Behe & Dembski - Winning (plus the Scouts)

[charlou]

I was in the Boy Scouts and I did a lot of cool stuff I never would have been able to do otherwise. It was the marching and drilling and military type shit that I hated. Not too much god stuff back then. It might have been in an oath or two, along with the flag-waving. But nobody gave a shit about stupid oaths anyway. Not us kids leastways.
Funny that there's such a strong prohibition against homosexuality now. Scouting was always thought of as gay. In fact that's eventually why I left, just short of making Eagle Scout. It was all just too fucking gay for me.

My mother had been a nurse and, thinking to steer me in that direction, signed my up for St John's cadets. St John's was the state ambulance service at the time. It had a military aspect that included rank, parade and marches. Uniforms for official duties and occasions, but otherwise everyday wear was fine. It had some minimal (barely noticable) reference to religion and to the queen. Mostly we learned First Aid and general nursing techniques ... but the best bit for me was learning about the human body in quite some detail. We'd have exams and get badges on passing. There were a couple of state camps that involved a mix of the above, with fun and entertainment.

I went along to one state competition that involved very authenticly enacted accident and injury situations that teams had to assess and work on. The actors were made up with realistic looking fake injuries, blood, bone, moaning, etc ... Our team of three were presented with a motorbike accident ... the rider with multiple injuries ... At eleven, I was way out of my depth with that one. The rider 'died'.

I really enjoyed the learning, including (oddly given my dislike of discipline, and pomp and circumstance) the choreography of the parade, but hated anything that made me feel put on the spot or in the spotlight and that came up too often ... so mixed feelings about the whole thing at the time. Now I look back and am glad overall that I had the experience.


ETA: just remembered ... the girls met on Tuesdays, and the boys on Wednesdays, but we got together for first aid duty (such as saturday at the local footy games), competitions, camps and other social occasions. I was in the cadets for almost two years.

[Bella Fortuna]

Oh my!!! Really? Good grief. And you like living there because....???

You didn't realise this? It's been terribly controversial, that they're basically immune to any sort of legislated equality measures because they're a private organisation. It's shameful. I had terrible qualms about my son joining for that very reason.

And they get free use of public buildings/spaces, all while discriminating

So, what to do about it? Legislate against the discrimination? I wouldn't agree with that. I think it's up to parents to show a bit of fortitude and solidarity with their own children, and make a stand against the discrimination ... or show disapproval by leaving, and look to other ways to fulfill the desirable experiences that don't include undesirable elements such as religion, ritual, tradition and discrimination. Might not be a single organisation, but a range of specialised activity providers ...

I could not agree more, though in my case I was cowed into letting my son join thanks to my ex, who's a complete apologist for the religious majority despite always having been an atheist and thought any 'different' sort of activities (I wanted to get him involved with Camp Quest in the summers, for example) would make him an outcast and he refused to even entertain anything that would be at variance with what 'the other kids' would be doing. Still... Scouts has overall been a positive influence in my son's life, so I just keep reinforcing activities and world views that don't involve religion and discrimination.

[charlou]

Still... Scouts has overall been a positive influence in my son's life, so I just keep reinforcing activities and world views that don't involve religion and discrimination.

A good way to go, I think ... kids are generally pretty good at working out a balanced perspective if given a broad enough range of ideas to work with.

[Ronja]

I find it amusing that the name of the troop that our daughters and I belong to, "Korsfararflickorna" translates to "Crusader Girls", yet I have never heard one word about religion since we asked about it when Elder Daughter was about to join. Several of the older troops in Finland seem to have names like this.

[Hermit]

It's been terribly controversial, that they're basically immune to any sort of legislated equality measures because they're a private organisation.

That's the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, which in 2000 held that the lower court's decision unconstitutionally violated the rights of BSA, specifically the freedom of association, which allows a private organization to exclude a person from membership when "the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group's ability to advocate public or private viewpoints."

The BSA's bylaws state: "The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God" and "Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed." I wonder what the Supreme Court's verdict might have been tegarding the BSA's right to exclude a person from membership when the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group's ability to advocate public or private viewpoints, if instead of atheists and homosexuals it targeted any other segment of society. The Southern Baptists, or the Jews, say.