Church announces date for complete split from BSA


pam
 Share

Recommended Posts

On 5/9/2018 at 11:36 AM, mordorbund said:

 

Is it? As it currently stands, any ward or branch that is organized without scouting runs the same Activity Days program for the boys as it does the girls. This new program may very well do that. Is this what really convinces the Church to break off? When the BSA organizes itself closer to how the Church runs its own custom youth programs?

I have to be with you. Not only that, Scouting Canada has been coed since about 1990, give or take. I know it was coed when I was a scout in the early 1990s because we occasionally had international jamborees here in Michigan. Yet the Church has stayed in scouting Canada until the present, with a withdrawal of older boys from it at the start of this year just as with BSA. So that seems to indicate the inclusion of girls is not a major factor.

BSA has been employing women as camp counselors, at least here in Michigan, for decades. We had women camp counselors at the BSA camp I went to. We also one year had Catholic Youth Organization girls in the camp site over, something my leaders pointed out would have never been tolerated with an actual joint YM/YW camp, they would have not let us be so close, or so I was told.

Come to think of it though, youth trecks are joint YM/YW camps, but I am not sure how close young men and young women camp. One time when I went to youth conference we rode overnight/slept on buses in a coed situation. On one bus it was felt that some of the youth had been too friendly (I heard this second hand, so I have no clue exactly what happened) on the way to Nauvoo, so on the way back they made boys and girls sit on opposite sides of the bus. My bus did not even require that much separation, but I don't think a bumpy bus ride with furtive sleep and lots of adult leaders around is a major place of concern.

 

That said, I also think much of the "girls in boy scouts is the last straw" rhetoric misses what the actual girls in boy scouts program is. As I understand it the following applies. 1-BSA has said that chartering organizations can impose their own guidelines for choosing youth leaders. This means that the LDS Church can apply any moral guidelines it wants to any position in scouting. While the Church dropped the requirement that Senior Patrol Leaders by Deacons Quorum Presidents in the early 1970s to avoid BSA being sued due to the Church's race based priesthood restriction at the time, I am not sure there is anything that would prevent the Church from having such a policy at present. 

 

When I was a scout about half the time the DQP was SPL, and I was told they were supposed to be the same, but I have no clue if the Church had reintroduced a requirement that they overlap after 1978 when the race issue no longer applied, or if my early 1990s leaders were just stuck in the early 1970s. I do know Church policy allows for non-members to serve as assistant scout masters, but scout masters may have to be members. One of the couples I serve as ministering brother to were until recently jointly over the 11-year-old scouts.

 

BSA has made it clear that accepting girls is at the discretion of sponsoring organizations and individual troops/packs. Although if they really did bow over claims the Eagle Scout award has unique prestiage, it might leave units that do not accept girls open to law suits. Beyond this, girls will be in sepeate cub dens, so that only at the pack level will girls and boys interact. While this is a change, it is not the total disregard for gender roles that some claim it is. 

 

With the core scouting area, if I understand correctly, girls will be in a seperate program, seperate troops. They will also earn the Eagle as boys, and I presume the same lower level ranks, and I assume work on the same merit badges, although accepting girls may cause the roll out of some new merit badges, but that has happened from time to time and is not unprecedented. Girls will be in fully seperate units, and so I do not see this is the "sexualizing the woods" problem some see. Most of the hype seems to ignore what is actually being done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 11:36 AM, mordorbund said:

 

Is it? As it currently stands, any ward or branch that is organized without scouting runs the same Activity Days program for the boys as it does the girls. This new program may very well do that. Is this what really convinces the Church to break off? When the BSA organizes itself closer to how the Church runs its own custom youth programs?

Explorers have been coed for decades. I even had a bishop whose daughter belonged to a community chartered exploerer patrol. So I don't think going coed was the bridge that could not be crossed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 12:32 PM, mgridle said:

No.  Traditionally speaking Boy Scouts was uber-conservative and Girl Scouts was uber-liberal-the Church a traditionally ultra conservative organization did not like the values promolugated by Girl Scouts.  Strange to see Girl Scouts be more conservative than BSA now . . .weird.

There is no world in which Girl Scouts are more conservative than boy scouts. They attack boy scouts trying to recruit girls with lines about how they address topics like "rape culture".

 

Girl scouts reguarly praise abortion and lots of other very leftist ideas. They are way too political in the views of many, and in a consistently leftist way. Boy scouts may have let Robert Gates move them to accept openly immoral homosexual leaders, but one cannot say they are being liberal. They were years behind the girl scouts in accepting people with gender dysforia outside biological reality, and unlike the girl scouts have not imposed this policy on all troops. They are making cub dens always be single sex (at least if we ignore confused people), and the boys and girls are in seperate programs.

 

This is more reognizing that parents of girls want an option for scouting that does not involve bowing to the false God's of the leftists than actually embracing leftist political activism. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 12:39 PM, Crypto said:

My understanding of the Boy Scout program is that it easily involves the gospel, and according to their bylaws requires religious participation. The scouting program teaching general principles and encourages each chartering organization to provide the religious support. The program method is more expansive than just camping. It's bad implementation that causes it to not be gospel related. 

Boy scouts are required to have belief in God, athiests are not admitted. However, many chartering organizations are secular ones. Schools, PTOs, PTAs, etc. Any religion can create an award to work with scouting, but the people who work on it do not have to be in a troop sponsored by that religion.

 

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod withdrew from scouting a few years ago. So I believe did the Southern Baptist Convention. The same is true of some Catholic Parishes I believe. However in none of these was scouting so integrated into the religious organization. Scout leaders were volunteers recruited as such, not people issued Church callings. 

 

Some scout masters in non-LDS troops served for decades. In my ward we had a scout master for 6 years straight, and at the end he was probalby the ward member who had had the same calling the longest. He was released when he moved away. 

 

Some scout troops sponsored by other organizations fold when the scout master retires. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 12:48 PM, Crypto said:

The Handbook for scouting units in the church prior to the new update recommended all priest age young men participate in the Venturing Scouting program.

All Teacher age young men were recommended to participate in the Varsity Scouting program (Sports division). All Deacon age young men were recommended to participate in the Troop. Most wards never ran the programs. From my discussions with others this dysfunction was prevalent from coast to coast.

My ward consistently ran all three programs. Yet we still had a grandmother who thought our ward was sub-standard in scouting. This is because she came just after her grandson came to visit his mom for the summer. He was 11, and there were no other 11-year-olds in the ward, so we lacked an 11-year-old scout program. 

 

Such multi-layered programs with no allowance of combining were just not set up for the reality of wards and branches in the Church. Especially not some urban branches where many youth are recent converts. The multi-layered scouting program has too much of a learning curve. There is a way to have an effective program that can be implemented in ways that adapt better to various circumstances.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 1:08 PM, hadl said:

I have always loved what the BSA was "traditionally" about, unfortunately I saw way to often that scouting programs were not being properly utilized in our units. Like others have stated, I saw this coming from a mile away and fully support it.

A gospel centered/focused program could be utilized a lot more affectively for today’s youth.

One thought along this line is I get tired of reading people who say "the programs would be good if implemented correctly." That is just plain rubbish. What we need to face up to is why they are not implemented correctly, and ask how to do so.

 

The answer is that we would A-need larger wards, which is not an easy option outside of Utah. B-need to allow people to volunteer to serve as scout master and serve longer, which goes against the whole way the Church is run. 3-This still ignores that scouting and young men overlap, but not quite in ways that make sense. In fact there are 3 organizations going on, Aaronic Priesthood, Young Men and scouting. This is just too many to make sense. 

 

Lastly, the underlying issue of why the Church was sponsiring an outside organization in scouting but nothing else meant that we had to continually have a really high buy in to scouting. However with scouting costing so much more than young women, and not neccesarily being better and if it was short changing young women, the whole thing didnt make sense.

 

One place the desparity often came up was summer camps. Boys scout camps cost more than girl's camp. Yet, some felt that girl's camp was better. Many felt the cost differntial showed waste by boy scouts. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 2:01 PM, mordorbund said:

You've just made an argument in favor of staying with the BSA.

I'm not comparing integrated BSA to BSA/Church programs, I'm comparing integrated BSA with non-BSA Church programs. So Young Mens/Young Womens and Activity Days Boys/Girls.

For the youth, the activities are not always separate. Once a month the YM and YW get together for their mutual improvement. Kind of like a court of honor, but with more fun - so maybe like a pack meeting.

And how is it the activities are always tailored to the specific genders when they are running the same program? It's because they have weekly activities in segregated groups with their own leaders. That's exactly what the BSA has proposed with the Cub Scouts dens, and I haven't heard any followup announcements on the Boy Scouts patrols. If they keep single-sex patrols, then it sounds more favorable to adopt that.

Well gosh, then instead of creating a new program whole-cloth for both the boys and the girls, maybe we should replace that structureless farce with a program that's already been around for a long time, that works for our boys, and is now accepting girls in segregated dens.

I thought BSA said that girls would be always in seperate troops, and maybe even in a wholly seperate program. So more seperate than even the cub level. This might still lead to a scout camp where boys and girls are present in the camp overall at the same time, but since troops camp together, and do lots of other activities together, this would not lead to much overlap. The level of overlap one would see would be no more and maybe even less than in stake youth activities and ward combined activities. i think my ward may have even on occasion done deacon/bea hive activities. I have heard a lot more of priest/laural and teacher/mia maid activities, but I think I have heard of joint ones at all levels.

 

Then of course last month on the 5th Sunday I went to my fiancee's branch, and the last hour was combined priesthood/relief society/young women. So the 12 and 13 year old boys and girls went to the same classes all three hours. Which means that the 13-year old boy and girl twins sat next to each other the whole time and the one 12-year-old girl was never far away. There is a reason why they do some scout activties with the neighboring ward. That does involve crossing 8 mile, something not all black youth are willing to do after dark. At least the YMP in Roseville Ward is a black man who lives in Detroit, so the 13-yeare-old boy will never be the lone black that side of 8-mile. OK, and it is 2018, not 1988 let alone 1968, so the worry of police stopping him is lower and the worry of a mob forming and throwing bottles is nil. If he had gone to Roseville in 1968 the worry of a mob throwing bottles would have been high. In May of 1967 a biracial couple moved to Warren just west of Roseville and faced mobs campaigning to get them to move out for the next few weeks. The image Detroit had in May 1967 of being a model of racial harmony and peaceful coexistence was a false one, which would burn in the American mind along with most shops on 12th Street the following July.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2018 at 6:54 PM, mgridle said:

I dislike the "churning out", but if you don't have a youth program that set measurable goals for boys to achieve, it's not better than an after-schools club. Young men need a program that sets goals and have them achieve those goals-it is extremely important.  It's not envogue to say it b/c "we have to be fair" and everyone cries over the boy who didn't make it . . .well did he probably didn't make it b/c he didn't put forth enough effort.  And that's an important lesson to learn in life-if you want something you have to work really hard to make it happen.

If you want to grow men, you have to train them on how to set goals and achieve them, you don't "build boys" by having a social club, get-together where everyone sings kumbayaa and plays basketball every week-you build a weak generation.

Achieving goals is one thing, but I never understood why my ability to be a strong leader as a missionary should ultimately hinge on my ability to tie knots or pass a swimming test. I literally did not get my 1st class until about a month before my 14th birthday, and the main reason for this is I had not been camping enough. Yet I had gone on every scout camp except one winter one I missed because I was so sick that day I stayed home from school, which was probably the only day I stayed home from school that year. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/10/2018 at 7:08 PM, mgridle said:

Agreed. Now b/c you introduce girls and women into the organization that means you will have women scoutmasters, you will have women in the leadership roles at the top of BSA, now woman's "issues" (whatever that means) will be taken into account.  For example the backpacker merit badge requires a 50miler in a short amount of time.  Eventually the requirements to be Eagle will be watered down and additional merit badges will be created to take into account girls interest.  It will no longer be "scouting.

The first women to serve on the BSA national committee was LaVern Parmley, primary general president. I am not sure what years exactly, but it was during at least some of her 1951-1974 time as PGP. Primary was put in charge of cub-scouting and 11-year-old scouting in the Church in 1954.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

Wow! Never knew that. Classy move by the church. 

I only learned of it because the Deseret News included that date in its time line of scouting and the Church. An informative read from that article.

 

It was also about 1991 or so that the Church discontinued local budget assessments (that might have been 1989, but around then) and went to paying all local operations from tithing funds. It was also at that time that the contribution level for young missionaries was standardized. Before that, basically you brought your money/got money from family and paid what it costs you to live where you lived. If you went to Brazil you could hire a cook and a maid and still pay less than a missionary did in France who lived in the cheapest apartment in town. The later was in part in response to the Supreme Court upholding the IRS refusing to credit as a donation money directly sent by parents to support a child on an LDS mission. Russell M. Nelson still had to plead with the IRS to count the new system as a donation, and his having not served a mission was key to convincing them that donating to such was acceptably a charitable donation.

 

However both the budget changes and the missionary changes move us towards a more Zion society. Hugely gung ho scouters have not liked these cahgnes, and they may have doomed the scouting program. Before the end of local budgets, there was a lot more latitude in fund raising at the local level, so troops in rich communities could regularly go to national jamborees. I could sense that some scout leaders in the rich ward in my stake did not like the hampering of their money raising style.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
1 minute ago, John_Pack_Lambert said:

I only learned of it because the Deseret News included that date in its time line of scouting and the Church. An informative read from that article.

 

It was also about 1991 or so that the Church discontinued local budget assessments (that might have been 1989, but around then) and went to paying all local operations from tithing funds. It was also at that time that the contribution level for young missionaries was standardized. Before that, basically you brought your money/got money from family and paid what it costs you to live where you lived. If you went to Brazil you could hire a cook and a maid and still pay less than a missionary did in France who lived in the cheapest apartment in town. The later was in part in response to the Supreme Court upholding the IRS refusing to credit as a donation money directly sent by parents to support a child on an LDS mission. Russell M. Nelson still had to plead with the IRS to count the new system as a donation, and his having not served a mission was key to convincing them that donating to such was acceptably a charitable donation.

 

However both the budget changes and the missionary changes move us towards a more Zion society. Hugely gung ho scouters have not liked these cahgnes, and they may have doomed the scouting program. Before the end of local budgets, there was a lot more latitude in fund raising at the local level, so troops in rich communities could regularly go to national jamborees. I could sense that some scout leaders in the rich ward in my stake did not like the hampering of their money raising style.

Very cool! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/12/2018 at 7:33 PM, John_Pack_Lambert said:

One thought along this line is I get tired of reading people who say "the programs would be good if implemented correctly." That is just plain rubbish. What we need to face up to is why they are not implemented correctly, and ask how to do so.

 

The answer is that we would A-need larger wards, which is not an easy option outside of Utah. B-need to allow people to volunteer to serve as scout master and serve longer, which goes against the whole way the Church is run. 3-This still ignores that scouting and young men overlap, but not quite in ways that make sense. In fact there are 3 organizations going on, Aaronic Priesthood, Young Men and scouting. This is just too many to make sense. 

 

Lastly, the underlying issue of why the Church was sponsiring an outside organization in scouting but nothing else meant that we had to continually have a really high buy in to scouting. However with scouting costing so much more than young women, and not neccesarily being better and if it was short changing young women, the whole thing didnt make sense.

 

One place the desparity often came up was summer camps. Boys scout camps cost more than girl's camp. Yet, some felt that girl's camp was better. Many felt the cost differntial showed waste by boy scouts. 

Ummm...

Thanks for making my point..I guess, who knows what you meant, but I do agree with your post to a certain point.

I have seen scouting work in branches/small wards, it really comes down to the "want to" factor..       

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/12/2018 at 7:54 PM, John_Pack_Lambert said:

Achieving goals is one thing, but I never understood why my ability to be a strong leader as a missionary should ultimately hinge on my ability to tie knots or pass a swimming test.

The same reason why graduating school required you to attempt using a larger vocabulary, learn math techniques you'd never use, read great literature you'll never discuss or apply, do jumping jacks, push ups, and situps, learn about the mating process of the earthworm, the name of the largest star in the night sky, the titles of all the positions of the Presidential cabinet, ...

All this stuff is useful to do *something*.  But you won't know what you'll use until you grow up and start interacting and working.  Some of it you'll use more than others.  Some of it you'll never use.  But it all depends on your future calling in life.  You won't know what that is until you grow up.

It's like having a standard set of tools in the toolbox.  The larger your set of tools, the more likely you'll be prepared for whatever comes later.  And it's absolutely true that you'll buy some tools that you'll never use.  But you buy them anyway just in case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

The same reason why graduating school required you to attempt using a larger vocabulary, learn math techniques you'd never use, read great literature you'll never discuss or apply, do jumping jacks, push ups, and situps, learn about the mating process of the earthworm, the name of the largest star in the night sky, the titles of all the positions of the Presidential cabinet, ...

For the record, the vocabulary I learned in public schools was barely sufficient to support most basic aspects of adult life. My post-high-school vocabulary is vastly larger. Same with the physics, chemistry, and math that I learned in public schools, barely sufficient to help me in adulthood.

Scouting teaches basic life skills. You can be an adult without knowing how to tie more than two or three knots. You might even navigate most of adulthood successfully. But heaven help you if you decide to take a job as a trucker and need to secure a load, or want to go camping or fishing or hunting or to the beach and can't tie anything more than a square knot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
5 minutes ago, Vort said:

can't tie anything more than a square knot.

With my dexterity and limited mental skills I don't think I can even tie a square knot. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/12/2018 at 5:04 PM, John_Pack_Lambert said:

Except that there will not be coed groups camping. Scout troops will remain all boy or all girl. So the closest you will be is in adjacent camp sites. Well, back in the summer of 1994 when I was at scout camp the adjacent camp site was taken up by a CYO group that was all girls, so the new program can not increase overnight proximity.

It is disingenuous to use an exception to do away with an issue that Boy Scouts has not addressed yet. As a long time worker at various scout camps over multiple years, I have never seen an all girl group concurrent with a week long accredited Boy Scout Summer camp. There are occasional girls present, but not in large numbers.

Daytime proximity in merit badge classes, etc might increase. Yet we have 12-year-olds in Sunday School classes with girls and stake youth activities. Dances and youth conference and trecks not until they turn 14, but I really don't think fear of boys having to take an orienteering merit badge class or even a swimming merit badge class with girls present is what is driving this decision. Especially since in almost all cases these boys are in coed classes at school. 

The issue is not just proximity, but situational. I have no issue with anything you just listed.

If troops themselves would be coed there might be worry, but I don't see it with any joint troop activites.

I already posted about my relief on no coed troops, page 3 top.

On thinking further, we did have 12 and 13 year old boys and girls at combined activities as well. 

See above

At least here in Michigan women have been working at scout camps as counselors since at least the 1990s. So the idea that the changes in scouting will end the all male nature of scout camp don't apply. I even went to Jamborees with Canadian scouts where there were women scouts present. The Church has been running scouts Canada troops for at least 27 years since they admitted girls, so I do not see accepting girls as the bridge that was not to be crossed. Such a claim just does not stand up to any scruitiny.

My comments on page 2 address this. I am aware that women have been working in scouting for a long time. I even stated such in the comment that was quoted.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/12/2018 at 5:21 PM, John_Pack_Lambert said:

Boy scouts are required to have belief in God, athiests are not admitted. However, many chartering organizations are secular ones. Schools, PTOs, PTAs, etc. Any religion can create an award to work with scouting, but the people who work on it do not have to be in a troop sponsored by that religion....

My comment was specifically towards Scouting and the Church. I reaffirm that using Scouting to help boys to receive the Gospel by inviting them to act in gospel principles can happen. When leaders put forth the effort to allow it to happen. One of the common complaints sometimes heard is that the boys program is just not as spiritual as the girls program.... Hogwash...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/12/2018 at 5:26 PM, John_Pack_Lambert said:

My ward consistently ran all three programs. Yet we still had a grandmother who thought our ward was sub-standard in scouting. This is because she came just after her grandson came to visit his mom for the summer. He was 11, and there were no other 11-year-olds in the ward, so we lacked an 11-year-old scout program. 

 

Such multi-layered programs with no allowance of combining were just not set up for the reality of wards and branches in the Church. Especially not some urban branches where many youth are recent converts. The multi-layered scouting program has too much of a learning curve. There is a way to have an effective program that can be implemented in ways that adapt better to various circumstances.

I am not against adaptation when needed and prompted by the spirit. Much as it stated in various policy guides.

I am against ignoring the guidance of the brethren.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But the boys program cost way more money without providing clearly greater benefits. It also involved way more unjustified shaming of those who had not achieved a rank that inehrently was set up so only a few boys could achieve it, and clearly not set up to allow those of us with Aspergers Syndrome to ever have a chance to get it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, John_Pack_Lambert said:

 

Clearly you do not know everything, because the camp I mention was a fully functional summer boy scout camp at the time, yet there was a full contingent of girls right by our camp site. Scouting is a lot bigger than what you know of.

I readily admit that I do not know everything. The longer i'm around the more I know that I don't know. 

If you really want to get down to it, all approximations are untruths because there are exceptions and approximations don't accurately represent an absolute truth. That being said, clearly a majority of accredited boy scout summer camps had a majority of boys attend and a quite small amount of girls participating in non-staff positions over the course of the existence of Boy Scouting. (Generally Staffs, and Adults are considered to be more likely responsible individuals in most aspects of society)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, John_Pack_Lambert said:

But the boys program cost way more money without providing clearly greater benefits. It also involved way more unjustified shaming of those who had not achieved a rank that inehrently was set up so only a few boys could achieve it, and clearly not set up to allow those of us with Aspergers Syndrome to ever have a chance to get it.

It pays clearly in the form of paid semi-professional (at least trained) staffing, organized program and facilities. Both volunteer run camps and paid exist in Boy Scouts, and the pricing difference between the two is often noticeable (Depending on council to council). Young Women camps get by largely with donations and volunteers, both local and through Church funds (costs of maintaining land, equipment, food, insurance, staff). I have a hunch that if you started adding those numbers together you would start to find total costs begin to equalize.  Though I am completely supportive of doing volunteer based camps. (Special spirit when people simply seek to do good for others)

I don't think there is anything wrong with having a program that requires work to achieve, and I have respect for the Girl Scouts Gold, as well as Eagle, as well as Personal Progress as well as Duty to God. You are right, the church did not provide a secular award opportunity for the young women.

 

You are speaking to someone with a brother who achieved the rank of Eagle that is diagnosed with autism.

https://www.scouting.org/programs/boy-scouts/the-building-blocks-of-scouting/disabilities/

https://www.scouting.org/resources/guide-to-advancement/special-needs/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share