Posted on 08/15/2004 9:05:41 AM PDT by BraveMan
Scouts Canada ceased to serve any useful purpose the day they became all-inclusive, all-sensitive, and all-tolerant.
Big Canadian real estate is on the market. A rather sizable chunk of Lord Robert Baden-Powell's Empire is available for investors, homebuilders, fishing resort prospectors, or blacktop barons. Scouts Canada is pounding in "for sale" signs at the entrances of a number of Scout camps across the country, including at least twenty camps in Ontario. But don't worry. No Boy Scouts will mourn the loss of their summer camps, for the Boy Scouts of Canada no longer exist.
Thinking they could become more inclusive, the Boy Scouts of Canada Board of Governors decided in November 1998 to admit females, atheists, agnostics, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals into troops. Although established troops were not even allowed to remain all-male groups, Scouts Canada approved the establishment of the world's first all-homosexual troop in 1999. The troop marches in homosexual pride parades and loudly symbolizes what Scouts Canada calls its commitment to diversity.
Scouts Canada's new non-discrimination code reads: "Scouting is a worldwide, multicultural movement. We welcome people to membership regardless of gender, race, culture, religious belief, sexual orientation or economic circumstances. Youth members are strongly influenced by the behavior of adults. We need to be sensitive to the traditions and beliefs of all people and to avoid words or actions which "put down" anybody."
And so, in its attempt to include everybody and everything, Scouts Canada is effectively dead.
Budgets have run dry. Troop halls and old campsites sit vacant. Professional staff salaries are severed. Membership is mostly decimated. In the past, membership roles consistently exceeded 300,000. Around the peak in 1965, there were 320,000 Boy Scouts. Today, despite a one third population increase in Canada over four decades and a doubling of the demographic possibilities (with female members), Scouts Canada has dwindled to a puny 130,000 and it is rapidly declining.
Open to all, there is a certain liability that accompanies the mixture of sexes and sexual preferences at Scout Camp. It is no coincidence that Scouts Canada's costs for liability insurance against sexual molestation claims increased dramatically by 2002 when, lacking adequate finances, Scouts Canada canceled its sex abuse insurance, and with it many "high risk" activities. Without the insurance, a single pedophile could potentially annihilate Scouts Canada forever.
Esprit de corps has evaporated. Last year, wearing a uniform at official Scout events became optional. Scoutmasters were deprived of the authority to demand the wearing of uniforms. "It's time to stop bickering about the clothes we wear," said Ms. Bonita Brick, chair of the National Scouts Youth Committee that handed down the uniform decision. "Accept the reality of change."
It seems that change is not so attractive to the traditional core of Scouts Canada. "It is disheartening. Everything seems to be going down and down," laments veteran Scouter Bill Stauttener, who manages Union Marsh Scout Camp which is set to go on the chopping block.
Eastern Ontario's Camp Apple Hill is expected to sell for just $30,000, a bargain considering that it is 300 acres. "It's very heartbreaking and very distressing," says three-decade Scout leader Pat Tugwood.
It may be a sad affair for some who've been around Canadian Scouting for a while, but I say good riddance to Scouts Canada. They ceased to serve any useful purpose the day they became all-inclusive, all-sensitive, and all-tolerant. The Scout Oath and Scout Law are obliterated in the land of the red maple leaf north of Parallel 49.
It is doubtful that this organization can be resuscitated. Political correctness, having infected whole institutions, does not easily reverse. But we Americans might well consider this malady and contain it at the border.
"In meeting the challenges of a multi-faith society which is increasingly gay-positive, the [Boy Scouts of America] might follow the lead of Scouts Canada," urges a writer at ReligiousTolerance.org. And thus the far Left attacks the Boy Scouts of America, relentlessly for the past two decades.
There are prices to be paid by the BSA for standing on traditional moral values, but none so severe as this eulogy of Scouts Canada. In America, United Way funding may be cut, cities and school districts may abandon the Scouts, courts may order the Scouts to leave public property. But so long as the Scout Oath and Law remain intact, the Boy Scouts of America can survive.
Goodbye, Scouts Canada. Political correctness is sure grand, eh?
Did I remember the salute right or was my kid just having me on? ;)
Since someone's always going to be dictating morality to me, I'll take my dictated morality from the Creator of the Universe, not from some human being who can't even see the contradictions in his own philosophy.
Looks like one for the list....
I vaguely recollect that salute.
I was a beaver in the '50s. ;^)
Like minorities, illegal aliens, homosexuals, and democrat politicians already get?
No one seemed to mind that BSA got to use public facilities 30 years ago. A meeting room at the local library, a corner of a state park for camping, etc. Now, most any group can do the same thing. Why does it matter that the BSA does it too? Because they have a values-centered philosophy, that's why. I bet if BSA was a gay atheist organization, you would not be so quick to try to impose your 'standards' on them.
Troop 386 bump.
I was just trying to figure if the answer was yes or no"
Like when Kozak asked you:
"So should atheist organizations be forced to accept the religious?"
and you answered:
"Then you, too, are in favor of discriminating against kids based on religion.
Why so sensitive in admitting it?"
Should atheist organizations be forced to accept the religious?
That's your choice, and I respect it. I choose otherwise.
Excellent comments, along with some others on this thread. Amazing how a slight mention of the name of God enrages some people.
It would be nice if organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center (or whatever it's foul name is) didn't receive taxpayer money... PP get millions of dollars, IIRC, and the Southern etc is all gov't money funded. It is as evil as PP. If I'm wrong I hope someone will correct me.
Then why don't you respect the "choices" of the BSA and their supporters?
According to you life is essentially meaningless. Why don't you drop all your ideals and "values" and live as if it were? The other soulless animals, plants, rocks, etc. do so and get by quite well (they certainly aren't fretting over Jeffersonian doctrines of taxation).
Wait a minute! This isn't Richard Dawkins, is it? ;-)
And atheist youth groups "discriminate" against believers. What's your point?
The majority of people who donate to Scouting are people who do not itemize their taxes. Therefore, they are not tax-free donations. I feel very certain they are not getting your taxes. Your taxes are safely going into the pockets of politicians, grafters, welfare cheats, and other ne'er-do-wells, but rest assured, not to those discriminatory Scouts.
...special public privileges... So, it's okay for the Scouts to pick up the litter in the public park, but God forbid that they should then enjoy a picnic there.
What's really scare is that people who don't believe in G-d still think that right and wrong objectively exists, that they can see it, and that they have the right/duty to impose it on the rest of us, all the while telling us that life is essentially totally meaningless and that rejecting G-d sets us "free."
Did you see the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other night, where they did the history of Greece and its legacy of rationalistic humanism? You know, the "evolution of man as a rational being" and the alleged nobility of asking "who am I? what is it all about?" even though it theoretically isn't "about" anything?
All the evils of the modern world may be traced back to classical Hellenism.
I may not be a chr*stian, but I certainly agree with Tertullian: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"
So you admit that it's merely a subjective personal hang-up and not somehow objectivey morally wrong? Then you've taken a step forward. Your next step is to stop trying to "convert" other people to sharing your subjective moral hang-up (as if it had any objective ramifications of any kind).
::Sigh:: Why is it that people who ridicule religion claim to be such defenders of religious people from "discrimination?"
Does your outrage extend to public schools that discriminate against Christians but not against moslems?
I'm sure that a local print shop could make them up for you and if you hawked them at a local ball game you'd sell out your supply in short order.
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