Scouts get pwned

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303280,00.html

Philadelphia Raises Boy Scouts' Rent $199,999 Over Gay Ba

PHILADELPHIA — The city has decided that the Boy Scouts chapter here must pay fair-market rent of $200,000 a year for its city-owned headquarters because it refuses to permit gay Scouts.

The organization's Cradle of Liberty Council, which currently pays $1 a year in rent, must pay the increased amount to remain in its downtown building past May 31, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said Wednesday.

City officials say they cannot legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates. The city owns the land on which the council's 1928 Beaux Arts building sits.

Scouting officials will ask the city solicitor for details on the appraisals that yielded the $200,000 figure, said Jeff Jubelirer, spokesman for the Cradle of Liberty Council.

The higher rent money "would have to come from programs. That's 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp," Jubelirer said. "It's disappointing, and it's certainly a threat."

The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that Scouts, as a private group, have a First Amendment right to bar gays from membership.

The council adopted a nondiscrimination policy in 2003 but was ordered to revoke it by the National Council, which said local chapters cannot deviate from national rules barring participation by anyone who is openly gay.

The Cradle of Liberty Council serves about 64,000 scouts in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

You wanna' be private & discriminate... BE private.
I SO hope this catches on!

[Aliantha]

Hmmm...interesting.

[Happy Monkey]

Good. I loved being a Scout, but the organization needs to shake off the Mormon takeover.

[DanaC]

The mormons took over the scouts?

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by DanaC

The mormons took over the scouts?

Maybe they ran out of choirboys?

[Lamplighter]

First, I know there is a lot of good to be found in the Boy Scouts of America.
Second, I know there is a lot of good to be found in the Boy Scouts of America.
Third, I know there is a lot of good to be found in the Boy Scouts of America.

BUT... I have been bothered for years by their policies regarding:
... exclusion of gays
... keeping secret lists of names of men accused of molesting scouts.

Finally, an Oregon case has tackled the second issue.

NWCN.com
by SUSANNAH FRAME / KING 5 News
October 17, 2012

Public to get access to Boy Scouts’ ‘perversion files’

"Perversion files" kept for decades by the Boy Scouts of America
are scheduled to be released for public inspection Thursday by a Portland attorney.

The thousands of pages of documents contained in 1200 files dated from 1965 to 1985,
show how the Boy Scouts dealt with men who were accused of molesting children.
<snip>
The man who sexually abused Kerry Lewis over a two year period,
Assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes, confessed in 1983 to a Scouting leader,
a Mormon bishop, that he had molested 17 boys in his troop.

According to testimony at trial, instead of warning parents or calling police,
the bishop slowly allowed Dykes back into Scouting.
The next year Dykes began molesting Kerry Lewis when the Scout was 13.
Dykes was convicted of the crimes and served prison time in Oregon.
He is currently a Portland resident and a registered sex offender

A jury awarded Lewis $18.5 million in 2010, concluding that the
Boy Scouts knew about the problem and failed to protect him.

The files to be released Thursday were presented to the jury by plaintiff attorneys
as proof that the organization had collected so many records on child molesters
that they had an obligation to warn parents and Scout leaders that pedophiles
were accessing victims through Scouting.
<snip>
The Boy Scouts waged a five-year legal battle to keep the documents away
from public view which led ultimately to an Oregon Supreme Court ruling.
The Court ruled that since the files were admitted into evidence in open court
in the Lewis case, the records belonged to the public and should be produced for public inspection.
<snip>
In 2008 they instituted background checks for all volunteers
and after the Lewis case in 2010, Scout policy changed to require all suspected abuse
be reported to law enforcement.

[Lamplighter]

An on-line database is now available at the following link...

http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/boyscouts-cases/

I did a simple search for Oregon, and the thing that impressed me
most was that so many different cities were listed.
I mean, I might have expected a larger number of listings for the bigger cities,
but it so many different towns and cities were listed.

My thought was that the parents of most kids involved in scouting
probably have no idea how widespread is the problem.

[Lamplighter]

The BSA is finally making a decision, but I seriously question if this one is for the better or worse.

NY Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 19, 2013

Boy Scouts Move to Lift Ban on Gay Youth Members

Seeking an elusive middle ground on an issue that has divided
its ranks and drawn heated national debate, the Boy Scouts of America on Friday
proposed ending its longstanding ban on openly gay scouts
but continuing to bar gay adults from serving as leaders.

The decision must be approved by the roughly 1,400 voting members
of the Scouts’ National Council at a meeting in Texas the week of May 20.
<snip>
“The Boy Scouts have missed an opportunity to exercise leadership and
usher the organization back to relevancy,” said Richard Ferraro,
the vice president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination.
“What this resolution appears to be doing is reinforcing the outrageous idea
that gay people somehow pose a threat to kids, which experts like the
American Psychological Association have dismissed for more than a decade.”
<snip>

First, understand that to be a volunteer leader in the BSA,
a person MUST be the parent of a boy who has joined the Scouts.
So, a gay boy is allowed to join, but his gay father or mother are not allowed to participate ?

Separating boys from their parent(s) as a matter of policy does not seem like the very good idea to me.

But Martez Moore, chief operating officer of the Scouts’ Middle Tennessee Council,
said he supported the proposal, especially the continued barring of gay leaders.
In surveys, he said, local parents were “overwhelmingly in support of banning gay Scout leaders.”

He said he did not expect that a decision to admit openly gay boys as scouts would have a major effect.
“Scouts who are gay usually decide with their own families whether they want to stay in a troop,”
he said. “It is a decision made within a family, not usually within the Scouts.”

So, let them join... and then drive them out.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

First, understand that to be a volunteer leader in the BSA,
a person MUST be the parent of a boy who has joined the Scouts.

When did this come about? This was not true back in the dark ages of my youth.

So, a gay boy is allowed to join, but his gay father or mother are not allowed to participate ?

Of all the scouts in the country, damn few parents want to be, or have the skills, to be scout leaders.

Separating boys from their parent(s) as a matter of policy does not seem like the very good idea to me.

I thought the idea of the scouts was to get them out of the comfort zone of family, and teach them to be self reliant. Teach them to work with other kids, who have different skills and perspectives.

While not ideal, I see this as a workable compromise for the millions of parents that don't want their sons to catch the gays. If their boy doesn't catch it from a queer scout, it'll ease their fears of queer leaders.

Yeah, that kinda' threw me too.

[DanaC]

How did that happen? Is it just thatthey have a lot of people working as scout masters, or are they in control of the organisation at a national level?

Perhaps Scouts get their own planet after they die?

[Cloud]

Here's a blurb on it:

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/043769.htm

I read that too and seriously question it, whatever church is in your area is where your local troop will be.
So in an area with a lot of Mormons, there will be a lot of LDS control, where there are a lot of Lutherans, the same.
It just depends on where you live and the church demographic of that area.
I was active in leadership for a while and attended several Jamborees... this is what I saw and what is logical.
You are not going to have Mormon troops without Mormons, not possible.

[jinx]

It's spelled out pretty clearly right here

Mormons control a significant percentage of all Boy Scout troops; if policies change to treat gays and atheists equally, the Mormons will walk - taking all of their money with them.

I'm pretty sure I went to high school with the guy that wrote that... definitely know him from somewhere... that's gonna bug me...