[www.change.org]

over 153,000 signatures. i added mine.

I was a Scout until age 18, an OA Brotherhood member, and I valued my time with Troop 512.

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My 7-year-old son, Cruz, loves being a Cub Scout, and he really loved when I got to be his pack's den leader. But the Boy Scouts of America asked me to step down as the leader of my son's group -- just because I'm gay. Cruz doesn't understand why that matters, and frankly, neither do I.

When Cruz told us last year that he wanted to be a Boy Scout, my partner and I were concerned. We knew the organization has discriminated against families like ours before. But the other families in Cruz's group were so welcoming and supportive -- they even asked me to be a den leader on the first day.

One year later, our fears came to life. A representative of the Boy Scouts of America abruptly told me I was no longer welcome -- that because I'm gay, I didn't "meet the high standards of membership that the Boy Scouts of America seek."

I hated feeling that my family had been discriminated against, so I started a petition on Change.org asking the Boy Scouts of America to stop discriminating against gay people.

During the year that I was den leader, my cubs performed volunteer service at a local soup kitchen, collected canned goods for area churches to distribute in food baskets, and worked on a conservation project for a state park.

After I was asked to leave, other parents from my pack were outraged. Some of them even waited for hours to voice their concerns to Boy Scout officials, but they were turned away. As for Cruz, he doesn't really understand why there's a problem. He made a sign that says "I love my two gay moms."

Other organizations like the Girl Scouts and Boys & Girls Clubs of America welcome gay kids as well as adult leaders -- I know that if thousands of people sign my petition, the Boy Scouts will see that it's time for them to adopt a policy that incorporates their own core values of compassion and respect.

Click here to sign my petition asking the Boy Scouts of America to allow gay parents to serve.

Thanks,

Jennifer Tyrrell

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[www.giyf.com]

I do agree that it's past time for a rethink on the policy.

Grace will provide some good opinions. I think the reality is that Scouting is politically rather replete with Mormons, and the internal politics militate against it. Scouting IS legally able to exclude people due to sexual orientation.. that case was settled.

Hate to say it, but it likely won't make a bit of difference to the BSA.

I was very proud of my son when he declined to join with his friends because they would not accept me due to being an athiest.

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You can tell a lot about a woman by her hands...
- For example, if they are wrapped around your throat she's probably slightly upset.

Well good luck with that, though this has been tried previously, and the boy scouts, which unfortunately has been largely taken over by the anti-gay mormon church, crushed the movement and threw them out of scouting. Check out [www.scoutingforall.org] . I believe there was a 60 minutes episode or some other kind of documentary on Steven Cozza and his quest to bring tolerance to the BSA.

Note that scouting in many other countries is highly tolerant of people who are different (gay, non-christian, etc), and that many of those countries have mixed boy/girl scout organization. Unfortunately, the BSA has become an incredibly intolerant religious organization that actively seeks out gays and athiests to purge them from the organization, nothing like what Lord Baden Powell envisioned when he created the scouts. My fantasy wish is that the world scouting organization rejects the charter of BSA for going against the ideals of scouting.

My son was in scouting for a while, and although I could see that scouting had good roots, the adults in charge of the organization are a bunch of intolerant hypocrites.

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"So be proud to be a decent American instead of just a w'anker whipping up fear!" - Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

As a former (and actually current) Eagle Scout, this continues to sadden me.

well, change may not come easily, and it may never happen; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

evolve or die.

and it's not like there's not molesters in the BSA who aren't gay, either.
(being pedophiles, not homosexuals)

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beagledave
As a former (and actually current) Eagle Scout, this continues to sadden me.

It's not just the Mormons, the direction of the BSA organization also gets undue influence from other conservative christian sects. Personally I noticed the change from attempting to be inclusive of various beliefs around the time BSA moved its national headquarters from DC to Texas. Don't know if this move reflected a change in the internal politics, or contributed to it.

As for accepting gays, yes the court cases have ruled that as a private organization they can do so. However, BSA does have a national charter granted by Congress. That in the end may be the way for change to be pushed onto the organization if the political will ever is there to revoke or modify that charter.

Little Poochie's Cub Scout Pack is run out of our local Catholic Parish. It is a large and quite active Pack. No Mormons or open homosexuals are in our Pack, as far as I know.

Conservatives also don't like the Girl Scouts.

What happens in a troop/pack has a lot to do with the flavor of bigotry (or lack thereof) practiced by the local volunteers. Mormons can dish it out but they don't always take it well.


ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: 8:25 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

RALEIGH, N.C. — A Presbyterian church was happy to have Jeremy and Jodi Stokes as Cub Scout leaders until it was discovered that they are Mormons. Then they were told they had to step down because the church doesn't consider them real Christians.

The Stokeses enrolled their sons as Scouts at Christ Covenant Church, a Presbyterian congregation near Charlotte, and expressed interest in volunteering as leaders. Church officials were initially thrilled earlier this month, the Stokeses said, until they saw on the application forms that they belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After two Scout meetings, the Stokeses were told that their sons, 6 and 8 years old, could stay in their packs, but the parents couldn't serve as leaders.

"I can't believe they had the audacity to say, 'You can't be leaders, but we want your boys,'\u2009" Jodi Stokes said. "Do you really think I'd let my boys go there now?"

Christ Covenant spokeswoman Stelle Snyder said in an e-mail Tuesday that the church — which belongs to the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative evangelical denomination — was taking action to "assure that our parameters for leaders are clearly defined and well-communicated to volunteers and those interested in leadership roles for church sponsored programs such as the Boy Scouts."

[www.statesman.com]

If they want to be a christian group that excludes others, what business is it of mine to tell them to do otherwise?

It's sad, yes, but the could be alternatives.

Boy Scouts is not a "Christian group." The list of "approved religions" by BSA includes Zoroastrianism, certain types of Buddhists, etc. The audacity of a group of men in Texas to sit around and approve some religions and not others is ridiculous and that along with the continued discrimination against gay parents is making a mockery of a really great organization.
And as the article I linked demonstrates, Mormons control scouting in the Western US but are discriminated against in the East.

They've worked themselves into a real mess by allowing so many different forms of discrimination based on beliefs of local volunteers.

Sure this is a private organization (although chartered by Congress and funded by Congress and by many local gov'ts) and the Supreme Court says they have "freedom of association."
However, the bigotry has become very destructive.

Fortunately my local Pack and Troop practices don't ask, don't tell. We're chartered to a Catholic Church, but the Parish priest is very cool and relaxed. I'm sure if one of the adult leaders 'outed' themselves by being all militant or public about it, we'd be forced to do something (probably by the Mormons that run Council). But the other leaders (myself included) don't give a hoot... we just want the boys to have a good and safe experience.

We recently had a boy who self-identified as being gay. The leaders who were told calmly suggested that he not share that with the rest of the boys. He was cool with it, and went on for a couple of years until he moved to a different town. I actually didn't hear about it until two years after he'd left, when we were having a non official adult get together involving alcohol.

Most of the laughter was directed at the Scoutmasters facial expression when the boy told him, and then his very calm and reasoned suggestion "Well good for you, I'm glad you are happy. You're a great guy, and will go far. Let's just keep this little bit between the three of us.."

Of course the fact that the scoutmaster and three of the adult leaders are mental health professionals who work with endangered young adults has a lot to do with the tolerance and understanding.

>>Most of the laughter was directed at the Scoutmasters facial expression when the boy told him, and then his very calm and reasoned suggestion "Well good for you, I'm glad you are happy. You're a great guy, and will go far. Let's just keep this little bit between the three of us.."

not exactly the best way to handle something like that with a kid that age.

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BSA isn't a Christian group, or at least it wasn't. I was in the Boy Scouts growing up and had a great time. I'd donate now but i don't donate to bigots.

The real tragedy is that you have a few bigots ruining it for a bunch of young kids.

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matt... He did not want the boys to run wild with it. Most of them were at the age where "F**" was just a cuss word, not a hope.

i think you must believe in God, or at least claim to.

we had Jewish boys in my troop.

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[www.giyf.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2012 11:44PM by decay.

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cbelt3
matt... He did not want the boys to run wild with it. Most of them were at the age where "F**" was just a cuss word, not a hope.

If he was old enough to "self-identify as being gay" he was surely old enough to understand the consequences of letting it be known to the other boys that he was gay, and making his own decision.
Sounds like it was more about the adults' convenience to me.

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

Black-
Quite probably the case. Turns out he did tell a few of the boys, who did not run around telling everyone else. They handled it quite well.

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cbelt3
matt... He did not want the boys to run wild with it. Most of them were at the age where "F**" was just a cuss word, not a hope.

Would this be different if the word were "Jew" instead of "F**"?

What the hell is the point of a scouting organization that insists on moral uprightness if it can't openly and vigorously teach its young members that hate is completely unacceptable? This is the height of hypocrisy,a and is a perfect demonstration of why the BSA can't handle the modern world.

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rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2012 10:56AM by rjmacs.

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cbelt3
Black-
Quite probably the case. Turns out he did tell a few of the boys, who did not run around telling everyone else. They handled it quite well.

Thanks, cbelt. You're making progress

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

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Black

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cbelt3
Black-
Quite probably the case. Turns out he did tell a few of the boys, who did not run around telling everyone else. They handled it quite well.

Thanks, cbelt. You're making progress

A step forward, two steps back followed by the occasional leap forward and subsequent relapse.

Just my own read.

sometimes kids have an easier time dealing with the facts of the world than adults.

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Given a chance, kids always carry less baggage.

Find a good 4H group. Scouting in suburban areas like the one in which I live have become so disgustingly snobbish and political as to make me gag.