Obama Missing Historic Boy Scout Jamboree for Fundraisers, 'View' Taping

If the decision was purely mine? I would not join because of all the reasons you have stated with which I agree.

Are you a parent? My kid was six when he wanted to be a Cub Scout.

We take the good from scouting that is there: camping, starting a campfire, tieing knots, etc.

When the oddball stuff comes up like religion and the quasi-militaristic jingoism, well we laugh about it.

 

I want to make clear that I'm not slamming the parents of scouts. I completely understand the positive things your kids can get from membership in these organizations. That said, if the scouting organizations had discriminatory policies based on race, I think it wouldn't even be a question whether most parents here would let their kids join.

 

Exactly. It's a double-standard. From a third-party perspective, it comes off as "Excluding people is okay, as long as I'm not one of the excluded". And because of that, it's something I could never or would never be a part of.

 

Understood and agreed. When our assistant scout leader is one of two mommies in the household (without repercussion), I surmise that the national organization doesn't hold a monolothic grip on the lower echelons.

 

Tell me your troop information so I can report to crimestoppers.

 

Change it Rashmon don't just laugh

Teach your kid to be a rebel

 

Yeah, Obama is dishonoring the children who have served our great nation. They are the hero's and how can Obama not regard their sacrifice?

Defend our SCOUTS!

 

The Boy Scouts have always seemed mildly fascist to me anyway. Good thing Obama didn't go, otherwise I would have started a thread about him ducking the tough interviewers on "The View" to indoctrinate boys in paramilitary garb.

 

Hmmm. Interesting.

 

I agree most with BetterThanI in this thread, but I think everybody in this thread makes good points.

Except OddsOn, of course.

 

I hope you're not some upper echelon scoutmaster overlord in jackboots ready to impose your fascist will on our open-minded pack.

 

Sadly, I think there are a whole lot of Hasselbeck-clones out there who would make this very argument. Which lends credence to the idea that they hate him for being him, and not for anything he actually does.

 

The OP's feigned outrage warms my cockles

 

If you guys start awarding a rainbow badge locally, you'll have won me over.

 

Good heavens... an actual parent! Folks, those of you who have kids have experienced things like this. I had real misgivings about my daughter joining (and she was about the same age), but after talking about it with my SO, we decided that if ever the national agenda made its way into our daughter's head, we would pull her ASAP. That's never happened. My daughter is literally your classic liberal. She has the DVR going for the Daily Show and Colbert every night, so she can watch shows usually too late for her to see. She "gets" the political humor, because she stays up to date with what's going on in the world. If that isn't enough, we talk about everything that's happening. You can probably imagine the conversations we had about Mr. Bush and the GOP, and still have. In other words, she's developed her own political filter and hasn't been influenced by the bigotry practiced on the national level of the BSA, being primarily influenced by us and her peers outside of scouts, those at school.

Her payoff? She really enjoys the camps during the summer. She's learned how to sail a sailboat, build a fire, paddle a canoe and, as Rashmon mentioned, tieing knots, knots I couldn't name, much less attempt to recreate... countless things, and she's having a gas doing them. She loves the work they do with seniors and, although not being religious, as best I can tell (not that I would care... we've always said that was their choice, not ours), she truly enjoys the things they do around the holidays for those less fortunate than her. I'm sure there must be some Stepford Parents out there, with little automatons marching to the tune of The Scouts, but it isn't anything we've experienced. It's why she can participate.

 

I completely get your point of view, Deckard (and Rashmon). And I'm glad that your children are getting the advantages of BSA/GSA that they are. Sincerely.

But it's a valid question: would you let your children avail themselves of all the advantages of BSA/GSA if their official stance was to exclude blacks the way they do gays and atheists? Even if it didn't directly affect your children's experiences?

 

That's a valid question and no, we would not have let her joined. Is it fair that we would have kept her out had that been their policy, yet have let her stay with the other stupidities practiced by the national BSA/GSA? No. It's one of those difficult decisions I guess parents have to make. If we had genuine concerns about her being influenced by the stance on gays and atheists, she wouldn't be in the scouts.

I'm agnostic and my SO is a non-practicing Catholic. My SO might go to church once or twice a year with her sister, who is religious, but I never step into a church unless it is historic or there is a wedding going on. I can't recall ever taking my kids to a "church service." My SO has a few times, but it didn't seem to take. My son, about to start his second year of college (he'll actually be a junior, having a year of college credit by the time he graduated from his magnet high school), has never had an interest in scouts. He does have an interest in various religions, just as he has an interest in the Far East. He has become pretty fluent in Japanese simply because it interests him, completing 6 hours of Japanese his first year at UW/Madison, and it wouldn't surprise me if he one day declared he was Buddhist or a member of some other Eastern religion.

My son is an interesting guy. He declared one day, several years ago, that he was a vegetarian. We sort of blinked and then said, "OK." Radical cooking changes soon followed, as you, if anyone, can imagine. Exactly a year later he declared that he was no longer a vegetarian and, despite several attempts by us to find out why he'd done it in the first place, and why he had changed his mind a year later, he never told us. My theory was it involved a chick or a bet. Who knows?

 

Fair enough. I'm not a parent so I can't put myself in your shoes and I don't want to come off as judgmental on your parenting (I have no problem being judgmental on other things, as you know).

But I would imagine that you wouldn't have concerned about her being influenced by a "whites only" policy either, since your kids seem to have their heads screwed on straight. So I guess this just proves that there remains a serious and significant difference in our society, even among liberals who support gay rights, between how seriously we take bigotry toward blacks (for example) versus how seriously we take bigotry toward gays.

And I think that's really unfortunate.

 

I think I've made as many posts here in support of gay rights as anyone. My kids don't have any prejudice towards them. In fact, quite the opposite. It is one of those parental things. Being physically unable to go camping and a lot of other outdoor things I used to be able to do, when my daughter expressed an interest in Girl Scouts and being able to go to camp, which they do several times a year, we saw it as a way for her to do things we would have relished doing with her years ago, but can't do now. That required compromise on our part. Knowing that she is not being influenced in the slightest by the GSA policies made it possible to let her be a member. As I said, my son was never interested, although we would have liked for him to spend more time outdoors.

You have to be an acrobat to be a parent. It's hard to keep some balance on the tightrope.

 

And I think I understand all that. I'm not questioning your decision. I'm also not questioning your commitment to gay rights. I understand that it is firm.

But regardless of anything else you've said, you also said you would not have let her join if the organization held the exact same stance toward blacks that it does toward gays.

And I take that as evidence that a lot of people (even liberals like yourself, even ones like you that are stalwart defenders of gay rights) are still more willing to tolerate bigotry toward gays than they are bigotry toward blacks.

I look forward to a day when that is not the case.