BoyScouts - 100 Years

[hms42]

Happy 100th Birthday to the Boy Scouts of America. The US Boy Scouts were founded on this day in 1910. http://www.scouting.org/

(Scouting worldwide was formed in 1907.)

(I am a former Life scout and am still active in my old scout troop.)

Comments

[madfilkentist]

The BSA says "The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizenship without recognizing an obligation to God." I can't respect an organization that considers me a second-class citizen.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with madfilkentist. I was an Eagle scout myself. Fortunately my lack of belief never came up. Honestly, I acted better than most of the scouts who DID believe in God. It's too bad they're shutting themselves away from so many members. Plus their policy runs against the Constitution which further hampers their efforts to reach out since schools should not support an organization that discriminates based on religion.

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

It's these lawsuits that have been killing the Scouts. While any group is in the news as the target of lawsuits, it kills their reputation. Atheists, gays, etc., who sue, rather than, say, forming their own groups, like the right-wing Christians, or the Lubavitcher Chasidim, or the Mormons, do more harm than good, IMHO.

The paederasts don't help, either.

And accepting all religions but atheism has not been held to be "discrimination based on religion", AFAIK.

The Boy Scouts discriminate against observant Jews on the basis of religion, though. Despite policy statements going back at least to the 1930s to the contrary.

1) I've never met anyone Orthodox who was accepted for camp staff. When I applied, I was told "we lost your application". OK, nichevo. But when I talked to my scoutmaster's older son, who had been given the same excuse, and I know he was way better qualified than I had been, I smelled a rat.

2) When we had elections for OA, the council sent around the guy who had been burning yarmulkes at camp the previous summer, a piggy-eyed Irish boy. (The camp was kosher, but most campers weren't Jewish).

3) When we had the largest troop in Roosevelt district (East Side of Manhattan), 41 boys, the council refused to schedule any one-day inter-troop events on Sunday, thereby locking us out of participating.

My scoutmaster used to say "Scouting is a great organization at the troop level, but at the district/council/national level, not so much."