Rusty, I agree. Good post at IGF, and some excellent comments there.

Ted, excellent points as well.

I also agree that private organizations determine their membership. But I also believe that it’s in the best interest of all involved to allow gay people to participate. I believe progress has been made in allowing openly gay teenagers* to be boy scouts. However, the message is still that being gay is wrong, because once the scout is no longer a child, he can no longer participate. It’s almost as if the Boy Scouts are advocating gay adults to begin the process of becoming ex-gay when they become an adult. I’m guessing the Boy Scouts will see the problems with this themselves, and within ten years, will vote to allow participation of gay adults as well.

* Perhaps I’m wrong, but I get the feeling that many think when a teen comes out as openly gay, it automatically means he is engaging in sex. This is no more true than straight teens.

For me personally, I was a boy scout until I was 14. I made it to second class (no pun intended). I don’t recall there being anything regarding sexual orientation. It was assumed everyone was straight, I suppose, and anyone who was gay didn’t say, mostly because he kept quiet about it outside of scouts as well. When people started realizing that homosexuality should not be kept in the closet, the Girl Scouts went in the right direction, while the Boy Scouts did not.

I thought “mentoring” among same-sex couples was commendable and a step toward enlightenment and an act of courageous diversity.

Heliotrope, I would say no more so than “mentoring” among opposite-sex couples is commendable and a step toward whatever and an act of courageous whatever else.

Think of it this way:

Makes sense, right?

Jman, I agree with this. In terms of the topic, with regards to gay boy scouts, it shouldn’t be their primary consideration either. When I was a boy scout, sexuality was definitely not the primary concern, but of course, sometimes fellow boy scouts did talk about girlfriends, or talk about girls they were attracted to, or even talk about having sex with girls, imagined or real. I recall on a camping trip, we had a chaplain talk to us about sexuality. I’m sure this continued well after I was no longer a scout. But while it was becoming acceptable for a gay teenager to talk about boyfriends as it is for a straight teen to talk about girlfriends (outside of scouts), etc., that apparently was not allowed in the Boy Scouts until now.

Jman1961, I would like see gay teenagers treated just like any other teenagers. How would would you like to see them treated?
Comment by SC.Swampfox — May 25, 2013 @ 11:19 am

I’m in favor of that as well, but here’s the biggest roadblock to achieving it:

When so many people (most of them well intended, like you) continually make the fact of a person being GAY their primary consideration, and by their words and deeds (both explicit and implicit), try to force everyone else to make it THEIR primary consideration.
The plan, ostensibly, is to show how much common ground exists, but the execution is to relentlessly point out what the differences are, even when the differences have no bearing on the issue at hand.

Think of it this way:

…not judged by the color of their skin their sexual orientation, but by the content of their character…

Makes sense, right?

Fail, again.

Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, was expelled from school for dating and having sex with her 14-year-old girlfriend, who was a fellow player on her basketball team. Hunt was arrested and charged with two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16 years.

I thought “mentoring” among same-sex couples was commendable and a step toward enlightenment and an act of courageous diversity.

Kevin Jennings was made Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar.” Jennings was the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and he was appointed by Obama in no small part because of his GLSEN work.

Gateway Pundit, back in 2009 had a very interesting post about Jennings and GLSEN. Here is a nugget from that post from a group that reviewed a handful of books on the GLSEN reading list for school children:

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.

Now, with this Jennings guy being a “czar” and “guru” for public school sex education, I thought that the gay and lesbian activist world had pretty much made the “gay victim card” an instrument against a case like the Kaitlyn Hunt from happening.

To be clearer, I thought that gays in the scouts and gay PDA in schools and gay liaisons in school bathrooms were all off the radar and considered to be diversity protected.

To my knowledge, no one is going to the streets in a mass demonstration to keep gays out of scouting. Of course I don’t watch the MSM channels, but if there were a major “keep-gays-out-of-scouts” focus out there, I know the MSM would go wall-to-wall in covering it.

Are we on the horns of a dilemma here? Has society “accepted” gay sex between two (only) sensible adults who wish to live out an ideal marriage, but society is still edgy about the “icky” side of gay stuff?

Put another way, what are the “boundaries” of the normalization of gay lifestyles? The easy answer is that everything goes and it is nobody else’s business. But that is such a pointless dodge from facing the reality of how society functions.

What would be the reaction to an advanced scout working on a project to help a tenderfoot discovery his sexuality? Or, the reaction if an advanced scout were to be blocked by the scouting leaders from helping a tenderfoot from discovering his sexuality? After all, the only clear difference between the two boys is that one is gay and one might be. So, tending the garden by the gay in helping the other one to grow blossom would be good thing. Right?

ND30 you are a strange bird.

Comment by SC.Swampfox — May 25, 2013 @ 9:42 am

That’s high praise coming from the likes of you.

It must seem strange to encounter someone who thinks for themselves and doesn’t submit to the ‘herd mentality’, which is so common these days. I’ll bet you find it more than a bit threatening, too.

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/i-team-emails-describe-irs-criteria-list-for-targeting-tea-party-groups-in-cincinnati-office

In addition to the article, it has a “scrubbed” e-mail trail back & forth within the IRS. This is NOT the Cincinnati Office — this is the Beltway…Washington, D.C., talking about how to pick “Tea Party” Cases.

It’s positively George Orwellian.

~ Fred

Really?

Smooches
http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l569/rusty98119/abfeea64.jpg

http://www.vthek.net/2012/07/almost-first-rate-pron.html

James is a wonderful person for adopting three boys, but what would one say if one of those adoptions was a girl?

Comment by rusty — September 24, 2012 @ 9:41 pm – September 24, 2012

Comment by rusty — April 28, 2013 @ 3:32 pm – April 28, 2013

You support and endorse telling people to kill themselves because they don’t vote the way you want.

You told V the K that his kids would be better off dead than with him as a parent.

And you openly mock and berate people with religious beliefs who were caring for AIDS patients while you were off making more of them.

I don’t expect any better of you. You aren’t capable of any better.

http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l569/rusty98119/IMG_20130520_100640_zps4c2cd236.jpg

As general counsel to the Obama re-election campaign, Mr. Bauer used the same tactics on pro-Romney groups. The Obama campaign targeted private citizens who had donated to Romney groups. Democratic senators demanded that the IRS investigate these organizations.

So come on, mike, lick some more boots for us. Show us how you can defend everything Barack Mugabe does. We don’t expect you to be anything other than a sniveling syncophant; after all, Mugabe-supporting bigots like yourself DEMANDED the Tea Party and others be targeted.

So if their main organizational drive is FB, then yes they would go to FB.

And here is an example where they did go after a liberal church (because of their sermons not prayers, but close!):
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-allsaints9-16-06,0,7778020.story

It looks like they make delving into the background of offered quite standard in their approach. Again, their scrutiny of the these groups was not the problem.
Each group deserves to be looked at when applying for Tax Free privileges.

The problem is the manner in-which they politically profiled Tea Party groups.

A Scout is reverent. He is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties and respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion.

So given you and your family’s obvious bigotry and hate towards other peoples’ religious beliefs, a la your ranting about “evangelicals” and “fundamentalists”, what were you doing in order to get this? Lying? Crossing your fingers?

Oh, that’s right. You’re LGBT, so you don’t actually have to believe what you say or act in a manner consistent with your principles.

And what I find most telling is this: you could have founded your own organization for gay youth and gotten all that sweet, sweet corporate lucre while nominally pretending to help children.

But you didn’t. Instead, you went after and attacked and sued the Boy Scouts to harass and punish them and, in the process, to DENY far more children the opportunity to be Scouts and have access to those resources.

You don’t give a damn about kids. You only cared about your petty, vindictive antireligious bigotry and hate. And as a result, places like your Wilmington, your Philadelphia, and your Newark are cesspools without opportunities for kids to learn anything other than gang-banging.

Are you proud of yourself, Ted B?

And I happen to be a holder of Scouting’s “God and Country” medal—which is much rarer than the Eagle badge—which I think makes me more knowledgeable of religion’s place in traditional Scouting than you.

Interesting post over at independent gay forum
http://igfculturewatch.com/2013/05/21/religious-rights-losing-battle-of-the-bsa/

Comment by rusty — May 24, 2013 @ 6:56 pm – May 24, 2013

Yes it is, rusty, especially since the commenters there who are going on about teen suicide openly endorse and support telling gay teens and others to kill themselves.

Or when you realize that these same liberal commenters support and endorse those people who have pushed the HIV rate among children and teens to twice that of sub-Saharan Africa.

In short, their concern for children and teens, like yours, is not reflected in your action.

But we already know that, given how you’ve stated that V the K’s kids should have been aborted.