Posted on 06/16/2005 11:22:21 AM PDT by SandRat
The year 2007 would have marked the 100th birthday of Boy Scouting in England. Unfortunately, the British Boy Scouts, founded by Lord Robert Baden-Powell as the first Scouting group in the world, is now a dead organization.
The recent decision by U.K. Scout Association executives to make chaos of the Scout Oath mangles the program far beyond anything Baden-Powell might recognize. Instead of being required to pledge their loyalty to "God and the Queen," members of the Scout Association can now opt to swear allegiance to any combination of things. Muslims can pledge to Allah, Hindus to Dharma, and atheists to life in "good moral standing." Anti-monarchs can omit the Queen's title and mention instead the state.
But the decision isn't much of a surprise.
In 1991, UK Scout executives decided to give troops the option of allowing equal access for girls and boys to any of its programs. By 1996, nearly 26,000 girls had joined. By 2000, British Scouting authorities required that all newly formed troops be co-educational.
In a statement of special problems that may arise with the integration of young ladies with young men on camping trips and the like, U.K. Scout Association administrators asseverate:
In the instance of physical building constraints, commissioners should first establish whether these problems have been raised as a cover for opposition to making mixed provision. Where these problems are real, commissioners should emphasise that these are NOT gender issues but are resource problems.
That's officialese for saying that tenting arrangements, bathroom issues, and other gender differences are simply relics of a time when males dominated society and filled the ranks of Scouting exclusively. Today, everyone is equal.
At an October 1997 meeting of the executive board of the U.K. Scout Association, a decision was made to admit open homosexuals into troops as leaders and members. "Society has changed considerably since 1907," wrote British Scouting executives in their revolutionary "Equal Opportunities Policy Guidelines." "The Scout Association has had to recognize these changes in how we describe what we stand for." The new non-discrimination code included a prohibition of discrimination on the basis of "marital or sexual status" and "political or religious belief."
The London Telegraph asked Lord Baden-Powell's grandson, a vice president for the U.K. Scout Association, to comment on the decision, but he said only that the board had made the decision without his knowledge. Baden-Powell's 79-year old daughter, Betty Clay, denounced the decisions and political correctness of the Scout Association. "He, in his writings to young men, and in his responses to many anxious young men's inquiries, always made it clear that they should do their best to keep themselves clean in thought, word, and deed ... They should ... look on themselves as guardians of their bodies and minds and to do as far they could according to the will of God."
Today, homosexuals are allowed to become Scout leaders without question, because "there is no link between homosexuality and pedophilia, and therefore there is no justification for restricting membership on this basis." Only a brief note at the bottom of the non-discrimination code clarifies what was clearly considered by executives in discussions of sexual status: "Pedophilia is a bar to any involvement in the Scout Movement."
Aside from pedophilia, sexual relationships are not only tolerated, but encouraged in the confines of the English Scouting experience:
It is important for leaders to help some young people to understand the nature of public and private behaviour, and the need to respect other people's privacy and personal space. When two young people do form an emotional attachment, leaders should both support their need for some privacy together as well as help them to remember their other friends, who may feel rejected by the couple.
Far from the abstinence-based approach of the Boy Scouts of America, British Scouts encourage Scout leaders to discuss "sexual behavior and practices" and "contraception" with their troop members. The only significant restrictions placed on troop leaders are mandatory abidance of the new age-of-consent laws (age 16) passed by Parliament and to avoid allowing "relationships between young people at different stages of sexual development."
Americans, take note of this: Since the UKSA decided to ally itself with the homosexual movement, Scouting membership in England has dropped by close to 20 percent. From 1997 to 2001, membership fell from 500,000 to 400,000. It had been as high as 650,000 in the 1980s.
There are consequences to political correctness. Among other things, it kills movements.
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Hans Zeiger is an Eagle Scout, president and founder of the Scout Honor Coalition and a student at Hillsdale College in Michigan. His new book, "Get Off My Honor: The Assault on the Boy Scouts of America," can be pre-ordered from online booksellers
The charter really does provide for exclusive use of emblems, badges, words, etc.
http://usscouts.org/aboutbsa/bsacharter.html
Using its congressional charter, BSA sued U.S. Boy Scouts (a.k.a. American Boy Scouts) to change its name:
http://www.troop97.net/bsahist1.htm
The USBS/ABS was more militaristic, and it had to change its name to "Cadets", but eventually failed as it was deemed "too right wing".
So, no other group can call itself "scouts". BSA has sole use of the name. They can call themselves something else, but not "scouts". That's why there aren't "Queer Scouts".
This is a crying shame! May God help us to preserve the integrity of the BSA.
Still waiting for American Heritage Girls to appear in our state. :(
Don't you think that's their purpose to begin with?
Wow. I had no idea that Congress could and did grant such a charter.
Don't know about the organization, but the activity it espouses has been rampant in Britain for years.
As my son's Den Leader and an Eagle Scout I can tell you that we will maintain our integrity or most of us will leave and start another group of the original ilk.
buring = burning, dang "fingerlexia." B-)
The 21st World Scout Jamboree will be hosted by the United Kingdom, in celebration of the Centenary of Scouting. It will take place at Chelmsford Hylands Park in Essex, from 27th July to 8th August 2007.
Right. God and Country award was what I thinking of. Thanks. [I told you it was a long time ago!]
"Funny how homosexual and atheists want to force organizations to confirm to THEM..."
Of course. Because, like liberals and socialists, their pathological/sociopathic desire is to SUBVERT and PERVERT everything they touch. Kinda like their daddy, Satan.
Limeyland's downward spiralling plunge into the moral squalor its death-cultist and/or mad-cow-worshipping pagan-heathen/pantheist third-world migrants refuse to leave behind, has progressed beyond the point of no return.
Time to pull up our nation's every drawbridge.
"The swimming requirements have as their purpose, the same objective which governs Scout Swim Requirements ... the safety of the Scout in the water, by developing in each Scout a confidence and true sense of his own ability. Thus, the rule toward Pipestone Swimming Requirements has been an ever-constant, rigid adherence to the letter of the requirement. To give a boy the "benefit of the doubt" and grant approval of his inadequate performance of a swimming requirement might be the most fateful decision a leader in camp will ever make.
Amen! And...
"No honor is respected by its recipient or his peers if that honor is gained through deceit or unfair practices. Striving towards the annual Camp Honor Award encourages the Scout to advance both in Camp and in his Unit. It is a valuable learning experience, and it emphasizes character development and builds self-confidence as well. Remember, the Pipestone cannot be awarded on the basis of effort alone!
The candidate must have fulfilled the established requirements as written. To reward a Scout when he is less than deserving, for emotional or other reasons, may do him a greater disservice than to encourage him to try again. Scouting's role is to prepare a boy to face life. Your own experience tells you that the most meaningful values are not always the easiest to attain!
It is absolutely no coincidence that the Buckeye Council maintains such strong membership. Contrary to the lib preference to make everything easier and hence more "inclusive", the Council has figured out that setting performance standards and holding rigidly to them is actually more appreciated by the boys themselves.
People who think the way to preserve the BSA is to lower standards have it exactly backwards.
I've been out, so I have just read this. I had taken some Scouts and leaders into Canada for a week-long canoe trip into Quetico Provinical Park.
Anyway, I disagree that the activists intent is to destroy these organizations. To my mind, their intent is to gain acceptance of their behavior as normal and equal in status to heterosexual behavior. Association with something as all-American as the BSA will help with this.
You need to re-examine WAGGGS' ideals, and those of Baden-Powell as well. Baden-Powell very definitely desired to get Scouts of all nations to get to know each other and become brothers as a way to develop world peace. As a General in the British Army, B-P was well aware of the alternatives.Finally, there is no requirement by either the WOSM (the world-wide organization that almost all Scouting organizations belong to, including the BSA) or WAGGGS (the girl-only Scouting organizations that don't belong to the WOSM) that their member organizations ban homosexuals.
Scouts are now banned from all public halls, and have recently been thrown off of military bases where they met in conference halls.
Are you talking about Boy Scouting in America? If so, you are quite wrong. Please quote your source for these assertions.
My Troop and Pack both meet in public schools, and my Troop runs a fundraiser at a local Park District's gymnasium.
bttt... to show the padre.
However, I suspect that there are a number of homosexual activists that want this because the BSA is incontrovertably a central part of American culture. Getting the BSA to accept homosexual behavior would accelerate getting America as a whole to accept homosexual behavior as normal. They don't want to destroy the BSA; they want to use it.
I recently had a father enroll his son in our unit. He and I were discussing the program. He told me that he was uncomfortable with the BSA's policy on homosexual membership. I asked him, "Consider the sexual dynamics of boys ages 11 to 14. They are sometimes unsure of their own sexual nature or identity. Now take these boys, run them through a typical campout where they engage in a lot of unfamiliar and physical activities away from home and their parents. Now give them all knives, axes and saws and have them sleep together. What do you think might happen?" He said, "I hadn't thought of that!" and there was no more question.
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