 - in the "patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues" necessary for an enlightened citizenry. To become a truly national institution - as well as one dedicated to a nationalistic ideal - the BSA appreciated that it needed a representative membership.
 
In that vein, the organization emphasized uniformity, middle-class values, and diversified outreach. Foreign-language troops were discouraged; a Committee on Americanization edited theScout Law to remove references to class conflict inherited from its British antecedent; and in 1919 the BSA's Fifth Avenue office hired a field director to establish troops in the under-represented South and West. And though in the 1920s the BSA leadership tilted rightward (in 1919 the BSA's executive secretary suggested that scout-training might prevent Bolshevism), headquarters forbade any explicit political involvement and settled for an aggressive, ethnically neutral American chauvinism.
 
If today the BSA seems mired in a controversy over religious principle, in its earlier years the organization avoided any such denominational strife. Scouting in France, where Catholics, Protestants, and secularists had split into their own programs, was a sound warning of the alternative. And so, though the BSA was initially linked closely to the Protestant YMCA, it espoused a strict ecumenism based on a vaguely articulated but potent American deism. The BSA's commitment to religious pluralism was clearly spelled out in its 1917 "Declaration of Religious Principle": "The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no boy can grow into the best kind of citizenship without recognizing his obligation to God.... The Boy Scouts of America, therefore, recognizes the religious element in the training of a boy, but it is absolutely non-sectarian in its attitude toward that training."
 
In fact, at first the BSA's efforts to transcend religious and ethnic particularism scared off some conservative denominations, such as Lutherans, Catholics, and Mormons, according David Macleod's Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners. But assimilationist pressures soon won these groups over, and by 1921 Catholics boasted the third-most troops of any denomination. For the Mormons, participation in the Boy Scouts became a way to convince suspicious mainline denominations of their Americanism. (By 1913 Scouting had become the official youth program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.) The BSA, writes Macleod, favored a "'civil religion' - not as a prophetic faith, standing in judgment upon actual American practices, but as a celebration of the American way of life." With its good works on the home front during both world wars (during World War I, Scouts sold more than $350 million in war bonds and distributed some 20 million government flyers), the Boy Scouts became one of the chief symbols of American patriotism; by 1955 the group could claim nearly 4.2 million members. And if the nation's living rooms had continued to look like those on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post, membership probably would have climbed steadily and with little contest.
 
That was not to be. The Boy Scouts as we currently know it, as an actively conservative body, emerged from the 1960s, a decade that challenged its institutional essence, its code of discipline, proud conformity, and devotion to country. Suddenly, it was no longer 'hip' to wear the khaki uniform. In desperation, the Cub Scouts removed the pledge "To be Square" from its Promise, while the Boy Scouts wondered aloud, in the words of a 1968 survey it commissioned, "Is Scouting In Tune with the Times?" Concerned that the answer might be "no," in 1972 the BSA revised its official Handbook. Sections on canoeing and rope-lashing were replaced with passages on urban hiking, drug abuse, and public speaking, and the organization made a concerted effort to recruit more minorities. But these efforts at relevance did little to correct stagnating membership, which declined for the first time in 1969 and plummeted in the early '70s; the Boy Scouts lost nearly one-third of its participants between 1973 and 1980. So the national leadership reverted to the old formula, issuing another Handbook revision in 1979 that returned the emphasis to camping skills and outdoor activities.
 
But as the organization rededicated itself to whittling and knot-tying, it also began to orient itself in the contemporary political landscape and to assert itself as a combatant in the culture war. Previously, the Boy Scouts had maintained a decorous silence about sexuality; according to the 1972 Scoutmaster's Handbook, Scoutmasters should "not undertake to instruct Scouts, in any formalized manner, in the subject of sex and family life.... t is not construed to be Scouting's proper area." Some of this was the residual prudishness of the organization's Edwardian founders. But the Boy Scouts also did not want to isolate the more conservative religious denominations that sponsored troops, who (ironically, given their current insistence that the BSA explicitly endorse certain sexual norms) worried that any official BSA position on sexuality would impinge on their own efforts at moral education. So, as with religion and politics, except for a few perfunctory references, the BSA was happy to leave the topic of sex to a boy's parents or clergyman.
 
To be sure, this official silence frequently cloaked unofficial discrimination. As the BSA pointed out almost giddily in its Supreme Court brief, until 1979 homosexual sodomy was a criminal offense in New Jersey, the state whose 1991 antidiscrimination laws formed the basis for gay Assistant Scoutmaster James Dale's Supreme Court challenge. Moreover, since its founding, the BSA was plagued by fears that scout leaders might molest their young charges, and avowed homosexuals were considered the most likely to do so. As James Tarr, the chief scout executive in the late '70s, recently recounted to Rolling Stone, "If you had a person you knew was a homosexual, you would confront them, and they would resign quietly."
 
But precisely because such homophobia was informal, other troops were free to interpret the Scouts' principles as consistent with a progressive world-view. Looking back on his days as a scout in New Jersey in the '40s and as a professional district executive for the BSA in Long Island in the '50s, David Napp, a retired Connecticut book salesman, acknowledges that some of his co-workers were probably gay. But "the issue never really came up in all the years I was in scouting as a boy or as a leader." In 1993, after the Boy Scouts discovered that Napp himself was homosexual - he claims he was not yet publicly out of the closet - he was dismissed from the organization. Napp now views his early years in scouting nostalgically: "[E]ven in the '30s, [the BSA] was really open to all boys.... We had boys who were fat, boys who were clods, boys who were nerds, we had black kids." Mike Montalvo, a scout in the late '60s in Dallas, concurs, recalling that in his troop it was generally known that one of his Scoutmasters' sons, also in the troop, was gay. "It was something that was known, but it wasn't talked about."
 
But amid the cultural conflict of the '70s, such silence became untenable. The gay rights movement began to demand a response to the discrimination that the Boy Scouts tacitly allowed, and several high-profile cases of child abuse by scout leaders inflamed the national leadership's homophobia. (Especially devastating was the 1977 trial of a group of New Orleans scout leaders who formed a troop to serve as a pedophiliac sex ring.) And so, in 1978, the national organization offered its first official, if barely publicized, disavowal of homosexuality: The president and chief Scout executive notified the organization's executive committee that the BSA does "not believe that homosexuality and leadership in Scouting are appropriate." The following year, for the first time, the BSA insinuated sexual politics into the 1979 Handbook. Whereas the Handbook had previously associated "morally straight" (a phrase from the Scout Oath) with respect for others, it now invoked heterosexuality: "When you live up to the trust of fatherhood your sex life will fit into God's wonderful plan of creation."
 
That same year brought another symbolic affirmation of this realignment: After a quarter-century in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the BSA moved its headquarters to Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Ostensibly, the BSA moved for lower rents and the convenient location near a major airport, but many saw it as part of a larger demographic and cultural redefinition. During the group's membership skid in the '70s - which was most pronounced in the Northeast - enrollment remained steady only in the Rocky Mountain region, where numbers were buoyed by the steady participation of 250,000 Mormons, whose percentage in the organization quadrupled from 1920 to 1980, to nearly 20 percent.
 
It was as if the BSA had decided that the terrain it had previously staked out - that broad national consensus - was suddenly uninhabitable and chose to decamp to the narrower territory of the traditionalists instead. So, even in 1986, when the Boy Scouts, citing a study of convicted child molesters, admitted that avowed homosexuals were no more dangerous than heterosexuals, they still rejected gays, pointing to the threat they posed to the traditional family. By 1991 the BSA had retreated so far from its big-tent roots that, when a California appellate court struck down the complaint of a gay Berkeley Eagle Scout who was rejected as a Scoutmaster, Scouting officials could explain, "We are a private organization aimed at traditional families." A few months later, the BSA's national spokesman elaborated: "We're not saying that Scouting values are for every person in society to live by." That same year those traditional values were further clarified when, with a bit of exegetical legerdemain, the BSA declared that homosexuality not only conflicted with the Scout Oath's injunction to be "morally straight" but also with the ideal of "cleanliness" featured in the Scout Law.
 
These explicit policies have made the Boy Scouts a safe haven for the conservative, centralized denominations that were once wary of it. The Church of Latter-day Saints now sponsors more troops than any other single institution. In fact, religious bodies now sponsor 65 percent of all troops, compared with just over 40 percent 15 years ago. And, according to some observers of the BSA's bureaucracy, the real clout within the organization now lies not with the national executive board, made up mostly of corporate executives, but with the relationships committee, which comprises representatives from all the major sponsoring institutions and which is dominated by religious groups. As Chuck Wolfe, a former member of the national executive board, told The Advocate magazine last year, "The real driving force is the relationships committee.... That's where the money comes from."
 
And, indeed, a significant part of that money comes from the Mormons. This grants the Church of Latter-day Saints substantial leverage with the national leadership. As one scout leader told Newsweek this year, "There is an unadulterated fear that [the Mormons are] going to bail out, that they're going to start their own program." The Mormons have invoked their power in the current controversy, threatening to withdraw their 412,000 boys if gay scout leaders are allowed to participate. "[T]he Scouting Movement as now constituted will cease to exist," Von G. Keetch, attorney for the Church of Latter-day Saints, threatened in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court last year, suggesting that other conservative religious denominations might follow the Mormons' lead.
 
Liberal groups within the Boy Scouts have countered the BSA's increasing identification with the religious right by invoking the organization's ecumenical past. As University of California at Davis Professor Jay Mechling writes in the soon-to-be-published On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, "To maintain the position that homosexuality is immoral amounts to preferring some religions over others on this matter." The BSA "is acting like a church and is departing from the founders' principles." In fact, in an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court, a number of more liberal denominations (including the United Methodist Church, Reform Judaism, and the Episcopal Diocese of Newark) pointed out that they - along with governmental sponsors - represent nearly 60 percent of all troops. "Contrary to [the BSA's] assertions ... our boys and young men do not participate in the Boy Scouts for the purpose of expressing the view that gay boys and men are immoral," they wrote. "It is our boys and young men that the BSA seeks to exclude from our Scout troops." This January the Union of American Hebrew Congregations - Reform Judaism's governing body - called on its congregants to withdraw their children from Boy Scout troops, stating that the BSA's position is "incompatible with our consistent belief that every individual - regardless of his or her sexual orientation - is created in the image of God."
But perhaps no religious group has challenged the Boy Scouts' fundamentalism as vigorously as the Unitarian Universalists, a progressive denomination with some 217,000 members in North America. In 1992, in protest over the BSA's position on homosexuality, the Unitarians withdrew as an official sponsor, though individual churches still maintained troops. Then, in 1998, the BSA refused to rubber-stamp the "Religion in Life Award," the Unitarians' version of the decoration given to scouts by their sponsoring church based on the fulfillment of certain religious obligations. Historically the Boy Scouts have deferred to the religious institutions in the creation and conferring of the award. But, in this case, they objected to the inclusion, in the award's instruction manual, of material spelling out the Unitarians' "ongoing concern regarding the homophobic and discriminatory attitudes of the [BSA's] national leadership." A BSA spokesman claimed that the language "was just not consistent with Scouting's values, particularly regarding the commitment to duty to God and traditional family values." The president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Reverend John Buehrens (who was himself a Life Scout), disagrees. He believes the BSA simply "knuckled under to political pressure by those who pay the bills." Many Unitarian leaders, however, believing that scouting was worth saving, handed out the award anyway, without authorization.
 
Which begs the question: Is scouting worth the fight? The answer is yes. For, even in its tarnished state, the Boy Scouts does bring together boys from diverse economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, providing, in Robert Putnam's terms, "bridging social capital." Just witness the quadrennial National Jamboree, where scouts from Massachusetts and scouts from Utah fished, traded badges, and worked and prayed together.
Until society, and the Boy Scouts with it, comes to a consensus about the equality of gays and lesbians, liberals should work to decentralize the BSA - allowing different troops to define their own moral and sexual rules, as they effectively did for most of the organization's history. As Jay Mechling writes, "[T]he Boys Scouts of America - that is, the legal corporation and the bureaucrats working in the office buildings of the national office and the council offices - is not the 'real' Boy Scouts in the sense that a boy experiences Scouting through a concrete group of men and boys." Conservatives might be hard-pressed to oppose this sort of local-control argument. Certainly, it made its appearance at the Jamboree, where several scouts expressed displeasure that headquarters was intruding on their troops' territory. "People think we're homophobic, but we have no power over that. It's all the head council," explained 14-year-old Joe Paul, a red-haired, freckled scout from Travis City, Michigan.
 
And decentralization is catching on among some scouting officials as well. This June representatives from nine of the largest metropolitan Boy Scout councils - Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, West Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Orange County - proposed leaving membership policies to the local sponsoring institutions. Says Mike Harrison, former chairman of the Orange County Council, "To me, one of the strengths of the organization is that it has always been able to accommodate differing viewpoints, and the present position is totally inconsistent with that. We want to get the tribe back on track."
Of course, remaining in the Boy Scouts would require liberals to tolerate a degree of moral discomfort. It would also require faith in the nation's moral progress: that the BSA will, over time, come to see nondiscrimination as the principle that best honors scouting's heritage. And it would require a belief that the Boy Scouts, by joining together children of different backgrounds in "a brotherhood of youth," can help achieve that progress. Should that time come, liberals, by refusing to abandon the organization even when it seems to have abandoned them, will - in the best tradition of the Scouts - be prepared. ([i]The New Republic, September 17, 2001; Benjamin Soskis)

 
http://www.bsatoday.org/#A Brief History

Edited May 27, 2013 by RobertNashville

[Raoul]

Personally I don't care. Gay people should have equal rights under the law and the law should be enforced. Then I can quit having to hear about this issue, every one can settle down and we can just be over it.

This issue is really the least of our problems and is just another diversion thrown out by the culture warriors who usually don't contribute a hell of a lot to the discussion.

 

I want to hear somebody start talking about birth control.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Yes, I was using the word in its broad sense. I figured those of us in this conversation would understand what inwas getting at.

And last I heard, the Belle Meade Country Club only recently accepted its first token black member. Oh, how the times are a changin'.

Does it always have to be a matter of caving to political pressure or correctness? Can't it just possibly be that people simply change their mind or views on any given subject? Does a person or group who change their opinion on a subject automatically make them a lesser person, or only if they don't coincide with your way of thinking on a subject you are passionate about?

So what? Was it about race? Or was it about their status in the community, and their reaching a certain pinnacle of success

that got them there? I submit to you that it could even be because of guilt in the old line Democrat slave holding aristocracy

that has its roots still in the above-mentioned country club. But it could be either. Don't blame it on the South, though.

 

You are right that people do change, and due to many reasons and experiences, but those that are forcibly changed by

outside political forces are morally and logically wrong. It's the forced bunch I have a problem with, and that's the bunch

behind this Boy Scout nonsense. It does have to be a matter of political correctness or caving to pressure when that is

what it is. When people change of their own volition you don't see the media coverage, do you?

 

I'm not trying to be passionate about anything. I try not to color my remarks and I do make mistakes, but I try to make my

argument as consistent as possible. The only prize for striving to get the argument right is usually offending someone,

and I hope I didn't, but that's about the extent to my hope and change. :D

[RobertNashville]

...You are right that people do change, and due to many reasons and experiences, but those that are forcibly changed by

outside political forces are morally and logically wrong. It's the forced bunch I have a problem with, and that's the bunch

behind this Boy Scout nonsense. It does have to be a matter of political correctness or caving to pressure when that is

what it is. When people change of their own volition you don't see the media coverage, do you?

If the BSA adopted its policy of not allowing gay boys to be part of scouts out of pressure from political forces (such as certain church or church related organizations) or some pressure group, is that in some way superior to then changing its policy because of pressure from groups with an opposing viewpoint or, does it all point to the same lack of backbone?

 

In the larger sense, while I don't think the policy against gays was appropriate; I believe the BSA, as a private organization had to right to set whatever rules it wants to set. That said, as you seemed to ask the question earlier, I do see that BAS as bearing a lot of the responsibility for this issue.

[TripleDigitRide]

If the BSA adopted its policy of not allowing gay boys to be part of scouts out of pressure from political forces (such as certain church or church related organizations) or some pressure group, is that in some way superior to then changing its policy because of pressure from groups with an opposing viewpoint or, does it all point to the same lack of backbone?

 

In the larger sense, while I don't think the policy against gays was appropriate; I believe the BSA, as a private organization had to right to set whatever rules it wants to set. That said, as you seemed to ask the question earlier, I do see that BAS as bearing a lot of the responsibility for this issue.

That's what I'm thinking. Based on the article you posted earlier, in order the BSA has been caving in one direction or another for a very long time. And as far as I can tell, much of the caving has been due to religious pressures; from one religion who can't agree with another. You're only angry when it doesn't cave in your favor. 

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Barbara Streisand!

[RobertNashville]

Barbara Streisand!

Oh god....you went and ruined a perfectly good discussion bringing that woman's (and I use the term "woman" very loosely here) into it. ;)

[Oh Shoot]

Barbara Streisand!

 

Is that progressive equivalent of Godwin's Law?

 

- OS

[TripleDigitRide]

Between my TGO friends and my family and friends from my homeland, y'all are about to give me a complex. One side thinks I'm too liberal because of my views on gays and abortion, and the other side thinks I'm too conservative because of my views on guns, welfare, immigration and healthcare.  :slapfight:  

[RobertNashville]

Is that progressive equivalent of Godwin's Law?
 
- OS

Maybe it's just his way of telling me I'm full of :bs:

[East_TN_Patriot]

Question on fairness.

 

If two gay scouts are in the same troop will they be able to share a tent?  If so, in an attempt to be fair should not the non-gay Scout be able to have his girlfriend with him?

And if they do share a tent, does that automatically mean they are going to engage in sex?  I have been around many females and gay men in my life and - lo and behold - we were all able to control ourselves.  Who could imagine?!?

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Is that progressive equivalent of Godwin's Law?

 

- OS

I hadn't thought of it like that, just "el toro poo poo". :D

[Joe357]

Between my TGO friends and my family and friends from my homeland, y'all are about to give me a complex. One side thinks I'm too liberal because of my views on gays and abortion, and the other side thinks I'm too conservative because of my views on guns, welfare, immigration and healthcare. :slapfight:

Sounds like a split personality to me ;)

[Guest Charis]

??  if ur diddling little males, you aint straight. Priest or otherwise.

 

You are right. They are not straight.

 

They also are not gay.

 

They are PEDOPHILES, a now common word that covers the vast categories of both pedophiles (prepubescent children) and hebephiles (post pubescent children), which are whole OTHER brands of sexuality entirely.

 

It is also a proven fact that these monsters are almost exclusively heterosexual in their ADULT sexual habits, with a very few that could be described as bisexual with a dominant tendency to the gender opposite them, which is just a fancy way of saying they will have sex with anything that's holding still, but if it can vote they generally choose the heterosexual partner. 

 

Here is a lovely long, educational, and boring, article to lay it out a little more eloquently if you need such a thing - http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html

 

I'm really kind of sad to see this as a topic up for debate as to good/bad here, as I would have thought that the people of THIS board was beyond being scared by media hype, bad press, and stereotypes. 

[Guest Charis]

Between my TGO friends and my family and friends from my homeland, y'all are about to give me a complex. One side thinks I'm too liberal because of my views on gays and abortion, and the other side thinks I'm too conservative because of my views on guns, welfare, immigration and healthcare.  :slapfight:  

If you figure that one out, SHARE... cause I have that fight with myself ALLLLLLL the time... lol.

[RobertNashville]

...I'm really kind of sad to see this as a topic up for debate as to good/bad here, as I would have thought that the people of THIS board was beyond being scared by media hype, bad press, and stereotypes. 

I am a bit surprised and disappointed by some of the responses in this thread.  I would have thought, incorrectly it seems, that people on this board who claim they embrace the concepts of liberty and freedom and the rights we have as human beings would be a little less narrow minded than some seem to be.

 

I find homosexual sex repugnant; I don't find homosexuals repugnant...as long as a person of whatever sexual preference treats me fairly and with respect they will get the same from me; what they do behind closed doors/in their bedroom is, frankly, none of my damn business.  If a person is an asshole then the person is an asshole but that's not a function of their sexuality; they're just assholes. Period.

 

As long as a boy isn't disruptive/follows the rules and is in scouts to enjoy scouting then his sexual proclivities are absolutely irrelevant and it was wrong of the BSA to have ever made his sexual proclivities an issue in the first place.

Edited May 27, 2013 by RobertNashville

[RichardR]

And if they do share a tent, does that automatically mean they are going to engage in sex? I have been around many females and gay men in my life and - lo and behold - we were all able to control ourselves. Who could imagine?!?

No two gays sharing a tent will not "automatically" have sex, but yes it will undoubtedly happen.

You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Does anyone have proof that the decision to allow gay boys to openly participate in Scouts was based on financial reasons?

While I do remember reading that some donors have decided to stop funding the BSA due to their stance, I don't know the actual numbers. Assuming the dollars lost were significant enough to cause concern, I'm wondering why I don't recall seeing some sort of campaign on behalf of the BSA to raise funds to make up the difference. If this issue is truly as important as it appears here on TGO, I'm wondering why more people didn't put their money where their mouth is.

Does the BSA have a surplus of money at the end of each year, or are they barely scraping by? The reason I ask is, I wonder if this decision was made out of necessity. If they chose to continue denying openly gay Scouts, would they lose so much funding that they could no longer operate? Would a better option have been to simply dissolve the organization due to lack of funding?

Was there this much controversy from the BSA supporters in the mid-1970's, when the BSA finally did away with racial segregation? I recall reading that it took a court battle before the BSA would finally recognize black boy scouts as equals.

How about when they finally allowed women to become leaders innate late-80's? I was in the Scouts at this time, and I clearly remember this being a very hot and much-debated topic.

The point is, the BSA has evolved with the times, and in order to survive, they will have no choice but to continue doing so. I'm sure there were detractors when they allowed blacks and women to participate, so hopefully they will survive through this ordeal as well.

In the late 60's I went to Camp Boxwell, and I remember quite a few blacks. There were two in my troop(506).

I was also in Troop 514 for a while and don't remember any segregation there, either. And, yes, there were all

black troops, but whatever de-segregation was done, I don't remember it.

 

As far as any proof, what kind do you need? This has been a continual media campaign from the gay movement

and the left who pays the bills. When something like the Scouts start getting pressure from outside sources, just like

the SEIU did to Bank of America, or whoever, they start to get dropping donations from corporations who have

become so politically correct and are scared of people like the IRS, unions and the like.

 

This is no isolated situation as far as this kind of tactic goes. The Rev. Al Sharpton used a similar tactic to get where

he is today, all based on lies and threats and thuggery. Same goes with another Rev., Jesse Jackson. All of this has

been used by radicals to extort something from someone for a long time.

[RobertNashville]

I really don't think it's about whether or not gay boys are allowed to participate. As you have pointed out, gays have already been a part of scouting for a long time, albeit in a clandestine manner.

 

My hope is that any promiscuity - and let's not kid ourselves, there will be - will be met with the appropriate punishment, not excluding expulsion from the troop. However, as we have seen recently regarding the case with the 18-year old lesbian committing statutory rape with a 14-year old girl, the gay lobby will quickly defend any and all alleged promiscuous behavior of gay scouts under the guise of discrimination against the gay youth.

 

This also sets up the gay scouts for being ostracized by non-gay scouts. As we all know, children can be cruel. And how long will it be before gay scout troops are created and even defended by organizations such as GLAAD and NAMBLA? Not that I would want my son to be part of such a group, but, of course, THAT kind of discrimination is A-OK because it's politically correct.

 

But I guess what concerns me more than anything is that the BSA succumbed to pressure and allowed a special interest group to dictate its membership policy.

I was in Cub Scouts from the time I was old enough to join all the way through Boy Scouts and high school...there wasn't any "promiscuity" in my pack or my troop...was sexual promiscuity a common occurrence in scouting experience?

 

Yes...it's sad that the BSA succumbed to pressure which seems to be exactly how the formal policy excluding gay scouts came about in the first place...now they've succumbed to pressure to remove the policy...I'd say that's just as it should be since such a policy was never appropriate to have in the first place.

Edited May 28, 2013 by RobertNashville

[RobertNashville]

No two gays sharing a tent will not "automatically" have sex, but yes it will undoubtedly happen.

You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.

Of course it will happen...gays have special mind control powers to exert control over "straights" and turn them "gay".  Plus we all know that gays can't keep it in their pants and just have sex at the drop of a hat. :)  ROTFLMAO

[Guest 6.8 AR]

The word "gay" is used to delineate one's sexual leaning. It used to just mean "happy". A group making it's

identification a sexual leaning should not be allowed to get away with pushing themselves on another group,

which has no sexual identity attached to it, other than the word "boy". Besides, the word "gay" is also used

by women, Robert, so it tends to be more a sexual thing than anything else. Now, why is one's sexuality so

damned important it has to be included in the Boy Scouts? You can dance around the maypole all day long

and rationalize this away, but it still boils down to sex, and not gender. Gender is covered by there being a

Girl Scouts.

 

Like I have said several times before, I have friends who are or claim to be gay. I don't care, and we are still

friends, really just acquaintances because it has been a couple years since I have been around them, but

it doesn't make me change my views on sexuality regarding the Boy Scouts. They usually do whatever they

want, but the radicals connected to political machinations are the culprit, and not anyone I know.

 

Words have meaning! "Gay", nowadays, is a sexuality identifier. That is the sole basis of my argument and

politics is so deeply embedded in this, to the point it makes it a tragedy. The gay community would have been

better served keeping their mouths shut on this. All they did is ruin another institution.