Was it their merit badge mills? Young Eagle scouts? All sorts of accidents, incidents, and tragedies with BSA troops in Utah? How did the morg turn the BSA into a joke? Was it anything specific or not??

The church simply treats BSA like a buffet line. It takes what it wants and leaves the rest....the very thing which drives the church crazy when members treat the church in the same fashion.

GREAT OBSERVATION/COMMENT.

By forcing backsliders to have jobs in the church, and because they couldn't be trusted to teach others, they assigned them to the Boy Scouts.

So you get men who are not volunteers. No other organizations do this, certainly no churches. We have been shouting about this for years HELLO - MORMONS WORKING FOR FREE ARE NOT VOLUNTEERS. They suffer social punishment and shunning if they do not accept a calling. Plus they can't pick their calling, it is assigned regardless of interest.

So you are sending vulnerable young boys into the wilderness with men who may not be interested in working with children (or interested for the wrong reason), who may not like or understand the dangers in a wilderness setting.

Also, the Mormons are interested in keeping people in the church, even if it endangers the lives of others. Here's a true story and some of the people involved may be reading this.

A good friend of mine was active in the scouts for years and he told me one narrow escape story after another. He had a young boy whom he absolutely forbade to go camping with the scouts unless he was along. This story illustrates my point.

The ward scouts were scheduled to go on a hike and a very fat lady wanted to go with them (don't hate on me - I'm fat myself). So she insists and rather than hurt her feelings, they let her drag her 250 lb ass up the trail with the boys "helping" her. Such a great visual. She insists she can do anything the boys can do--and she does, including jumping over a stream which, of course, she misses and BREAKS her ankle. She is screaming her head off, and was in terrible pain, plus freezing sitting in a mountain stream.

The three men cannot get her out because the stream is in a small ravine. Meanwhile, the scouts have gone on their merry way, god knows in what direction, and are lost for the next three hours as they have to call in a helicopter. It takes six men to get her out of there and then they have to find the kids --and it is almost nightfall.

Boy Scouts should be about young boys learning wilderness skills AND NOTHING ELSE. All leaders should be safety trained and actually interested in working with youth.

By the way, I joined the Mormon church so they could help me raise my four young boys. After they grew up, one told me he was molested by a scout leader, who told him something bad would happen to me if he told me.

So there you go. 94% of scout fatalities take place in LDS boy scout groups. And that's even factoring in for more wilderness in Utah.

Kathleen

Can he sue them? He won't be alone since that creep abused other kids. Koriwhore on this forum has friends who filed suit and won. The church might have to open all their files about not reporting these pedophiles to the police...

Call this attorney: http://kosnoff.com/latterdaysaints.php
He'll make your son rich.

It's the son who has mental illness. He has had so much trauma in his life that stability is a daily success.

They couldn't pay me/him enough to rock that boat.

If I had a big fat Mormon settlement, I would immediately open a cult awareness center in downtown Salt Lake and provide services for women leaving polygamy and/or free legal advice for people being divorced for having left Mormonism.

It galls me that the Mormon church takes no responsibility whatsoever for the harm it has done to children and families with its church-first policies.


Kathleen

anagrammy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Boy Scouts should be about young boys learning
> wilderness skills AND NOTHING ELSE. All leaders
> should be safety trained and actually interested
> in working with youth.

But, it was never that and nothing else. Long before mormons took it into their bosoms.
From the get-go, scouting was an organization dedicated to producing obedient, well-trained little patriots.
Its founding statement was "to teach [boys] patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred values."
That mission statement was one reason the mormons were the first "sponsoring organization" for scouting in the US, because that kind of indoctrination fit right in with what they wanted from their youth. The "train up a child" idea, so they won't get their own radical ideas.

The larger non-mormon BSA has slowly and only partially moved a bit more towards teaching thinking instead of obeying; but even that bit of movement is at odds with the mormon version. Hence the tension between the two.
But let's not pretend that scouting has always been about wilderness skills and nothing else -- that's not the case at all. It's always been about indoctrination into what particular people consider "correct thinking and behavior."

One of the problems exmormons children have is sorting out what to obey and what to throw out.

Unfortunately, when you've taught them a lot of garbage, they may throw out everything you taught, including safety and health habits.

It's my view that children should be taught how to take care of themselves, body and mind, including their parents' values. They can discard those and pick their own when they grow up, but they should know why they are being taught patriotism, God,wilderness safety or whatever.

That way they can throw out all the stuff they are taught because they want to be in the Celestial Kingdom in the afterlife and keep the part about boiling water, avoiding street drugs and brushing their teeth.



Kathleen

was a real eye-opener for me.

My older son belonged to a Methodist troop. The leaders were trained and dedicated. The boys learned (and were actually competent at) map-and-compass skills, wilderness survival skills, fairly advanced first aid, including CPR - stuff like that.

My younger son was in a Mormon troop. While they weren't as sophisticated as the Methodists in many ways, I was glad to see that the men called to participate in the Scouting program were dedicated scouters themselves. My DH (who is very accomplished at outdoor survival skills, "mountaineer medicine," and figuring out the right direction to reach your destination) was present on every camping trip our son went on.

There weren't very many dufuses in the troop while these guys were in charge. Either you had your $hit together, or you were invited OUT. I was glad to see that.

I think the biggest difference between Mormon and non-Mormon troops is the level of commitment.

In a non-Mormon troop, you are a scout because you want to be. You choose to participate, and if you decide it isn't for you, you stop participating.

In a Mormon troop, you become a scout because you turned 12.

So a non-Mormon troop is full of boys who want to be there and want to participate. A Mormon troop has some boys who want to participate, and some who don't.

The same is true of the leadership. In a non-Mormon troop, the leaders are there because they feel the program is valuable, and want to help youth. In a Mormon troop, the leaders are there because the bishop called them to be there. Some Mormon scoutmasters are committed to the program and want it to be successful, some are just present to fill a calling.

As a result, non_mormon troops are more likely to be truly committed to the program (all of it), and not just committed in name only. Many of the problems associated with Mormon troops are due to the difference in the level of committment. Non-Mormon troops view getting Eagle as something that you really have to earn. Too many Mormon troops view it as just another in a list of routine things to do - kind of like graduating from 8th grade. Hence the merit badge mills and weak-assed service projectsin Mormon troops.

That's true, non-Mormon scouts and leaders are there because they actually WANT to be there, while Morg leaders are there because it's their "calling." There have been threads here and on other exmormon sites about Mormon parents requiring their sons to get their Eagle Scout before allowing them to get their driver's licenses.

In non-Mormon troops, the Eagle Scout thing is something that one really has to earn, and doing projects for your church generally doesn't count. Not all Scouts get Eagle outside of Morg troops, so I'm actually more impressed when I meet a non-Mormon who says he was an Eagle Scout. Morg troops treat the Eagle thing like a participation trophy, and they don't do community service projects outside of the church. In my area, when there's been a search for a missing Boy Scout who got lost on a hike, it's often mentioned that he was from a LDS troop.

The Eagle Scout Award is the precursor to completing a mission.

It's expected and if a YM doesn't earn it some leader has failed. No debate. Parents are excused and even the boy is excused. No Eagle? Bad leader.

in our council, at least, the Eagle Project cannot benefit the chartering organization, ie some project to help fix up the church and save it some coin.

the Life Scout has to select an outside cbo, there are all types in NYC. Contact them, establish a suitable project, write it up, have it approved by the troop and then council.

Recruit others from other troops and community volunteers to help (troop adult leaders are not allowed to participate (oversee) and then the project passes or fails on its execution.

I got my Eagle at 14 because my troop leader really pushed me. I was probably too young, but I wouldn't have gotten it later because I lost interest in scouts when I started high school.

My mom got the terrible idea from other people at church to force my brother to get his Eagle or withhold his driver's license. I was in my 20s by then, so I stepped in and told her, "Either he gets it because he wants it or he doesn't get it."

The idea of forcing a kid to get his Eagle is a joke. It's not a high school diploma. Mormons are used to jumping through hoops for the church, so they treat the Eagle as just another hoop to jump over: Primary, Seminary, Eagle, Mission, Temple Marriage, Kids, etc.

My cousin was bitten by a rattlesnake on a LDS Scout trip and nearly lost his hand.

That was tragic when the scout fell to his death near Zion Nat Park. Safety is always first with trained leaders.

Remember the LDS scout group that went hiking down the Grand Canyon to the river and no one had brought more than 1 canteen of water? On boy died of dehydration and two of his friends saved by doctors who were rafting on the river. All the others had collapsed at various locations on the trail and had to be helicoptered out. The church used the story of the rafting doctors to play the 'prayers answered' card, even if they were unable to save the life of the one boy.

and then there was the time in 1963 at Hole-in-the-Rock where 7 LDS scouts were killed while being transported in an old truck. The truck stalled going up a grade, and began rolling backward. but guess what? he truck had no brakes, so it went down a ravine, killing the 7 boys and injuring many others.

I've had my own encounters, none deadly but all uncomfortable.

this is old (2005), but fun reading:


http://scouter.com/index.php/topic/13716-why-do-lds-scouts-get-lostkilled-more-often/

If the numbers given in the 2005 figures are correct, the likelihood of an LDS being a victim is 18.3 times that of the non-LDS scout! BSA would be safer without TSCC!

Nonamekid nailed it. My husband and I did scouts for years, probably because of his beard. There were only ever 2 leaders above us that had any experience/training in real scout leadership. People who had older, adult scout leader training from the BSA, I mean. So basically, this is a calling, often an unwanted calling, that people do the way anyone does anything assigned - willing but unmotivated to do more than necessary. If you are in a non-LDS troop as a leader, it's because you love Boy Scouts and love the outdoors and love learning/teaching the skills the BSA teaches. You are motivated to make it great because it's a passion/interest rather than an assignment/obligation. This level of commitment makes all the difference.

And the boys - every single year we got at least one boy who did NOT want to be there and was happy to tell us that his parents were forcing him to attend. About half the other boys were there and participating, but their hearts weren't in it. It wasn't something they looked forward to or had any interest in excelling at. They were willing enough but probably would not have gone if they had a choice to do something better. During this whole time, I also did Girl Scouts and the difference between teaching kids who chose to be there and kids who had to be there was a big one.

One other thing, LDS troops are funded, marginally, by the LDS church. There are very few, if any, other fund raisers. Our Cub Scout troop was limited to $1.25 per month, per boy for activities. If we earned more money during our one big annual fundraiser, it went to helping with camp fees or buying something for the entire Cub pack, not to the individual dens. We always stockpiled and spent the fundraising money like crazy in December because if there was any left, the church budget for scouts was adjusted down and they gave us less money for the upcoming year, based on the fact we already had X amount of dollars and didn't need more. So there was no way to win or get more money to do fun things for your boys - the more interesting things you see non-LDS troops do. So between the underfunding, under trained leaders and unmotivated kids, of course LDS scouting is a joke.

And if anyone reading this has a son in an LDS troop going for his Eagle Scout rank, make sure you wait until he is older. We left the church when my son was 12 but he continued to participate in his LDS troop because his friends did. He could have gotten his Eagle at 14 but someone in non-LDS scouting warned me that anyone familiar with non-LDS scouting would look down on his Eagle as a "joke, Mormon Eagle." That a legitimate Eagle usually can't be earned until a boy is at least 16. So my son waited to earn his last badge and turn in his application until he was 16, even though he'd done his project at 14. I was so proud of him for rejecting all the easy projects his leaders suggested and going the extra mile to do something more complicated. But he waited to turn stuff in so he'd get the credit he deserved, not be looked at as a Mormon Eagle Scout.

Because mormon scouting has nothing to do with scouting. For the leaders, it's a calling, not a volunteer position for something they care about. For "scouts" it's just a junior priesthood society to prepare them for becoming elders and going on a mission. LDS "scouts" have nothing to do with being Boy Scouts.