Boy Scouts does not have anything to do with the Book of Mormon, any other scripture, or any of the commandments. No GA said, "Get involved in Boy Scouts or be damned!" Mormons have enough commandments to live up to. They don't need to be guilt tripped into the Boy Scout program.

At the very least, they should run Boy Scouts by the Boy Scout "book" not modify it to be the "activity program of the Aaronic Priesthood." Most of all, it should be OPTIONAL and the parents should be INVOLVED (not just dropping their boys off at the church and never doing anything to help).

I sat on an Eagle Scout Board of Review this week and it just reminded me of all the things the church does to intentionally screw up the BSA system.

One of the things that really made me mad as I was working my way out of the church was a meeting I attended for different Primary leaders. The Primary president was discussing the scouting program and the importance of the Cub Scout leaders reaching out to the "lost boys" i.e. the boys who didn't attend Cub Scouting program. She said if the Cub leaders didn't catch them early, they wouldn't complete Scouts, wouldn't attend Boy Scouts, wouldn't earn their Eagle Scout and probably wouldn't serve a mission and get married in the temple. I had been a Cub leader several years earlier and it really bugged me that she would consider boys who didn't like scouting "lost boys". I knew from experience some boys really love the things we did in Cubs, others were more hesitant but ended up joining in and having fun and others just didn't fit. Watching them was like watching a non-musical child being forced to take piano lessons. They were bored, didn't listen, jumped all over the place and you really couldn't blame them. Scouts was NOT their thing but they were forced to go because somewhere along the line, Scouting became a church program.

I am a Girl Scout leader. The troop started out sponsored by the Catholic church and they let us meet in their rectory for years. But we made our own money, made our own decisions and eventually moved over to the basement of the Lutheran church because of scheduling conflicts. Being sponsored by the Catholic (or any) church as a scouting organization is WAY different that what the Mormons are doing to Boy Scouts. They didn't interfere with our fund raising. They didn't try to get us to teach their religious goals. We didn't have to get permission for what we wanted to do and spend. Mormons are very controlling of the troops they should merely sponsor. Part of the difference may be between how the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts run things. But it's a real eye opener because it isn't fair that the tightwad Mormon church controls their troops when other Boy Scout troops in our town do much more interesting things because they don't have to go begging on their knees to the bishop every time they want something.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2012 06:28PM by CA girl.

The most important reason for the church not to be involved with Boy Scouts is that they "call" those who are disinterested in their spiritual callings. So it's a bottom tier calling, last stop on your way out of the church, resulting in disinterested people who are disaffected, angry, disconnected or otherwise not really volunteers who wanted to work with boys.

The result is poor supervision and death for too many boys whose parents trusted the very lives of their children to such men.

I have posted here about safety violations ONGOING which were not reported to BSA leadership for the same priesthood-protection-boys-club-loyalty reasons that sexual predation is hidden.

No one should work with boys in the wilderness who does not have their best interests safety-wise as their number one priority.

Period.

Anagrammy

Fuck the boy scouts. I say this as a person who earned his Eagle.

BSA is a bigoted, immoral, hate organization that is against atheists and homosexuals. The morg's interference since the 90s has only amplified this fact.

Years ago, I was working with a nevermo young gay guy (his family was either lapsed Catholic or Episcopalian), a HS senior, & he had always been involved in Scouts. At that time, he was trying in vain to hurry up with his Eagle project before everyone found out he was gay.

came here to say pretty much this

I didn't know that...our cubmaster's is pretty openly gay...no one cares.

I think the LDS needs to stop acting like they own the entire BSA program...I bet there's a lot of kids out there who have no idea that the BSA is totally independent of the LDS church.

And that is the reason my son is not in BSA. Maybe I am jaded having grown up in the LDS BSA program, but from what I have seen they are just like TSCC. They hide sexual predation, they teach belief in god, and they are against gays.

I do know that the other BSA troop in our town had a lot more fun than us, did a lot more camping and everything! Wish I had been in that troop.

Dances with Cureloms Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fuck the boy scouts. I say this as a person who
> earned his Eagle.
>
> BSA is a bigoted, immoral, hate organization that
> is against atheists and homosexuals. The morg's
> interference since the 90s has only amplified this
> fact.


I agree with this wholeheartedly...I also got my eagle... BFD... I don't even put it on resume's anymore...

Just a funny side note...I got a call from the eagles nest or whatever organization is running the database of former eagles...I don't even know how they got my cell phone number... and they wanted me to buy some book of former eagles...I told them there was no way in hell I was going to buy it, and they could put my info in, if they wanted to, but I was not giving them any money...took me 4 times of telling the person no to get off the phone...It was almost as bad as trying to get the missionaries to leave...

The church is the boy scouts largest client. The church has stood with the scouts since they started, however mcarp is right we screw the proram up but we have a massive influence on the program we even write some of their material. I love the program it could be better, nut I don't know of another program of its caliber.

I agree that BSA should not be such a big part of the Mormon Church. It should be optional and something on the side, not the major YM program.

I Utah when I was in scouts (early 90s) there was no separation between scouts and the mormons. On all of our scouting trips, full mormon rules were always enforced, right down to taking away my playing cards.

I remember one year we took a snowmobile trip in yellowstone, and one day they spent the whole day cooped up in a hotel room praying and doing church bullshit. I sluffed that day.

Since it was a non-LDS troop in our remote area.

I especially like the time ten boys were crammed in a tent reviewing the Playboys one of them brought from his dad's collection.

On my way out of the morg, I went to a scout camp and I saw the lack of interest. Alot of square filling. Boys going from one station to another - 5 minutes of training, sign off on whatever the skill was, and move on.

The other problem is our lifestyles are making scouting obsolete. If we were all country folk, perhaps it would help, but because we're supposed to reproduce like rabbits, space is more rare. How many knots do you need to know to live in an apartment and play video games all day?

I'll be the naysayer. Having been a Scoutmaster for 8 years, there is a right way to do it and the Mormon way to do it. If they didn't want to be there, I either 1. told their parents to keep them out of scouts or 2. let them play basketball in the gym. I refused to be a babysitter and saw no reason to force the boys to participate.

That said, things like Summer Camp were a bitch because with all the long history of Mormon troops being worthless, disruptive and fucked up, we were always looked at as a lesser quantity. I hated that because our troops were actually pretty good. We wore the uniform properly, didn't cheat on merit badges (this is rampant in the morg), and won the cook-off five years running.

So, ya, morgscouts is, in general, fucked up and off target. This has more to do with the fact that the leaders are "called" not volunteers. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes about how things are run.

Just sayin'...

Ron

I agree...read this post of mine when I did go into a mormon church for an Eagle Scout ceremony.

Weird and uninspiring doesn't decribe it well enough..

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,426877,426877#msg-426877

I worked for the BSA Orange County Council, years ago. I liked the job - data entry and printing up 'executive' letterhead with invitations to invest in BSA.. They sold BS supplies, but they were also a huge fund raising group. They would give prestigious people awards, so they could charge large amounts of money for awards banquets. I believe they were the largest fund raisers for the BSA at the time.

A few years ago I went to a new store (in TN?). It was a huge, it looked like a high end outdoors store that was selling BS gear.

Somebody is making money, I can't image it all goes back into scouting. They're is alot of overhead if nothing else.

Maybe it's closer to TSCC, then you think.