Posted on 06/02/2003 6:39:40 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Philadelphia’s Cradle of Liberty Boy Scout Council self-destructed last week. Its executive board voted unanimously to include "sexual orientation" in its nondiscrimination code. The outrageous move came after years of intense pressure from radical homosexual and atheist rights groups in the area and nationwide.
The Philadelphia Council is the third largest local council in the country, serving 87,000 boys and men. It is an unfortunate addition to a list of councils that have eagerly given the finger to the Boy Scouts of America and its associated moral codes. Last year, San Francisco and Boston became the first branches to reject the concept of “moral straightness.”
We must be reminded that the Boy Scouts are not an intolerant, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic bunch. In fact, the Boy Scouts have always taught tolerance and have been at the forefront of celebrating diversity. Since 1911, the BSA has reached out to disabled youth, racial and ethnic minorities, Native Americans, and inner city children.
And Scouting has also taught the difference between right and wrong, between honor and indecency, between justice and perversity.
When it comes to a Scout troop, sexual orientation is an issue that goes beyond differences in skin color or economic status. It affects such matters as tenting arrangements and the development of pre-teenage masculinity in a close-knit group of boys and men. But the BSA’s position against homosexuality is not just an issue of moral principle in an effort to affirm the Scout Oath and Law, it is a serious safety effort to prevent cases of sexual abuse and harassment.
To the vast majority of Americans who understand the importance of Scouting in every community across the nation, preserving the traditional moral code of Scouting is a no-brainer. It is time for families in Philadelphia to show that they oppose the leadership of their local council by leaving the organization.
Furthermore, the BSA national office must entirely disconnect itself from the Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco Councils. And Boy Scout councils around the country must take notice that their entire mission is staked upon the moral character of the boys and men involved, and that if they sever those core principles from the program they will destroy the entirety of Scouting.
The pressures from the radical Left must be dealt with as well. As the Left has opened fire on the Scouts, the reaction of Americans has been interesting. I’ve heard some say that the Scouts don’t need to be defended because they are strong enough. Many would argue that ignoring the opposition is the best thing for the Scouts. Perhaps that would be true in a small-scale conflict, but those who lead the drive against the Scouts have proven their capacity for a dangerous perversion of morality when, in a hundred other scenarios they’ve struck deepest when decent Americans chose not to fight back. They didn’t fight back because they weren’t looking in the first place.
Now, America - now is a time to turn our sullen eyes on Philadelphia. Now is the time to awaken to the awful stench that arises from the moral relativism condoned by Boy Scout Councils in Boston and San Francisco. Now is the time to fight back and defend the Boy Scouts from further damage.
As an Eagle Scout and an assistant Scoutmaster, I cannot couch myself in the dark chamber of apathy as my organization is taken over by special interests whose political agenda contributes to a breakdown of character and the family. The Boy Scouts have the God-given right to establish standards for membership, and those standards have been highly respected for over 90 years. Citizens across America have the God-given obligation to see to it that the Boy Scout Oath and Law are upheld for another 90 years.
Hans Zeiger, 18, is an Eagle Scout and an outspoken advocate on behalf of Scouting with the Scout Honor Coalition. He is a Seattle Times columnist and chairman of Washington Young Americans for Freedom. He may be contacted at hanszeiger@yahoo.com.
One of the changes that the GSUSA went though over the last decade was to allow youth to remove the word "God" from the GSUSA oath. This was justified by the GSUSA to WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guide and Girl Scouts, the international GS sanctioning body) on the basis that the GSUSA wanted to allow girls for whom "God" was too Judeo-Christian to substitute their own deity (a.k.a Allah, Jehovah, Brahma, etc.). WAGGGS requires that it's membership organizations require their individual members to profess some kind of higher power. However, the effect seems to have been to allow the GSUSA to accept members who substitute nothing for "God", either verbally or mentally. And it seems that the GSUSA is doing little to disabuse people of that here in the U.S.
As far as your son goes, if he's 7 he's Tiger Cub or Wolf Cub age, depending on his grade level (1st or 2nd grade; if he's homeschooled, you can pretty much pick it yourself). Look in the phone book or yellow pages for the name/address/phone number of your local Council. Or, go on here, enter in your zip code, and get it from there.
Call the council. Tell them what town you live in, and ask for your District Executive. Once you're talking to him or her, ask about the Cub Scout Packs in your area. Find out who their sponsors are. The DE will want to know what church you go to and what school your son goes to so that they'll know whether or not there's a Pack sponsored by them. By the way, it's possible for you to live in one District, but for your son's school or church to be in another, so you might end up talking to another DE. Get the names and phone numbers of the sponsors and the Cubmasters of 2 or 3 Packs.
Call them up. Ask them how big the unit is, when/where it meets, and what activities they do. Outings, campouts, service projects, etc. A Pack meets once a month, but your son will be most closely associated with a Den, made up of 4 to 8 Cubs his own age/grade level. Find out what Dens they have and who the Den Leaders are, when/where they meet (often in the Den Leader's home), and what the Den Leader's phone number is. Now call the Den Leader and ask the same questions.
Then take your son to a couple of Den meetings, and see if you like what you see. Please understand that a Den Meeting is not usually all that quiet. These are young boys, and while sometimes they're working on a project, a smart Den Leader sets aside some time for the boys to be active and let off steam. In short, to be boys.
Should you find a Den and Pack to your liking, you'll fill out a short application, and your son is a Cub Scout. Congratulations! Expect to be solicited to become a leader. I encourage you to do so. You'll find it rewarding (I have). The application asks for your SSN. They use this to do a background check on you. The BSA NEVER releases information of any kind about their leaders to anyone. Companies have offered fortunes to the BSA for it's mailing list, but it never releases or sells the information and never will. You'll also be asked to take a couple of basic training courses. Please try to fit those into your schedule. You'll find it very helpful (I'm on our Council's training staff).
But, even if you can't sign up as a leader, please consider helping out at either Den or Pack meetings, the popcorn sale, etc. Understand that there's a group called the Pack Committee that handles running the fund raisers, recruiting leaders, buying the awards, getting the newsletter out, etc., that you can do on your own time without having to go to Pack or Den meetings. You can join it.
Of course, if you really want to go the whole hog, you can organize a Pack at your church or other community organization. You only need 5 Scouts and 5 adults to start a Pack, and small units are much easier to handle than some of those Cub Scout Packs with 100 or more Cubs in them.
Perhaps. But it's the sponsor's role to know more about the people they sign up as leaders than how they look when they go to work. If a sponsor doesn't know a candidate for leader personally -- what they do when they're not at work, where they go to church, what their hobbies and recreational choices are, who their spouse is and what they're like, etc. -- then they shouldn't sign them up. So I don't see much danger that people as described will end up as Scouters.
Another drive-by slander. You go girl.
Then they have a don't ask don't tell policy for incestuals, bestials and ax murderers too. That's rediculous and NOT ture.
Not totally true because homosexuals have a much higher rate than heterosuals to offend children, but don't let get in the way of good sophistry.
You might want to look here for the following BSA offical policy.
The Boy Scouts of America makes no effort to discover the sexual orientation of any member or leader.
The BSA doesn't ask. And if you don't tell (that's the "avowed" part of "[The BSA believes] an avowed homosexual is not a role model for the values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law."), and they don't ask, they have no way of knowing, and you can be a Scouter no matter what your sexual orientation is. It's DADT, just like the military, except that unlike the military the BSA actually follows their own policy.
For example, note this, from www.tompaine.com
The Narragansett Council took the apparently unprecedented step [in 1999] of reinstating an openly homosexual employee. The sixteen year old Eagle Scout had been released from a summer job at Camp Yawgoog and kicked out of Scouting after camp officials asked whether rumors that he was gay were true. The boy said yes. After a public uproar, the council reinstated his Scouting membership and offered his job back, with an okay from BSA, saying it was Scout policy not to ask about employees' sexual orientation -- an action similar to suppressing evidence because the warrant was bad.
You can find references to this on numerous sites. I picked www.tompaine.com because most of them are gay rights sites, and I wanted to find a site you'd believe. But the bottom line is that DADT is official BSA policy.
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