Contention: Since the Boy Scouts is a private organization and not taxpayer funded, they can admit who they want.
So can the Nazis and the Klan but that doesn't change the issue. I'm not suggesting that what the BSA is doing is illegal, just discriminatory. In one case, back in '82, they gave a kid a week to find God before stripping him of rank and membership. I find that unreasonable and immoral.
"Your church is not necessarily 'promoting discrimination' by sponsoring Boy Scout troops. It's for boys who believe in God. What's wrong with that?"
If you know someone is hurting someone else, and you do nothing about it, you're giving tacit assent. That's why Steven Spielberg, a lifelong scout, cut his ties to BSA. He didn't like the direction the organization has been taking.
As for the idea that BSA is "for boys who believe in God," what you mean is that it's ONLY "for boys who believe in God." Yet the Boy Scouts were never set up as a religious organization. Robert Baden-Powell was a British officer who adapted his military training manual, Aids to Scouting, to a youth readership as Scouting for Boys. The scouting movement was an attempt to teach progressive-era values to youth, values such as:
--Be prepared.
--Do a good turn daily.
--Do your best to God and country.
--Help other people at all times.
--Keep yourself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.
--Be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
--Be clean in your outdoor manners, be careful with fire, be considerate in the outdoors, and be conservation-minded.
I don't see anything in W.D. Boyce's attempt to create an American version of the Boy Scouts that would make Scouting only "for boys who believe in God." This is clearly a youth organization designed to adapt military training and values to the development of leadership skills in youth. It was never intended to be a church or religious organization, indoctrinating its members with any specific religious beliefs.
What references there are to God are token at best. Duty to "God and country" is generic, a reflection of the English phrase, representing duty in its myriad forms. The admonition to be "reverent" is equally generic, referring to respect for, and tolerance, of that which is held sacred. I'm not a Hindu, but I can be reverential toward Hindu beliefs, just as I can be reverential toward the practices of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others.
While there have always been Scouting lessons on showing proper respect for other faiths, I have yet to come across a single Scouting lesson that tells boys to accept the Bible, Jesus, the atonement, the Sabbath, religious prophecy, et cetera. Scouting is not a religious movement but a social organization, using military training and values as a model for the development of youth.
The idea that one could learn something valuable from the training given to young men going into battle, young men who must learn to rely on themselves and one another for survival, is not a religious one, but a secular one, with a tip of the hat to community beliefs and values.
To take such an organization and turn it into a means of excluding certain boys, either because of their orientation or because of their private beliefs, is to distort and pervert the whole point of scouting.
As for the idea that it's okay for Troop XYZ to tell Little Johnny Agnostic that he's not fit for scouting, because he's not sure if there's a God - while letting the Pumpkin Pie brothers go on the big camping trip even if they're not courteous, not reverent, not loyal, not friendly and not completely honest - I'm reminded of a quote from Eugene V. Debs who was actually prosecuted and sent to prison for opposing America's entry into World War I - a position that most Americans would end up agreeing with some 116,000 American deaths later - said this in his defense:
"Your honor, years ago,
I recognized my kinship with all living beings,
and I made up my mind
that I was not one bit better
than the meanest on earth.
I said then,
and I say now,
that while there is a lower class,
I am in it,
while there is a criminal element,
I am of it,
and while there is a soul in prison,
I am not free."
You can't look at injustice and say, "It's not my kid." You asked me why the BSA can't say, "This kid doesn't come in; he doesn't believe in God." I have to ask, "Why should an organization tell one kid he can go on the camping trips, he can earn the badges, he can learn leadership and survival skills - BECAUSE HE BELIEVES IN GOD - but tell the other kid, who's willing to pay the dues, abide by the rules, learn the skills, buy the uniform and show up for all the meetings, that he's not fit for scouting BECAUSE HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN GOD?
You realize, don't you, that BSA is telling kids they don't care WHAT God a kid professes faith in, as long as it's SOMETHING? If a kid is willing to be dishonest, or declare a belief in a religion that is practically godless - like Buddhism or Taoism - that kid gets in, but if the kid should be honest about his doubts, he is told to say otherwise or he's out.
While the BSA has said that Wiccans can't be Scouts - even though those folks worship Mother Earth - a kid can get in if he declares a belief in ANY higher power, including Mother Nature. The kids that are getting kicked out (or excluded) are those who honestly say, "I don't know" or "I don't think so." What kind of message does it say to a kid when you tell him he's not worthy of joining a camping club unless he pretends to have beliefs he doesn't have, or pretends not to have beliefs that he has?
I realize that the Scouts do a lot of good things - and I'm in favor of scouting, which was there for me when I was growing up - but to create a "belief test" as a standard for exclusion is really outrageous. Whatever sense of inclusion scouts get, it's hardly justified by the exclusion of those who were deemed unworthy of camping trips and merit badges because they didn't pass the belief test.
AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
When I think of all those kids who have been ejected or rejected, for having their own opinions about a Supreme Being, I'm reminded of something Robert Baden-Powell wrote in What Scouts Can Do - More Yarns, 1921:
"On the stole of an ancient bishop of Winchester, Edyndon, who died in 1366, is the Swastika or Scouts' Thanks Badge ... said to represent Obedience or Submission, the different arms of the cross being in reality legs in the attitude of kneeling."
"But as you know from the account of the Swastika Thanks Badge which I have given you in Scouting for Boys, this symbol was used in almost every part of the world in ancient days, and therefore has various meanings given to it .... "
"How it got from one country to another, separated as they are by oceans, it is difficult to guess, but some people who say they know all about these things, affirm that there was once a great continent where now there is the Atlantic Ocean, but it went under the sea in an earthquake."
"This continent was called Atlantis, and joined up Europe with America. It was supposed to have four vast rivers running from a central mountain in different directions—North, East, South, and West—and the Swastika is merely a map of Atlantis showing those four rivers rising from the same center."
"Anyway, whatever its origin was the Swastika now stands for the Badge of Fellowship among Scouts all over the world, and when anyone has done a kindness to a Scout it is their privilege to present him—or her—with this token of their gratitude, which makes him a sort of member of the Brotherhood, and entitles him to the help of any other Scout at any time and at any place."
"I want specially to remind Scouts to keep their eyes open and never fail to spot anyone wearing this badge. It is their duty then to go up to such person, make the Scout sign, and ask if they can be of any service to the wearer ...."
Of course, Baden-Powell wrote this nonsense back in 1921, before Hitler had taken over Germany, though not before Hitler had taken over the Nationalist Socialist Party and had himself named as its "Fuhrer." Hitler was already giving beer-hall speeches ranting against Jews, including his famous Munich speech before 6,000 admirers, and was using the Swastika as a propaganda symbol. I still find it pretty creepy that the Scouts were wearing and awarding this Badge of Fellowship while Hitler was using that very symbol as a sign of solidarity among those who wanted to rid the world of Jews. In 1924, when he published his next edition of Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell continued to use the Swastika - a year after Hitler's arrest for the Beer Hall Putsch - using it on the Thanks Badge and the Medal of Merit.
The Scouts later retired the badge, which you can see pictures of online (Thanks Bade and Medal of Merit) but they sort of had to after Hitler started using it as a trademark for Death-to-Jews, Incorporated.
DEAR DIARY: I THINK I'M A RACIST NUT
If that isn't creepy enough, consider what Robert Baden-Powell wrote in his diary on October 6, 1939 -
--14 years after the publication of Mein Kampf,
--six years after the burning of books,
--four years after the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their rights,
--three years after Hitler used the Olympics as a Nazi propaganda tool,
--17 months after the Anschluss (or takeover of Austria),
--13 months after demanding Czechoslavakia,
--12 months after the occupation of the Sudetenland,
--11 months after Kristallnacht, and
--a month after Hitler invaded Poland.
Given that his native Great Britain was now at war with Germany, you'd think that Robert Baden-Powell would have some very ugly things to say about Hitler.
Instead, he was reading Mein Kampf.
BADEN-POWELL'S REACTION TO MEIN KAMPF:
"Lay up all day. Read Mein Kampf. A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organization etc.—and ideals which Hitler does not practice himself."
LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT THAT "WONDERFUL BOOK," WITH ALL THOSE "GOOD IDEAS ON EDUCATION, HEALTH, PROPAGANDA, ORGANIZATION, ETC.," AS WELL AS ALL THOSE "IDEALS" HITLER SPOKE OF:
"...The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight."
"If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity ..."
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
"To what an extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ..."
"Since the Jew is not the attacked but the attacker, not only anyone who attacks passes as his enemy, but also anyone who resists him..."
"Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."
"The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of the Jew, the lack of instinct and narrow-mindedness of our upper classes, make the people an easy victim for this Jewish campaign of lies."
"Slowly fear and the Marxist weapon of Jewry descend like a nightmare on the mind and soul of decent people.
They begin to tremble before the terrible enemy and thus have become his final victim."
"With Satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people."
"With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate..."
"It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race ...."
"For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards and bastards alone."
"In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his financial control."
"In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation ... destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter."
"Culturally, he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature."
"Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen."
"Now begins the great last revolution. In gaining political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears....In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia ..."
"The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too."
EPILOGUE
If Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, can call Mein Kampf "a wonderful book" with "great ideas," I don't even need to get into the accusations that he, himself, was a pedophile. Racist jerkoff is enough.
Keep your brownshirts. Keep your elitist exclusionism. The moment you begin to point the finger at someone else and decide, a priori, that they are not worthy to join your little tribe because they don't think like you - let alone because of their sexual orientation - you are repeating a pattern known well to the author of Mein Kampf.
Given that Hitler thought he was doing "the Lord's work," and confused Jews with Marxism the way atheists and agnostics are confused with Communism, I'm not surprised that the Boy Scouts would pick atheists and agnostics and say, "Your kind aren't welcome here. This is a private club."
Keep your brown shirts and your high salutes. I prefer to judge people on the merits of their actions, not on whether they have the "right" beliefs. But this is a free country (knock on wood). In fact, why stop there? If you can use religious tests to admit or exclude the membership of a camping club, why not move it on over to little league?
I can see it now.
"Hey, little boy. You can't take part in T-ball."
"Why not?"
"You don't go to church."
While we're at it, why don't we apply it to Mormons, since none of these other "Christians" think Mormons are "Christian" enough. Maybe, someday, you'll be sitting in a drive-thru at McDonald's when the 16-year-old in the window says, "I'm sorry, sir. But we don't serve your kind."
"Because I'm black?"
"No, because you have an angel Moroni swinging from your rear-view mirror. Y'all ain't Christians so y'all ain't getting those Chicken McGrills."