[Winona Online Democracy]
At 06:49 PM 3/22/01 -0600, you wrote:
>[Winona Online Democracy]
>Greetings all...as you may or may not know, the United Way of the
>greater Winona area today announced that the boy scouts will no longer
>receive general fund dollars from the annual drive.
>This is because of their inability to sign an agreement with the
>United Way that probibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.
>This was a tough decision that took over six months...and involved
>lengthy conversations with the scouts.
>The scouts are a terrific group...but they should play by the same rules
>as everybody else, right?
>Did we do the right thing?
Speaking as a Boy Scout leader (committee chair/assistant scoutmaster, Troop
6), I guess I feel that you probably did what you had to do. However, the
"cost" will be felt by a bunch of eleven- to seventeen-year old boys, not
the BSA organization.
Let me try to put a bit of perspective on this. First of all: boys belong
to troops sponsored by local organizations (churches, etc) which are
organized into "Districts" and "Councils" (we are in the Sugarloaf District
of the Gamehaven Council headquartered in Rochester) which answer to the
national BSA organization headquartered in Texas. Troops have volunteer
adult leaders (many of whom I know are on this listserve), but almost all of
the adults at the Council and national level are paid employees of the BSA.
The issue of barring homosexual leaders resulted from a court case a year or
so ago at the national level - the national organization dismissed a young
man after he appeared in an article which identified him as being gay. At
no time did he behave inappropriately in any way, and all of the boys in his
troop wanted him to stay. However, the national organization won the court
case, and he was out. This "victory" has been the topic of extremely heated
discussion within the scouting community, with many local volunteers and
even some of the paid staff resigning in protest. I am a member of a
listserve called ScoutsL on which the discussion grew so heated that the
topic had to be banned. I know, from talking to other volunteers in Winona,
that very few of us support the actions of the national organization, and if
we don't we can simply walk away. I know of at least half a dozen gay boys
in Winona troops, and I haven't heard that any of them have received
anything other than support from their troop's adults.
The Council people quoted in this morning's paper, on the other hand, are
BSA employees and are thus required to follow instructions from above. I
also know, from personal discussions, that many of these people also
disagree with the actions of national. Thus, a movement is building to get
this action of the national organization rescinded. Unfortunatly, BSA is
organized along very a military-like chain of command, and it will take a
while for the "old generals" to either die off or be forced out. In the
meantime, there are hundreds of boys right here in Winona who will continue
to benefit from scouting, particularly in troops such as mine which have
chosen to ignore the ruling from the national level (yes, they may force us
out too before this is all over). Please do not give up on the entire
scouting organization because of the actions of a few bad people at the top.
Ed Thompson
*******************************************************************
Ed's witty saying for this week comes from Bob Dylan:
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at
night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
*******************************************************************
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