Posted on 08/09/2002 10:49:31 PM PDT by ppaul
SAN FRANCISCO - Don't try to be a judge in San Francisco if you work with the Boy Scouts. Judges in San Francisco are being barred from associating with the Boy Scouts because of the Scouts' opposition to homosexuals being in leadership positions.
The new policy, adopted by the city's Superior Court, prohibits the court's judges and commissioners from participating in any organization that excludes members "... on the grounds that their sexual orientation renders them 'unclean,' 'immoral' or 'unfit.' "
Bob Knight, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Culture and Family Institute, said the policy is ludicrous and offensive.
"In other words, the Boy Scouts are supposed to be so evil for protecting boys from homosexuality that you can't be a judge if you have anything to do with them," Knight said.
National Scout spokesman Gregg Shields said the Boy Scouts will take no action since it is not directly affected.
"In a piece of irony here, the people who are aggrieved or the people who are having their rights trampled here would be the judges themselves," Shields said.
Nonetheless, he called the policy "indefensible" and "inappropriate."
"The judges of the court are supposed to be devoted to fairness and impartiality and respectful treatment of all who appear before them," Shields said. "And yet, they've chosen to publicly reject lawfully held private views."
In fact, attorney Brad Dacus with the Pacific Justice Institute, a religious-liberties group based in Citrus Heights, Calif., argues the new restrictions go far beyond the Scouts.
"We're dealing with a policy that prohibits judges' involvement or participation with any organization that teaches homosexuality as being immoral," Dacus said.
There's a move to take the policy statewide in California. Dacus' group has offered to represent any judge who objects.
Link to article HERE.
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Boy Scouts in Front of Capitol, Washington, D.C., John Rous, photographer, circa July 1941. FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945 |
On August 21, 1912, Arthur R. Eldred of Oceanside, New York achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. He was the first person to earn the award.
The Boy Scout movement began with the 1908 publication of British Lieutenant General Robert S.S. Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. In 1902, nature writer Ernest Thompson Seton advocated organizing a boys' club called "Woodcraft Indians." Seton inspired Baden-Powell's efforts to marshall existing boys' groups into scout patrols. Baden-Powell's book describes the games and activities he developed to train cavalry troops during the South African War and suggests an organizational framework for scouting. The appeal of Scouting for Boys reflected the popular fascination with nature-based recreation as a means of character development.
The Boy Scouts of America was founded in 1910 with President William Howard Taft as honorary president. By 1912, every state could claim a band of Scouts. Soon, the organization inaugurated its program of national civic Good Turns--promotion of a "sane and safe" Fourth of July was among the earliest of these campaigns. Congress granted the Boy Scouts a Federal Charter in 1916, authorizing a Scout uniform similar to a U.S. armed services uniform.
In the 1930s, Vito Cacciola, an Italian immigrant living in New England, extolled the virtues of scouting to Merton Lovett in an interview for the Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. According to the conventions of the day, Lovett attempted to capture Cacciola's accent by transcribing his words in dialect: I thinka de Boy Scouts is good for boys . . . de Italian boys maka good Boy Scouts . . . It maka de boys strong. It maka them acquainted with nature. Some Italian boys does not know de flowers and de trees. The wilds animals and birds they does not recognize. Yes, it is better than playa on de street. And I thinka they learna some good lessons, what? |
In 1912, Juliette Gordon Low started the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia. Her efforts to bring fresh-air activities to girls proved popular. By the following year, national headquarters were established in Washington, D.C. The Girl Scout cookie sale quickly became an important fund raiser for the organization. Initially homemade, by the 1930s Girl Scouts peddled precursors of the commercially-baked delicacies we know today.
Use the American Memory Collection to learn more about the roots of Scouting in the United States:
"The Boy Scout's Dream," V. Paul Jones, music 1915. Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920 |
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