Busybodies pestering Boy Scouts should get a life

Houston Chronicle ^ | Nov. 22, 2002, 9:17PM | DAVID REINHARD

[Buffalo Bob]

WHAT is it about the Boy Scouts that turns folks who celebrate their tolerance into raging busybodies? What is it about the Boy Scouts that changes people who go out of their way not to be "judgmental" into common scolds? What is it about the Boy Scouts that transforms those who fret about somebody else "imposing their values" on society into authoritarians who would use society's instruments of power to impose their values on others?

After all, here's an organization that does enormous good for millions of boys. Here's a Supreme Court-certified private organization that doesn't force any child or adult to join. Yet here's an organization that's regularly dragged out into the public square for a good pistol-whipping.

The most recent took place after the "news" that the Boy Scouts told Darrell Lambert, an Eagle Scout and college freshman, he would be booted out if he did not declare a belief in some higher power. The young atheist refused, and he was out. And from sea to shining sea, the lashes came out. The shameful Boy Scouts were intolerant, narrow-minded and bigoted! There were even references to Hitler Youth. If only merit badges were given for hyperbole.

What seems to rankle Boy Scout bashers no end is that the organization is premised on a belief in God -- it's right in the oath -- and the Scouts take this belief seriously. They really, really mean it. Can you believe it?

Today's apostles of tolerance can't. They can't abide that the Scouts don't share their world view when it comes to God or homosexuality. So they unleash their fury on this faith-based private organization.

What a perversion of tolerance. Lambert is praised to the high heavens -- are we still allowed to use such phrases? -- for having the courage of his convictions, but the Boy Scouts are lambasted for sticking to theirs. Lambert makes an issue of his atheism in this faith-based organization, but the Boy Scouts are the ones deemed intolerant. Lambert lectures us on "religious freedom," but doesn't want the Boy Scouts to practice theirs.

Lambert and his defenders don't make arguments. They engage in tantrums; they just harangue people for having a different outlook. But their rants raise a few questions.

One, doesn't "having the courage of your convictions" mean accepting the consequences?

Two, shouldn't Lambert himself have shown some tolerance, if not tact, in this whole affair? He knew the Boy Scouts were a "theistic" outfit. Indeed, he had uttered or mouthed the Scout oath in the past. If this young atheist wanted to stay in Boy Scouts, maybe he should have shown a decent respect or tolerance for the organization's accommodating -- dare we say, tolerant -- religious views. Tolerance works both ways.

Or does it? You have to wonder when you see our tolerance champions' hellfire-and-brimstone intolerance of others.

Three, what's to keep "tolerance" advocates from trying to bring other private faith-based groups to heel? If the Boy Scouts are "bigoted" in excluding self-avowed atheists and homosexuals, how long will it be before we see campaigns against religious groups whose sin is having moral-religious views different from today's crusading secularists? Soon we'll be hammering church officials for getting so hung up about the Nicene Creed.

In the end, however, there's one overriding question: If people are so keen to open up Scouting to atheists and homosexuals, why don't they start their own private organization?

Answer: Our modern busybodies should get a life -- their own.

[goldstategop]

Excellent questions. Liberals would burn every one at the stake who didn't share their views yet they are the folks who go around lecturing every one "can't we all get along?" Their undoing is their uncontrolled hatred of religious believers and conservatives. Its just amazing the Left treats the Boy Scouts as the moral equivalent of NAMBLA. Methinks they have more than a few screws loose somewhere.

[Vidalia]

The Scouts should create a special badge for outsiders that would be granted merit for just one activity.

Call it the "Effective Suicide Merit Badge"...

[Slyfox]

A good friend of mine used to work for 'Boy's Life' magazine at the Boy Scout headquarters. She said that the Scouts used to call their ongoing problems, "the three G's". That is God - meaning the problem with the athiests, Girl's - meaning females wanting to enter the Scouts, which has been satisfied by creating Explorer's and of course, the Gay's.

She also said that they used to be regularly broken into. (Don't know if they still are.) Whoever was breaking in, only rifled through Scout files looking for dirt.

[o_zarkman44]

Tolerance is a two way street. They can have mutual respect for differeing opinions, just like they tell us we should have. I respect other peoples opinions, but resent opinion based on anarchy that attempts to curtail the opposite point of view and illegally force their will on the overwhelming majority of unwilling.

They need to leave the Scouts alone. If they disagree, they are welcome, and encouraged, to start their own Gay Scouts, or Athiest Scouts or whatever. I bet they could even get funding from the United Way!

The best way to destroy a society is to splinter the mainstream into diverse (opposing) opinions. Then no one group has any clout over another. No leader, or organization or party or religion, has a clear majority, because minority philosophy is granted prevailing exclusitivity, based upon flawed misrepresentation of minority rights.

[EdReform]

Bump & Ping

[Yardstick]

Good article. The radical left's infatuation with the Boy Scouts is just too bizarre. It really gives an insight into the soul of the Left. How did we end up with such dorky people in this country?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Reminds me of a sign I saw about 30 years ago outside an adult book shop.

"To our gay friends, please do not pester our straight friends."
Too bad they still won't take that advise.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Agreed. I think the attraction is the 'Boy' part, and the indignation is the idea of ideas and absolute values. A potent red-flag to deviants seeking a total moral vacuum.

[Tacis]

Hey, hey, sensitive left wing faggots all over the world will die from STDs caused/introduced by normal people to kill fairies. The Boy Scouts have lots of clean fresh meat and keeping those young men from the fairies is, well, homophobic. No ultra-left wing, liberal extremist can stand to even hear the word "homophobic" (whatever the word means) without drooling appropriately and condeming this evil inflicted on fairies everywhere. Remember, it is the responsibility of every left wing extremist democrat to never say "no" to a member of their interest groups, be they fairy, union member, black, feminist, environmentalist, or other whacko.

[MarkL]

As was seen in last night's epidode of South Park, there's nothing that the "tolerance crowd" won't try to push on people... But it's not tolerance that they want, but acceptance.

A quote from last night's episode, from the "commandant" of the tolerance camp, with a german accent, "Intollerance will NOT be tollerated!"

Mark

[1stMarylandRegiment]

As an active Adult Scouter and Eagle Scout Board of Review Member for my Area Council I have had this discussion, and similar discussions regarding ANY standard for Recognition or particpation established in the Boy Scout Program, many times with disaffected parents.

The core issue is that people now feel "entitled" to anything and everything - that freedom should not come with consequences.

Thus a parent who wants a son to "earn" the Eagle Recognition for the college application feels entitled to the opportunity, without any requirement of profession or completion of "unreasonable" requirements to earn the Recognition.
I have been told by parents that the Citizenship Requirements of BSA are unsuitable for a school-sponsored organization and that the community service requirements are intrusive.

Membership in Boy Scouts (and Advancement Recognition) is wrongly perceived by these persons as a right, not a conditional option which one can refuse before-the-fact to exercise; one for which no pre-conditions should exist.

As if atheism were akin to skin color or gender.

Furthermore, BSA clearly states that the badges of recognition for achievement remain the property of BSA, and can be recalled for after-the-fact actions deemed to be contrary to the values and missions of Scouting.

[GailA]

Boy Scouts in Tracy City, TN could use a little help, they are meeting in a COLD room. Troop 12 Tracy City's Troop Twelve of the Boy Scouts of America is fighting an uphill battle. Lack funds and a general lack of interest from the community leave these young men having to meet in freezing cold classrooms and working in neighboring communities, such as Sewanee, for enough money to send one or two boys out of ten scouts to summer camp.

[yendu bwam]

The core issue is that people now feel "entitled" to anything and everything - that freedom should not come with consequences.

This is indeed the core issue, 1MR. Homosexual men feel entitled to take your teenage sons camping and atheists feel entitled to not have to take the oath which distinguishes Boy Scouts from so many other organizations. Tolerant leftists would simply acknowledge that the Boy Scouts isn't for them. But the leftist homosexual atheist tirade which has been directed at the scouts is the most intolerant thing I think I've ever seen. I was always very happy with Boy Scouts and their program - which has benefited my sons enormously. I'm even MORE happy now that I see that it is an organization which stands up for its values (which I share), and is not afraid to take on those who seek to get it to discard those values. It's a great organization!