Scouts get pwned

[BigV]

What you can do to encourage the Boy Scouts of America to end their policy of discrimination:

Originally Posted by suggestions from Todd Bieber's video

Join your local Boy Scout Council
Contact your local Boy Scouts of America Council
Sign a petition
Share the video posted above
Some recommended websites:
ScoutsForEquality.com
Change.org
Scouting.org

[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

Which one?

I got two. Lots of similar questions between the two, but one asked specifically about forcing a straight scout to sleep in a tent with a gay scout, and the other didn't.

.... hard to say, but I'm sure I didn't get the one with that question. I would have remembered it.

My answer would have been to let the boys work it out for themselves. What a frightened, ignorant question in the first place. wtf. Who would force any kid to sleep in a tent with any other kid? "Force"? That's the operative word here. If the kid's in the troop, there's already plenty of social contact with other members of the troop. I can't imagine a situation where such "force" would be necessary. It's like that joke with the punchline "The doctor says you're gonna die." Such a situation won't ever come up ffs. What a loaded stupid question.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Replace force with assign.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Replace force with assign.

Ok.

Still doesn't work, isn't ... likely to happen in our troop. We have a boy-led troop. Now.

If the whole troop, all the boys are pathological homophobes, then what? We have to buddy up, right? Well, according to the Scout Law

A Scout is
trustworthy,
loyal,
helpful,
friendly,
courteous,
kind,
obedient,
cheerful,
thrifty,
brave,
clean, and
reverent.

I can't see how it would have to come to that. There's no surprise here, the scouts all interact with each other outside a tent, ... I don't see a situation where it would come to that.

As imaginary Scoutmaster, I'd speak to the SPL (Senior Patrol Leader), and possibly to the Patrol Leaders. Ask them what are the sleeping arrangements? Does everyone have a tentmate? For that matter, there have been situations where there have been individual scouts sleeping by themselves in a tent, single occupancy. I know I've sidestepped your question, but it's a stupid made up loaded question. If things have deteriorated to the point where I'm "forcing a straight scout to sleep with a gay scout"... things got off the rails a ways back.

Or. I'm just an asshole leader bent on making trouble.

[glatt]

The question pissed me off too. It's the only one I remember. They may have said "make" instead of "force" but the meaning was the same. Assign an unwilling scout to sleep with the gay one.

I'm not sure how sleeping arrangements should be made though. As they get older, it matters more. Hopefully the boys are all mature about it and just work it out.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Still doesn't work, isn't ... likely to happen in our troop. We have a boy-led troop. Now.

People making statements of what is right and wrong for the BSA, for the USA, and everyone in both, are proclaiming their position on what life and society should be. Fine, that's cool, sometimes it starts dialogs.

You did the same, then got down to where the rubber meets the road with glatt's questions, and drew on your experience in your local area troop when discussing implementation. That's what most people do, because if you discuss hypothetical situations, a shitload of them (majority?) will never happen in a million years.

I think you'll agree, if you take the position of what would happen in your troop, then you sort of have to accept someone else's position on what would happen in their troop in another state/region. So glatt's specific examples will get different responses from different areas.

That's why rules, like laws, can be too specific. First, to cover everything, there wouldn't be enough paper to write them down. Second, it will invariably create unintended consequences.

So now I've come full circle and say the BSA rules/code, have to reflect the general attitude, the spirit of the BSA. But that comes with the realization there are some big divides in this country. Everything you are fer, there's someone agin, and vise versa.

Maybe there can't be a national BSA, maybe if it was broken up by states, each state could come to consensus on rules. Nah, even at that level, most states have a philosophical spread. Maybe the BSA should be dissolved and put them all in the army? Nah, the Navy fathers would have a fit, and the Marines would start a damn war.

So I guess the BSA can't be fixed until society is fixed... may take awhile.

[Clodfobble]

There will always be bad troops. One of my college boyfriends detailed to me how he was actively discriminated against and harassed by both the scouts and the adult leaders in his first troop, because he was ("openly") Jewish. As in, the nicest boy in the group would say things like, "I feel so bad for you, that you're going to burn in hell," while the mean ones would refuse to sit near him and call him disgusting because he wasn't "washed clean" by Jesus. The adults who overheard would shrug at him like, "What can you do? They're right after all..."

I'm sure the issue of who had to share a tent with him would have come up, if he'd stayed long enough to experience a camping trip with them. Instead, he quickly left the troop and joined a better one. And that's really all it takes, is for good people to leave the discriminatory troops and join (or form, if necessary) better ones.

[BigV]

I've been thinking about the phrasing of that hypothetical situation. I'd like to extend and modify my answer.

I *can* imagine a situation where sleeping arrangements could be "assigned". Assuming there are no volunteers to buddy-up with teh gay scout; assuming there had to be a match, I can imagine having to make an executive decision to make such an assignment.

Then I think, "so what?".

It comes down to the idea glatt presented, getting a scout to do something they're unwilling to do. It isn't about "making a straight scout to sleep with a gay scout". oooOOOOOoooo scandalous. That's what that kind of baiting hypothetical is supposed to engender. To getcha all riled up. But, pfffft. I have to get scouts and other scout aged youngsters to do stuff they're unwilling to do all the time. That's part of being a grown up around children. It's possible to do everything using "because I'm the Dad, that's why!" method but fuck that sounds exhausting just saying it here. There are lots of other tools in the kit, aren't there? Lots.

The question's a trick. It's a fig leaf, a smoke screen to obscure the vision of the old bigoted homophobes in positions of authority so they don't have to acknowledge the reality that their attitudes will die with them. More and more younger people, scouts and adults, are becoming less and less apoplectic about homosexuality. This dumb, unmeasurable, unenforceable (insert giant eyeroll here) policy is just a thumb sucking security blanket for ignorant micromanagers. Let them have it, let them choke on it. It won't last.

---

Y'know, the BSA is a private organization. Let them control who they want to associate with and who they want to exclude. I'm fine with that. But, of course, I don't want my support to go to outfits that don't reflect my values. MOSTLY, the BSA does reflect my values, this stupid psychic contortion to avoid catching the gay is the most prominent exception. That's ok. DADT, fine, I have no intention of lifting a fucking pinkie to support, much less enforce this idiocy.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by BigV

What you can do to encourage the Boy Scouts of America to end their policy of discrimination:

Well, somebody was able to do it...


USA Today

The Boy Scouts of America will accept openly gay youths starting on New Year's Day,
a historic change that has prompted the BSA to ponder a host of potential complications
— ranging from policies on tentmates and showers to whether Scouts can march in gay pride parades.
<snip>
"My hope is there will be the same effect this Jan. 1 as the Y2K scare," said Brad Haddock,
a BSA national executive board member who chairs the policy implementation committee.
"It's business as usual, nothing happens and we move forward."

Some churches are dropping their sponsorship of Scout units because of the new policy
and some families are switching to a new conservative alternative called Trail Life USA.
But massive defections haven't materialized and most major sponsors,
including the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches, are maintaining ties.
<snip>

GOOD ON THEM ... the BSA and the 2 churches !!!

[glatt]

You didn't include the part about openly gay adult leaders still being banned.

Which is amusing to me, that the idea of a gay scoutmaster sleeping a couple tents away from innocent Tommy is scarier than the idea of little Tommy actually sharing a tent alone with gay 17 year old Bobby.

[Lamplighter]

You didn't include the part about openly gay adult leaders still being banned....

Slow down, Grasshopper.

For 20 years I've been despising the BSA for it's anti-gay policies.
I need to give them at least 24 hours celebration for this decision.

Next year...

[Clodfobble]

It makes sense to me--not the "gay scoutmasters are dangerous" bit, just the "gay scoutmasters are scarier than gay scouts" hierarchy. An adult is going to be much more experienced in interpersonal relationships, and may be quite skilled at grooming their victim, including pretending to be straight in order to label any questionable contact "okay" in the mind of the victim.

On the other hand, think about how terrified most straight teen boys are to flirt with girls their age. Gay teen boys are just as terrified, plus more so, because they know the object of their affections might get extremely angry if they are not also gay. They're not just risking rejection from their crush, they're risking rejection from the entire social group for making an unfair pass at a straight friend.

Now, if little Tommy and little Bobby are gay, then yeah, you'd best make sure they stay in different tents, because otherwise there's going to be some hot action going on in those woods...

[Sundae]

Aha! I've just worked out what JBKlyde's problem with homosexuality is.
He can't work out which partner is supposed to be loved and which one respected, because presumably they can both smash eachother in the face.

When they're not doing their nails that is.

[Lamplighter]

This looks like either finally a court case, or finally some sanity in the BSofA


With Hire, Boy Scouts Affiliate in New York Defies Ban on Gays
NY Times - JAMES BARRONAPRIL 2, 2015

Taking the first step toward a possible face-off over the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on openly gay adult members or employees,
the organization’s New York affiliate said on Thursday that it had hired a gay Eagle Scout to work in a scout camp this summer.

The New York group, the Boy Scouts’ Greater New York Councils, announced the hiring of Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout
who grew up in Kensington, Md., and is now a student at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
He became a prominent figure among those speaking out against the ban on gay people over 18 in scouting.

“We’ve had an antidiscrimination policy for a very, very long time,” said Richard G. Mason, a board member of the Greater New York Councils,
the local umbrella group for Boy Scouts in the city’s five boroughs.

<snip>

[glatt]

With hundreds of thousands of members across all regions of the country, there are lots of different points of view within scouting. At the national level, they make these rules, but as you get down to the individual level, you don't have uniform agreement with those rules, and in my experience, people sometimes look the other way when it comes to some of the more ridiculous ones.

It's great that this Council level group is openly defying the national level rules instead of just looking the other way to achieve the same thing. I hope it brings change to the national level.

The downside of individuals looking the other way on some of the ridiculous rules is that you get individuals who look the other way on the good rules and do shit like destroy geological features in protected parks.