Posted on 04/22/2006 4:58:22 AM PDT by Man50D
A renewed effort by several members of the American Library Association's governing council would sever all ties with the Boy Scouts of America until the youth organization stops "discriminating" against avowed atheists and homosexuals.
In 1998, the governing council of the ALA, the world's largest library organization, condemned the Boy Scouts over its policies, but a WorldNetDaily investigation reveals activists quietly are planning to take action at the association's annual convention in June.
The renewed effort is led by Mark Rosenzweig, formerly an official archivist with the U.S. Communist Party and a chief defender of Fidel Castro in the ALA controversy over the communist regime's repression of the independent library movement in Cuba.
"It is scary that an organization which purports to believe in free speech and intellectual freedom would take this kind of action," said BSA spokesman Bob Bork. "It is a Soviet-style effort to make us a non-person."
Rosenzweig unveiled his proposal April 9 on the ALA Council e-mail list, declaring, "I am tired of seeing Council pass resolutions which like the previous one on the BSA are never monitored or reported back upon and for which no one takes responsibility."
He was referring to a 1999 ALA resolution, which read: "That the American Library Association urges the Boy Scouts of America to reconsider their policy of discrimination in the areas of sexual orientation and religious belief and demonstrate a commitment to human rights, inclusiveness, and mutual respect."
The BSA's Bork responded: "How could they show such utter disregard to the First Amendment rights of any organization? We have the same rights of freedom of association as the ALA and it is disgusting to think they would disrespect those rights."
Michael Golrick, an ALA council member and city librarian for Bridgeport, Ct., told WND he believes the resolution "will accomplish exactly what the last one did: No changes in BSA policies, and irritated librarians who hold views not shared by the radical left."
Golrick was one of the few council members to publicly object to the 1999 resolution. He wore his Scout uniform to the meeting, prompting ridicule from John Berry III, editor of Library Journal, who called it silly.
"This resolution plays into the hands of critics who take ALA to task for being too liberal," Golrick warned. "If anything, this will turn off many librarians who might otherwise join the organization since it positions ALA in such a left-wing position."
The announcement of the new proposal touched off a long flurry of policy questions and debate on the ALA Council e-mail list in which members from various committees looked into old records to see what is meant by phrases such as "affiliate," "liaison" and "official."
In response to apparent uncertainty about the outcome of the previous resolution, Stephen L. Matthews, a councilor-at-large, said "We still need to hear from ALSC about what is really happening today."
"Whether there is anything happening or not," he then added, "it is important to reiterate our concern to BSA about the destructive nature of their so-called "moral modeling" policy." Matthews said, with little response from fellow councilors, "I wholeheartedly support additional communication with BSA challenging their policy of intolerance and its encouragement of hate and contempt as part of their organizational commitment to 'moral education.'"
The volume and intensity of the response on weblogs, e-mail lists and e-mails to WND shows the issue has struck a chord.
Among the opinions received by WND after querying three library e-mail lists are these:
We should be open to working with the Boy Scouts or any organization which does so much to help boys in so many ways. If ALA wants to help the Scouts become more inclusive, they certainly won't do it by severing all contact and shutting them out of our organization. – Carol Simmons, director, Daly City Library, Calif.
I am so sick of the ALA speaking for ALL librarians when I believe that they are only speaking for a MINORITY of librarians. I was a Boy Scout leader for 10 years. Boys Scouts is a great organization. The ALA needs to concentrate on library issues and leave the Boy Scouts ALONE!!!!! – Sharon Beever, Maine.
"This could turn into a bigger brouhaha than Dr. Laura started, and even teach the Scouts themselves how uptight we are about being liberal – another side of bigotry," wrote a retired California librarian who wished to remain anonymous. "Young people deserve better." "Couldn't ALA show the bigger heart and merely proclaim itself disapproving of the BSA stance and continue to help the Scouts in the reading and librarianship business?" she wondered.
"I absolutely believe the ALA should take this action, as should all organizations committed to fairness. With its goal of being "a leader in recruiting and developing a highly qualified and diverse library work force," the organization must take actions like the proposed resolution to improve the profession's relationship to diversity." – Liberty Smith.
Because the Boy Scouts choose to discriminate within their organization, my family does not support any of their local or national efforts. I would truly appreciate the gesture of ALA breaking all ties with them as well. – Katie O'Dell, reading promotions coordinator, Multnomah County Library, Portland, Ore.
"We would be undermining another value – that of inclusivity – that many people love about libraries and by extension ALA. On the other hand our relationships say something about our values, and not making some sort of statement puts us in murky ethical territory – kind of like not divesting in the Sudan or wherever. I wonder if there is some middle ground that preserves the value of inclusivity." University of California librarian.
"BSA will not change its policies but ALA can and should." – "Big grandma" Officially, leaders of the ALA and its divisions appear to be taking a very cautious approach.
Asked the president's opinion and if the executive board had discussed the issue, ALA spokeswoman Larra Clark said, "The ALA executive board is not discussing the BSA matter at this time, but I can let you know if action is taken in the future."
Officials at the Association of Library Services to Children, which has had the most contact with the BSA in the past – and which was criticized most on the council list – did not reply to WND by press time.
Beth Yoke, executive director of the Young Adult Library Services Association, or YALSA, told WND that if an official resolution "regarding any issue is put before ALA's council, YALSA's board of directors, when it next meets, will discuss the proposed resolution with the intent of coming to a consensus on what direction to provide YALSA's Councilor on how to vote on the resolution."
She also confirmed her group has not received any complaints from ALA members or the public about the informal contacts the ALA maintains with the Scouts.
Librarian and ALA council candidate Greg McClay says the lack of public outcry over the BSA-ALA relationship shows there is "no professional reasoning behind any of this, as libraries serve everyone."
"This is strictly personal politics," he charged, pointing out comments posted on his weblog of ALA councilor K. R. Roberto, who said "Personally, I am rather uncomfortable with the concept of ALA having close ties with an organization that finds me morally unfit."
"And yet this person engages in a discussion to decide if the Boy Scouts are morally fit enough for ALA to have close ties with?" said McClay, a Massachusetts librarian.
While no scientific opinion polls have been take, just this week the ALA's American Libraries Direct online magazine asked the question, "Should the Boy Scouts of America's policy of excluding agnostics, atheists, and gays prohibit libraries from cooperating with the organization in joint programs?"
Forty-Seven percent voted yes while a majority, 53 percent, vote no. There is a difference, however, between this poll and an informal one by WND. The WND question asked only about a resolution that would cut off relations with the BSA; it didn't mention particular libraries.
Even the supporters of the resolution within the ALA have not gone as far as to say libraries themselves should not cooperate with Scouts and Scout troops.
As Rosenzweig wrote to the council list: "Serving the needs of members of the Boy Scouts is one thing, supporting the BSA, Inc. organizationally linking to them is QUITE another."
The AL Direct poll seems to indicate many members are not familiar with the Library Bill of Rights, which forbids viewpoint with respect to collection policy and public use.
"Who are we to tell the Boy Scouts that their philosophies are wrong? Have the Boy Scouts told ALA that they disagree with our stand on certain issues?" asked Evelyn Bell, administrative secretary at the Moreno, Calif., Valley Public Library. "While I don't agree with BSA's stand on atheists and homosexuals, I'm not interested in alienating, as a group, an organization who works at creating good citizens."
In support of her argument not to pass the resolution, Bell cited a policy on tolerance from the BSA website:
"A core value of the BSA is respect. Scouting respects those with ideas and customs that are different from our own and expects the same respect from those who may disagree with Scouting's position. Tolerance for a diversity of values and ideals does not require abdication of one's own values."
"If human rights are the issue let us remove the mask of deception," wrote Nanette Overholt a Library Associate at the Solano, Calif., County Library.
"There is no persecution against the right to be gay that comes from the Boy Scouts of America, but there does seem to be a constant harassment and bullying from the gay community for the Boy Scouts to conform to their beliefs," she complained. "The gay community seems to want to abolish the right and freedom to think differently than themselves."
"Let me leave you with this question: Who is tolerant here?" she ended.
Anthony E. Lee, a professor and librarian at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, agreed in a telephone interview that, "This would be going against their very own principles of liberal openness," not to tolerate the Scouts.
Lee, a longtime BSA and ALA member who has degrees from Seton Hall, Columbia University and Princeton, told WND, "The Boy Scouts of America, ever since I was in scouting in the 1960s, has maintained a stance that is unchanged by the winds of caprice."
"Meaning they are who they have always been – very straight-laced," he added, "And I, being an Eagle Scout and a member of the Order of the Arrow have always backed Scouting in that stance."
"Look, if you don't subscribe to ALA rules you don't have to join," agreed Bork. "There is no 'right' to membership."
But Bork agreed that if discrimination is seen from the standpoint of ALA policies, one could conclude the association has the right, as a private organization, to choose not to associate with the BSA.
"It is a private, non-profit group and it has rights for membership standards," said Bork, "But we would find it insulting if the ALA removed all mention of Scouts from their websites."
The renewed debate over the Boy Scout resolution will come to a head at the ALA annual convention this June in New Orleans when the council can decide to table the resolution, accept or modify it, or recommend that the matter be given further consideration by a relevant committee.
"There will be, if necessary, a floor fight," the resolution sponsor Rosenzweig already has told his fellow council members.
"And this time I hope the majority is not bullied by special interests connected to the BSA," he said.
Golrick warned those same council members: "As a public library director, I know how critical it is to have support throughout the community. The youth of today are the voters of tomorrow. How can [libraries] expect support in the future, if we do not support the youth today."
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
What kind of "connection" does the ALA have with the Boy Scouts, anyway? This seems like something that's not going to make a bit of difference, except as a Statement from people nobody listens to anyhow.
Yet another story about "in your face" librarians. Why can't they just shut up with all the yelling already.
"...Mark Rosenzweig, formerly an official archivist with the U.S. Communist Party and a chief defender of Fidel Castro in the ALA controversy over the communist regime's repression of the independent library movement in Cuba."
That's the info that the general public needs to be made aware of. Otherwise, they will never understand how Left-wing the ALA really is.
Libraries...another dinosaur hanging on by government funding.
Who needs them and who cares what they say or think?
Let them sit in the corner and roll their crap into little balls and stay the marginalized idiots they have become.
"Hate speech" indeed. Thats all they know.
Jerks.
ALA takes stands on all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the profession itself. I've never belonged, partly for that reason, and partly because it's heavily geared toward public and school librarians, and I've never worked in that part of the field. I work in the part that pays real money.
As far as I know, the ALA has no connections with the Boy Scouts in the first place. Keep in mind the ALA is the same group that passed a resolution last year condemning the war in Iraq and demanding U.S. troop withdrawal, as if anyone possibly cares about their opinion on the subject.
ah....Mr. Atoz.
The Star Trek librarian.
seems to me all the local libraries (liberrys for those in Reo Linda) around here are taxpayer funded video stores. The patrons all seem to be leaving with DVDs or VHS tapes.
truly skewed.
Please don;t confuse "libraries" (vital repositories of knowledge—even in the Internet era) with "librarians".
Ooooooo! Lookout! The LIBRARIANS are upset! All good Boy Scouts better behave, or they'll take away our Merit Badges for Reading! And maybe even take away our library cards!!
Tell ya what, LIBRARIANS. Us Boy Scouts will try not to lite campfires in your libraries, and in exchange maybe you shouldn't intrude in Boy Scout policy matters that are of no concern of yours.
I'd bet most Librarians were never Boy Scouts, anyrate. So why should they even care?? Do Boy Scouts try to interfere with the Dewey Decimal System? I doubt it.
Next thing these jolly LIBRARIANS will be after us Freemasons... and *that* has me truly worried!
Let's see – the ALA are severing ties with the Boy Scouts but not with NAMBLA?
Library Bill of Rights: forbids viewpoint with respect to collection policy and public use.
["This resolution plays into the hands of critics who take ALA to task for being too liberal," Golrick warned. "If anything, this will turn off many librarians who might otherwise join the organization since it positions ALA in such a left-wing position." ]
The same pinko ALA pro communist, pro homosexual recruitment of young men and women into sodomite lifestyles, pro pornography and anti filters Librarian taxfunded liberal athiest Christophopes and leftist fools that helped destroy the once great Christian nation of America at work in your taxpayer funded putlic school systems to destroy and sodomize all children is at work against you who are moral and good. My soul rages against the hateful, proud ,ignorant, immoral fools and leftist politicians that are destroying all children in the pubic school system.
Romans 1:
Chapter 1
1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)
3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:
5 By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name:
6 Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ:
7 To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;
10 Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.
11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established;
12 That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.
13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.
14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.
15 So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
9 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
It does seem like just a headline-grabbing kind of thing on the part of this Rosenzweig guy, doesn't it? With he hoopla over the Boy Scouts anti-homosexual stance fading away I'm sure this is just an attempt to try and raise it again. Be interesting to see how far it goes.
It does seem like just a headline-grabbing kind of thing on the part of this Rosenzweig guy, doesn't it? With he hoopla over the Boy Scouts anti-homosexual stance fading away I'm sure this is just an attempt to try and raise it again. Be interesting to see how far it goes.
Now we know who the fellows are who write those notes soliciting "dates" in the library bathrooms.
One day I should join the ALA, just so I can vote against these nuts.
The only solice I can find is that one day this nutjob will retire.
I was a Boy Scout....not a very good one, but I was one.
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