to help other people at all times;
to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.
"DUTY TO GOD AND COUNTRY: Your FAMILY and religious leaders teach you to know and serve God. By following these teachings, you do your duty to God." - from www.usscouts.org. Click here.
I am an Eagle Scout, a fact that I attribute to the interest and hard work of a lot of people, including Scout leaders, my parents, and church leaders, and a little effort on my part. I remember when at my Eagle Board of Review, one of the board members (who happened to live down the road from me - a cousin of my Dad's) told me that the local troop provided either a jacket or an engraved knife for each and every one of the boys that made Eagle. He then proceeded to ask me my jacket size, telling me that they just assumed I'd take the jacket.
"Are you kidding?" I asked incredulously. "I want the knife!" The look on his face was, in a word, priceless. (But what can you expect? I was a 17 year old boy, and I had a lot more use for a knife than I did for a red felt jacket any day of the week.)
It actually took a year from the time of the Board of Review to the day I got my Eagle badge, because about a week after I made Eagle I left home to go to college. I'm proud of the fact that I'm an Eagle scout. It was a near thing. I actually had my Board of Review the day before I turned 18, and the last possible day that I could make the rank.
It is my experience that the Boy Scouts of America are an uplifting, character building organization. To hear them being challenged on their practices and decisions strikes me as particularly odd, considering the good they do in the world. They teach tolerance. They teach self-reliance. And they teach morals. And maybe that's the problem. People, for whatever reason, have a hard time in this day and age with people professing to teach morals. And it's even worse if God is mentioned anywhere near morals. Religious morals are so... medieval. So... intolerant. The ACLU believes that we can't allow such intolerance to continue.
Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? The challenges to the Boy Scouts of America's tax exempt status are an attempt to undermine the Scouts' continuing financial stability, and perhaps undermine their ability to effectively continue as an organization. It places them at an economic disadvantage to other groups (WHAT other groups are there for kids that age? Nothing so well-known or well-respected). It gives them a public black eye, sullying their reputation, when you drag them through the courts. It's tantamount to blackmail. I find it especially ironic that the Boy Scouts are being attacked in the name of religious freedom, when it's their ability to be religious that's being questioned. (See paragraph 3).
I'm sure there are those who will continue to contribute time and money to the Scouts because they believe in their purpose and mission. But I'm also sure the Scouts benefit more as a tax-exempt entity than they would otherwise, and that's just the way it is. Now, I'm not sure what kind of confrontation sparked the controversy here in Portland (I've read the news stories, but not much in the way of details really emerge from that - and I'm sure there's a healthy dose of boneheaded idiocy on both sides involved). I don't believe the Scouts will back away from this fight, nor will they change their values. But with the very vocal ACLU piling on, Scouting needs all the friends it can get.
Count me in.
[Listening to: Zelda 3 TheDarknessAndTheLight OC ReMix - McVaffe]
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2 comments:
I agree the Scouts are a good organization -- my husband is a fine man, and I believe a part of the credit should be given to them. [After we changed our name, it was me, not him, who sent away for his Eagle certificate in the new name!]
Yet however noble a group they may be, they exclude certain people from membership and participation. While any private organization has that right -- and I agree they ought to have the right, though I disagree with the choices they've made -- I don't believe taxpayers should subsidize exclusionary groups, however noble their purposes may be. If it turns out their exclusionary practices rise to a level of unconstitutionality, then they, like any other exclusionary group, ought to lose their tax-exempt status. It shouldn't stop people from making donations of money and time to them, if they believe in the mission of the Scouts. It would simply stop taxpayer subsidies.
The more I think about it, however, the more I think we should get rid of nonprofit status, period. I agree it's good to encourage charitable giving, but I'm not convinced nonprofit status is the way to do it. (And I wish I'd stop getting interested in topics that have little to do with finals studying!)
-Shelley
Posted by Shelley
Thanks for defending the Boy Scouts. It's a great program - certainly not perfect, as I would argue that it should end its homophobia, or at least allow each troop's sponsor to determine what that troop's policy is. But it's a decision for the Boy Scouts themselves.
As for the religion issue, the Boy Scouts don't have a strict standard - belief in a "higher power" is all that is required. Several years ago I sat in on an Eagle Scout Board of Review where the scout being examined, when asked about his religious beliefs, stated that he believed in reincarnation. The Chair of the Review Board was a member of the Unitarian Church, and she engaged the scout in a great but brief discussion on the merits of reincarnation as a belief. It was funny, but telling about Scouting.
Atheism and scouting are not compatible because, as a result of atheism, a person will either go Neitzchean on us and declare that there is no morality - he can do whatever he wants, or the person will turn into a fatalist, "nothing matters anymore." Scouting rejects both ways of thinking - therefore Scouting rejects atheism. As should any sensible human being.
Posted by Gordon
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