What do you expect from bigoted paramilitary organisations? Consistency?

[theweaselking]

"Profit trumps preservation for Boy Scout councils nationwide
They logged, sold thousands of acres of prime lands"

The money quote:

In some cases, councils have sought to use revenues from logging or land sales to make up for funding lost because of the organization's controversial bans on gays and atheists from membership and employment rolls.

"The Boy Scouts had to suffer the consequences for sticking by their moral values," said Eugene Grant, president of the Portland-based Cascade Pacific Council's board of directors.

Yeah, because the purpose of the Boy Scouts is to teach children that it's okay to dump every moral or ethical position they hold *as long as you can exclude fags while doing it*.

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

It is, in fact.

How does one get out of the boyscouts, by the way? i thought that once you were a life scout you were a scout for life (hence the name). Is it like the catholic church? Do you just tell some other boy scouts that you quit?

Sidebar, I know one Eagle Scout. he's gay. Big surprise. Did the boy scouts think that heterosexual boys would want to spend all their summers camping with other buys once they realized that they could get girls to touch their privates?

[theamaranth.livejournal.com]

I know one Eagle Scout. he's gay. Big surprise. Did the boy scouts think that heterosexual boys would want to spend all their summers camping with other buys once they realized that they could get girls to touch their privates?

*chuckle*

well, what's the army if not a big boy scouts?

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

My brother did cub scouts for like a year and quit. Too authoritarian for him, plus I suspect he's been an atheist since he was old enough to know what the word meant.

I stayed in Girl Scouts a lot longer, mostly because the creepy paramilitary undercurrent is basically nonexistent. I left when I got bored.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I was a boy scout for years and nobody ever gave me any shit for being an atheist who was constitutionally incapable of *not* asking "why?" when told to do something.

But I'm also Canadian. For us, it was a club that got us out of the house and taught things like wilderness survival and let us *see* all the incredible cool stuff that we've got in Canada.

(and I can still set fire to anything, with anything, in minutes. Life skills, there.)

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

no joke, i think all of the senior scouts that were there when i joined went into the military. several into special forces.

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

I think the Hawaii Council (at least when i was in) seemed a lot more lax.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

I was a Brownie for approximately one meeting, until I was shown those little brown shapeless dresses they wore in the 80s. I may have been a fashion victim, but even I was never that far gone.

Also, there was a distinct lack of knives and burning things, my vocal disappointment with which seems to have resulted in my immediate enrollment in the conspicuously destruction-free public library summer program.

(Apparently, and I don't remember this, I complained vociferously about both counts to Mom in the car on the way home from the orientation meeting.)

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Girl Scouts are less about the paramilitary aspects, more about the extortionary behavior. Why is it people need to make up excuses not to pay $5 for fifty cents worth of shitty cookies?

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Those were the very words that pissed me off.

[unknownpoltroon.livejournal.com]

Eagle scout. I wouldn't donate any money to them these days.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

*as long as you can exclude fags while doing it*.

You forgot atheists.

Yeah, the Scouts didn't start getting Extremely Dickish until the '80s, long after I blew off the Arrow of Light and ended the experience as a Weeblo. After that, I guess the Mormons took over and enforced Weirdness Moste Vile.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I'm a gay Eagle Scout who was in the American Boy Scouts.

An interesting thing about the BSA policy and "moral values" is that what some of the councils and the national leadership say... is pretty much ignored by some troops. The troop I was in had several boys who weren't religious, and nobody really made a big deal out of it.

Then there was a troop my friend was in in the next town over. The description he gave me was, "half of the troop was gay". The leaders there didn't care either.

The program is great for the boys. Like you said, it gets them out of the house and teaches them things like camping and wilderness survival, as well as skills like first aid. The real tragedy here is that it is being run into the ground by what amounts to a bunch of old, white, men.

The BSA needs their own version of Obama.