Like all sweeping generalizations, the accuracy of your statement matches it's precision.

I checked their mission statement. It's one sentence. I quote it here and it's dependent elements.

There is no inculcation of hatred. Trust me on this one.

Now, you may know individuals who are hateful and involved in Scouting. But to libel the organization the way you have is inaccurate, inflammatory, and inappropriate. I urge you to take up your grievances with the people about whom you have a complaint.

In the decades I have been involved in Scouting, hatred has NOT been a part of the program, not on an individual, patrol, troop or district basis. I have seen no evidence of hatred by Scouts, or leaders; no evidence, factual, circumstantial or apocryphal.

There *is* a policy in the organization at the highest levels that an avowed homosexual cannot serve as a Boy Scout Leader. This is not inculcating hatred. An organization cannot hate. People hate. I imagine there are Scouters who hate, but tarring all Scouters this way would be as correct, soothing and fair as saying you, as an American, are an imperialist pig given America's foreign policy. Maybe it fits, but even if it does, it's not because of the policy, it's because of your individual qualities.

They're taught to exclude gays and atheists. Whether they're taught to hate them as well is, like so many things in Scouting, up to the individual troop. What can raise the most bad feelings is that most kids at the age in which you join the Scouts don't have set views on religion or sexuality, and they only come into their realization after several years in a troop. If at that point they are atheist or gay, they have to either quit, play along, or announce. If they announce, many troops would be happy to let them stay, but the greater organization comes down and overrules them, which never causes happy feelings.

Screw it. You can teach your son whatever you like. The Boy Scouts can teach their members whatever they like, too. But they CAN'T DO IT WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE GOVERNMENT. That's all the original ACLU case was about.
Lookout, do you teach your son that homosexuality is "wrong"? How will that impact the way he treats gays, for the rest of his life? How about us atheists?

I guess we disagree right here. If the Scouts say that a gay person is not "Morally Straight", then they are condemning an individual. In fact, an entire class of individuals. That opinion is most certainly transmitted to the youth they lead.

Official reference regarding tolerance.

It is possible to be tolerant, and selective. Tolerance is not anarchy. Even if it were, anarchy is not hatred. Intolerance is not the same as hatred. You wildly overstate the truth. Do you have standards? Do you hate everything that doesn't match your standards? Does your intolerance make you a hypocrite?

It's wrong that they ever received gov't assistance (regardless of how valuable you think their services are) - not wrong that they won't anymore. You can try to minimize it all you want, but requiring recognition of a higher power as a core value of the group is a major sticking point with some Americans.

So, people are now fighting to be included in an organization whose principles they reject?

why?

I can't speak for them (although I would guess they'd like to change those principles). What I am fighting for is to yank their public funding.

Oh, okay. I guess that's cool, as long as they yank the NEA's as well. The government pays for too much fluff anyway.

stick-poking aside, if the BSA's public funding is revoked, can they keep their little creed thing?

(calming down)
Yes. One should have standards. However, one cannot espouse religiously-derived standards as membership criteria for an organization and still receive government funding.

Look, Pie. What "the Scouts say" and what *I* say as a Scout leader don't match all the time. Does that make me unqualified as a Scout leader? You know, this isn't the Whitehouse with an airtight policy alignment of adherence to the party line. You make an easy mistake by short circuiting a couple of points and making a direct zap to your conclusion. Avowed homosexuals cannot be leaders in the organization --> organization says gays are not morally straight --> different==evil==worthy of hate.

Come on. It just *isn't that way*. If you know these people, these Scouters and you don't jive with them, move 10 blocks west and connect with another troop. This is a very local organization. The ideas you're so apoplectic over are coming from Irving, Texas. That's far far away from me. On purpose. You can associate with like minded people in any organization. Look at our diverse country, we all get along as a country. Look at the cellar, we get along here too, despite some unbridgeable divides. If you looked into Scouting, you'd find that there's a way to get along there too.

Your characterizations of the BSA as haters just is not true. Whether or not you choose to persue it further is entirely up to you.

Totally different. While you may not value the National Endowment for the Arts (I don't really either), you can apply to get funds from that endowment, the same as every elephant dung artist out there.

But aren't all members of an organization responsible for the actions of that organization? In college, I read a book called "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" that had a few ideas that really stuck with me. If one fundamentally disagrees with the tenants of an organization, one has two options: exit or voice. "Loyalty" in this context is the triumph of complacency over ethos.

The Boy Scouts want to limit membership while soaking up everyones taxes. Sorry, that don't fly, get off the teat. I say the ACLU can hound them until they stop using public schools for their meetings as well. Once they get their hands out of the cookie jar, I'll defend their right to freedom of association.

Now that's what I ment to say. :blush: