Posted on 03/12/2005 4:07:10 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Georgia Power CEO Michael Garrett, a former Boy Scout, spoke at a luncheon honoring Scouting supporters in the Augusta Towers Hotel last week. He noted that 60,000 Georgian students – four in 10 – who enter the ninth grade never graduate. By contrast, "95 percent of Scouts finish school. The things you are doing are important to this state."
But an emergency is in the offing. Under threat by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Boy Scouts of America is formulating plans to remove thousands of chartered troops from sponsorship by our nation's public schools. The important partnership that has existed for 95 years between the Boy Scouts and public schools apparently is being severed – by the Scouts themselves. It would be detrimental to America's communities. In a time when strength and honor are most needed, the Boy Scouts run the risk of appearing weak.
According to a recent BSA annual report, public schools are the third-largest type of group that sponsors Boy Scout, Cub Scout and Tiger Cub troops, numbering over 10,000 units of nearly 363,000 Boy Scouts. Though public school relationships with the Boy Scouts have been harmed by political correctness in recent years, especially in major cities, most local school districts have cherished the contributions that the Scouts make to their communities.
But last month, the ACLU – which has spent the past two decades at war on the Boy Scouts because they exclude homosexuals and atheists from membership and leadership and celebrate God, country and character – sent a letter to the Boy Scouts national headquarters threatening lawsuits against public schools that sponsor Scout troops. According to the ACLU, for a school to sponsor a Scout unit is a direct violation of the First Amendment separation of church and state.
And the Boy Scouts are yielding. The ACLU is just too big and nasty and vile, and the Boy Scouts don't have the time, money, public relations infrastructure or strategic ambition to fight its lawsuits.
"We obviously don't want that [expensive lawsuits against schools] to happen," national Boy Scouts spokesman Gregg Shields told the Baptist Press. "Instead, the Boy Scouts have tried to protect the resources of our education partners by moving our charter from public schools to other community-based organizations such as parent-teacher organizations or Salvation Army units or nearby religious organizations."
By withdrawing from public school charters, Boy Scout troops will not be protecting the resources of their education partners – far from it. Rather, the Boy Scouts will concede the validity of the ACLU's claims. Of course, the ACLU is wrong. Of course, there is no truth in their argument that the Scouts' presence in the public schools is a violation of our nation's Constitution. Not only does a school-chartered Scout troop fall well within the Constitution, it helps to preserve the Constitution.
For the Constitution rests on self-government. If ever a statement of self-government was written, it is the Scout Oath: "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight." It is the duty of the public schools to teach, to encourage and to frame its academic mission around that understanding of self-government.
In a day when public schools have fallen far short of their moral, spiritual and intellectual responsibilities, sponsorship of a Boy Scout troop is one critical, remaining link to self-government. As Paul W. Terry of the University of Alabama wrote in the School Review 70 years ago, "Being concerned with boys of school age and principally with out-of-school hours, and being devoted to objectives which are wholly educational and strikingly similar to those of the school but pursuing these with activities which differ in many respects from those of the school, the Boy Scout organization is now generally recognized by school men as a highly desirable if not an indispensable supplement to the training afforded boys in the schools." The same holds true, if not truer, today.
Of course, the ACLU is not concerned with truth. But Americans who care about the future of Scouting, of self-government and of constitutional government, must be concerned. We must take a stand for the Boy Scout Oath and Law before they are destroyed by the ACLU.
This newest challenge to the Scout Oath and Law is one of the harshest the Scouts have come against. And the Boy Scouts of America should hear from supporters around the country – with dollars and with feedback. First, the Scouts need money for their legal defense efforts and other programs. Second, the national Scouts need to know that it would be a crime against honor to give in to the ACLU – contact your local counsel through the Scouts' legal-issues website. Some 363,000 Boy Scouts would be affected if the BSA withdrew from public school charters.
This must be our clear and unabashed message to the ACLU: On my honor, get off my honor.
Scouting in Canada has been destroyed by allowing girls and homosexuals . They have many camps up for sale because they have had a 50% drop in scouts. The ACLU wont be happy until they put American Scouting in that same position.
Stop all funding of the ACLU. Stop our government from paying the ACLU to screw us.
The BSA launches a preemptive move against the ACLU?The BSA uses reverse psychology against the ACLU?
Whichever/whatever, good for the BSA. The publicity created by this on a local level will be a very good thing. It really is all about the judges. As my tag line says,
"If our nation be destroyed, it would be from the judiciary." ~ Thomas Jefferson
Does the ACLU realize that the separation of church and states requires the eradication of the rights and liberties?
At the fundation of the things ACLU claims to defend is religious principle:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"
The rights and liberties are not based on chemistry or market. They are derived from the belief in God.
The states which were first to implement the radical separation of church and state (early Soviet Union and Cambodia under Pol Pot) did not respect the human beings to the degree of murdering them on the mass scale.
But then the ACLU will take over the camps and show their true colors by setting up "Red Pioneer" Camps.
I seem to recall that a few years back Congress enacted a rider to a bill that would cut back federal funding to districts that banned Scouting.
My son and I proudly wear our Iraqi Scouting patches on our uniform. BSA was trading them for a donation to the Iraqi Scouting movement.
ACLU needs to be stopped dead in their tracks. They are on the wrong side of America on every single issue.
John Wayne passed away in June 1979 from cancer. One of his last public appearances, and at this time all knew that the end was near, was at a dinner to benefit a land purchase for a Scout reservation called John Wayne Outpost Camp. At this dinner, the Duke recited the Scout Law. Then he did something unusual, he said “the twelve points of the Scout Law are “nice words.”” “Trouble is,” he continued, “we learn them so young we sometimes don’t get all the understanding that goes with them. I take care of that in my family. As each boy reaches Scout age, I make sure he learns the Scout Law. Then I break it down for him, with a few things I have picked up in more than half a century since I learned it.” Then the Duke proceeded to explain the importance of the Scout Law, breaking it down for the guests at the dinner, much like he would have for his grandson.
John Wayne then thanked those in attendance at the dinner for putting his name on the outpost camp and said, “I would rather see it here than on all the theater marquees the world over.”
Would you happen to have any info on how we could purchase these patches?
I think it was a nationwide endeavor. Contact your local Boy Scout Council and see if they can help you.
Does the same policy for the ACLU also apply for the Girl Scouts. Are they trying to get the Girl Scouts out of public schools also. It makes me thank God that when I was a Cubmaster and a Scoutleader my kids attended a private school where as Scouts we could pray whenever and however we felt.
I havent read much about what is going on in the Girl Scouts as pertains to homosexuals, I do know boys arent trying to join.It seems the ACLU is concentrating on the boyscouts because they wont allow homosexual leaders and they swear an oath for God and Country. Both God and Country seem to offend the ACLU even though they couldnt exist in most other countries.
That's why my girl is a BSA Venturer.
Note that the BSA is not being threatened with lawsuits here; the public schools are. This is not a case of the BSA folding, but of the BSA's recognition that the schools will.
That is the Equal Access Act (of 2003, I think?). It forbids a school district from denying an organization access to the use of school facilities based on the membership policies of that organization.
However, that is not at issue here. Scout units are not be denied access to the schools. They are losing the right to be sponsored by the schools; sponsors are responsible for selecting the units' leaders and for ensuring that the unit meets both the sponsor's and the BSA's policies. But they can still meet there.
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