Talk:Boy Scouts of America membership controversies

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Mass Deletions done by IP without notice or discussion

I reverted mass deletions that were done by an IP without notice or discussion. Many severe problems in those changes, possibly some good ideas. Please discuss such mass deletions before doing. North8000 (talk) 13:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC) (I reinserted this note after I accidentally deleted it)

A couple of the issues involved are good to talk about here.

Introduction Wording to Non-Discrimination Policy Section

I don't know if it sounds wacky or not, but felt that something like my "controversial vs. non-controversial" discrimination, and "enumerated protected classes" introduction wording was important to provide clarity as to what a non-discrimination policy with respect to sexual orientation actual was/is. Any thoughts on this?

Terminology

The terminology question regarding homosexuality as come up several times. Setting the most extreme views and verbal tactics from both sides aside, the underlying culture war is between those for and against general societal acceptance of homosexuality as a norm. I feel that the choice of terms should strive to be neutral on the underlying topic. I think that the term "homosexual" is the most middle-of-the-road on this. I think that more negative (not repeated here)terms or more positive terms (e.g. gay) referring to this represent "weighing in" on one side or the other on the main dispute. While it may not be the preferred term for folks with strong feelings on either side of the issue, it is a term that is not widely rejected by folks on either side of the issue, and also the term most widely used in legal and policy documents when they refer to persons of that particular sexual orientation. Any thoughts on this? North8000 (talk)

The BSA specifically uses the term homosexual. Gay can ambiguously mean male homosexual, as in Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:17, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed with both. 'Homosexual' is probably the best for this article since it's BSA's term and since lesbians are affected also. If people aren't offended by it, no problem. If it is offensive, that's an informative reflection of BSA's choice to use the term in defining their stance. Either way, we shouldn't substitute our own term preferences over BSA's. --Alecmconroy (talk) 19:10, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Null edit to keep it visible North8000 (talk) 03:04, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Atheists/Agnostics not allowed; Buddhists are???

As a Buddhist I would like to point out that while most of the world looks at Buddhism as a religion, it is at its core non-theistic, and has been since its inception. The Buddha spoke of unhelpful questions and among them are questions such as "Is there a god?", "What is the nature of an afterlife?", "What is eternity?"

'Unhelpful' in this context refers to not helping us on the path to freedom; freedom, ultimately, from clinging and striving. The central point of Buddhism. It could be argued: the only point of Buddhism.

While this hasn't stopped many in the years since from practicing Buddhism in a religious manner, it is a basic misunderstanding of this philosophy to ascribe theistic beliefs to what is ultimately a very personal and beautiful system of thought. And let's be clear, that's ultimately what Buddhism is -- a philosophy and a psychology. What it is not is a religion. And what it does not concern itself with are gods and goddesses.

My question as relates to the article is this: do the Boy Scouts officially welcome Buddhist while at the same time denying membership to agnostics? And if so, how do they justify this contradictory policy? I wonder if anyone in the know can shed some light onto this.

And while we're at it, just how many practicing Buddhist and Muslims does the Boy Scouts have in its registry? Does anyone have the numbers? Just how homogeneous is this organization? It seems a relevant point to this article.

68.206.127.30 (talk) 05:13, 15 July 2010 (UTC)mdmullins

The BSA does not specifically address the issue of theism and Buddhism. The BSA is a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, and they do address the issue.[1] The BSA has a formal relationship with the Buddhist Churches of America.[2][3] I know the BCA does not represent all Buddhists in the US, but it is the only national Buddhist organization I am aware of, and the BSA only makes formal relationships with national organizations. The BCA relationship is recognized through their National Buddhist Committee on Scouting,[4] which provides the information on religious emblems programs. This does not mean that no other Buddhist group may charter a Scout unit, but they may not be tracked as such.

The BSA does not gather information on individual member religion, but it does track the chartered organizations. The are 61 units chartered to Buddhist organizations and 89 to Muslim organizations.[5][6] Not all members of those units may be of that religion, and the are probably many of those religions who belong to units chartered to other organizations.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 08:22, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The IP user does indeed raise a relevant point that WOSM should be considering, but it is not something that we, as wikipedians should be considering. Nevertheless it does point to the fact that the religious policy of WOSM and many individual associations is inconsistent and a rather poorly thought out compromise to keep as many people in the tent as possible. --Bduke (Discussion) 09:05, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I have been considering how this relates to the article. I have had this discussion before in other contexts, but I don't see that is has ever risen to the point of a controversy, nor am I aware of any discussion in other reliable sources. There is some discussion at Religion in Scouting; see also World Buddhist Scout Brotherhood. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:25, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I said, it is not an issue directly for wikipedia, but I would suggest that the inconsistency is likely to mean that sources could be in conflict. You may be right that there is little discussion in reliable sources, but there certainly has been discussion about it. I think B-P's rather confused view of what is an acceptable religion is mentioned in Jeal. He wanted the Buddhist countries in the British empire to be in and he wanted to keep out the left thinking free thinkers in the UK who rejected God, so we got this confused situation we have now. Mind, this discussion should probably be at Talk:Scouting not here. One BSA issue that I have heard discussed might be relevant is that the Buddhist group you mention above is influenced by Japanese Buddhism and does have a notion of God, while other groups based on Buddhism in Thailand and Burma do not have the same idea of God (or even no idea of God), but are less represented. Another idea I have heard is that Buddhists want to avoid conflict so do not make a fuss, but are actually unhappy with the strong BSA anti-atheist position. These could surface in reliable sources at any time. We should be conscious of what issues might arise. --Bduke (Discussion) 10:44, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Buddhism seems as diverse as Christianity in teachings and lineages, but except for the BCA, they do not seem to form denominations, which is a problem in BSA relationships. There is no evidence that the BSA has issues with Buddhism, but there is anecdotal evidence that some Buddhists may have issues with BSA policies. I don't see enough reliable sources to add anything to the article. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:06, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Buddhists and their beliefs is not something that is an issue in the Boy Scouts of America at this time though I could imagine some troop leaders having problems (but those same leaders might have problems with boys who are Hindu or some other religion the leaders are unfamiliar with) when a controversy arises it will be a matter for this article. In the world organization it is not an issue at all (the emphasis there is not in a belief in a God but more spiritual values for which 'duty to God' is a shorthand, Buddhist majority countries use 'duty to religion' instead of 'duty to God' and Britain allows an alternative promise for Buddhists). The Buddhists could end up where the Unitarian Universalists are but not yet. --Erp (talk) 05:20, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

If you would like a very un-wikipedian, unofficial, but (I believe) accurate answer (i.e. just for your personal understanding of the situation, not for the article), (from a 50 year BSA scouter, 40 years as an unwilling atheist), the only way that anyone has ever had any official collisions with the BSA on this issue is when they go high profile about being an atheist or refuse to recite BSA items due to having the word "God" in them, or refuse to sign the application on those grounds. A person with a non-theistic belief set that appears spiritual would have an even easier time, unless their beliefs compel them to do the above types of refusals, or they went high profile about not believing in any deity.

This is with respect to having official collisions with BSA. Doubtless there are situations where the policies as written have additional subtler influences, particularly situations at the at the individual unit level where religion has a higher profile in the unit. But in my 50 diverse years in Scouting, I have never even heard of someone being asked what their religion / belief set is, much less heard of a review of a belief set to see whether or not it is theistic. North8000 (talk) 16:02, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

From a Wikipedia standpoint, if we could ever find a reliable source that has studied and summarized actual BSA actions in this area, such an overview on actual practices would be a very informative addition to the article. North8000 (talk) 16:13, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I do not want to discuss the issues themselves, but I can not resist here. The phrase "refuse to recite BSA items due to having the word "God" in them" is amazing. An item? This is the Scout Promise you are talking about. In the US, you even call it an Oath. This is serious stuff. I am an atheist. A Scout is honest. I can not make the Scout Promise if it has the word God in it. It is not "just not reciting an item". So, since 1970, my activity in the movement I love has been on the fringes. The critics are taking Scouting seriously. They are not out to cause trouble. --Bduke (Discussion) 22:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I used the word "item" to be vague and cover the other possibilities. On your other points, I would disagree with some, agree with some, and say that one is more complex than you make it out to be. I would be happy to discuss, but I don't think that this is the place. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 04:27, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Please email me. I have email enabled. I do not think you do. --Bduke (Discussion) 08:33, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Will do. Haven't figured out Wikipedia email yet, but I will. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:20, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Reversion of my reference addition by Ckatz.

Ckatz I have to admit that you are right regarding BornGay / procon.org being overall a reliable source. I just wanted to explain why I used them in the first place. One the one point were I used them (which was the detail-adding edit I made a few minutes before) they had much more credible details in the wording on that one sentence where the more mainstream source had an obvious problem where leaving out the detailed description caused the generalization to be misleading and wrong. And, this being an old story, they were the only source I could find which went into more detail. North8000 (talk) 10:25, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Non-discrimination policy wording needs clarification in a few areas

Some widely supported policies mandate discrimination (e.g. not allowing child molesters to be leaders or 8 year olds to get driver's licenses, or 11 year old boys to join the Girl Scouts.), in other cases it is tacitly expected (they won't let me play professional football because I'm no good at it) Some nondiscrimination policies are vague motherhood-and-apple-pie statements without "teeth" of operative wording. For the above reasons the ones that do have teeth always enumerate the protected classes or attributes.

This article uses the term "nondiscrimination policies" a lot, without clarification. In some of those uses such ambiguity is not an issue, e.g. where the word does not purport to be self-defining. In other cases, use of the term without clarification is clearly misleading, where the word is used as being self-defining. I think that in the latter cases it should be clarified. North8000 (talk) 11:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Could you be specific about where it is unclear? It's hard to know with the broad brush there. --Habap (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

"World Organization of Scouting Movement programs" section

This section has an "OR" tag on it right now. At first glance one might think a "Whit is this doing in THIS article?" tag would be in order, but I believe that it's sort of good in there. I think that a section giving WOSM's policies in that area, beig an umbrella organization is appropriate. Then it goes one to described policies of a few orgs within WOSM, and then some that are not in WOSM (which I think are confusingly misplaced in the WOSM section) I guess that picking selected organizations to list is inherently OR, and in this case, all of those picked in the first section were those with policies more liberal than BSA. Ideally there would be an objective expert source that has done this overview / analysis, but so far it's not here. Barring winning the lottery and finding that, I guess a few ideas are:

1. Rename the section to "Policies of similar organizations and the World Organization of Scouting Movement"
2. Delete the whole section
3. Strip out all example organizations and just leave in the top level WOSM stuff
4. Add one or two examples of organizations which have policies more stringent than BSA (for balance)
5. Remove the OR tag

North8000 (talk) 17:41, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

It's been about 5 weeks since I put up the question, with no comments. Here's my thoughts/plan:

For structural purposes, split the section into "World Organization of Scouting Movement" and "Comparable organizations". Implicitly, these titles mean policies/stances etc. of those on the topic of this article.

To the existing 99% OR material here I would add a bit of balancing OR. Basically saying that in the counties where homosexuality is illegal or where there are religious states, such would not be expected to be seen in Scout policies due to being redundant or a moot point. I'd draft it here and run it up the flag pole before putting it in.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I made some copy-edits. If you can find a citation for the paragraph on values, that would reduce the level of OR here. I would also recommend adding one or two organizations with either similar or more restrictive policies for balance, since the opening paragraph states that such exist. --Habap (talk) 20:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice to meet you. As a sidebar, I occurred to me that an organization tends to often not have policies when such would be redundant to laws or some overwhelming consensus in the society. North8000 (talk) 22:27, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Note on Quality of References

Since I just reverted deletion of a reference, I wanted to mention that during the reference review process there were many many in this article where I had to "hold my nose" as I put them in / left them in. (main work is at [[7]] Generally speaking these were cases where both of the following were true:

• Seemed reliable on the fact at hand, with those sentences being reporting of facts rather than conjuring up stuff.
• Could not find anything better.

If we took all of these out, we would sort of 50% gut the activist / critic side of the article. Not sure I did the right thing, but wanted to explain it. North8000 (talk) 12:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

2010 Membership numbers

Does anyone have the 2010 membership numbers? Are they out yet? 68.27.169.172 (talk) 07:53, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes— see the Boy Scouts of America infobox. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:57, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I've updated the table but haven't gone back and checked the 2009 numbers against the annual report and updated its reference (now checked).--Erp (talk) 15:23, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Erp. This data is very appreciated. The numbers appear to be fairly consistent with previous trends. 107.25.88.117 (talk) 19:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

How often do BSA Membership Policies Change, and How Are Changes Communicated?

I notice that the citation for the 2004 "Youth Leadership" policy, http://www.bsalegal.org/morally-straight-cases-225.asp, no longer contains the policy stated in the Wikipedia article. Is the 2004 "Youth Leadership" policy still in place, or has it changed? Cwgmpls (talk) 15:00, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Good observation and question; I don't know if it has changed. I do remember that it was spelled out at that page, and so there has clearly been a disappearance.

Not that it matters for content, but my take on it was that the homosexual leader policy never did get distributed, nor did it have any mechanism for general enforcement.....that it is/was just something they only enforced as a special initiative in a handful of special higher profile cases. I never found any examples beyond the handful of cases that are described in this article.

This contrasts with the atheist policy. There it is somewhat communicated via the application, and if one refuses to sign it they don't get in. I think that all of the atheist cases arose from refusal to sign the application.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:12, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll pass it off as another attempt by BSA to obfuscate its membership policy regarding homosexuals. When recruiting for new members or donations, BSA likes to promote its diversity, but when trying to kick out an unwanted gay member, BSA has a long history of pulling out obscure membership position statements when they are needed in court. This pattern can be seen in any analysis of the BSA vs. James Dale decision. I guess the same pattern continues to this day. Cwgmpls (talk) 16:53, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd agree with some of that. From all of the research (including organizations who are vigilant about finding and publicizing any such things) it appears that they have never rejected or kicked out a member for being gay except when they were also a leader of some type, and also high profile about it. And that was like 3-4 people out of the 20,000,000 or so that came through Scouts in the period. This is not to imply OK/not OK, just to help with my 2 cents on an understanding of the situation. My guess is that it started out as unspoken (don't forget, 40 years ago, such a rejection by any organization would generally be considered to be acceptable, no policy needed). Then in the court cases they had to say it was existing policy and did as you described. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:43, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

It's safe to assume that, despite the unannounced removal of the 2004 policy from the bsalegal website, nothing has changed. A simplified statement at http://www.bsalegal.org/litigation-222.asp reads "Scouts are required... not to be openly homosexual." Despite the clumsy grammar, the policy seems unchanged: Scouts cannot be gay. Cwgmpls (talk) 18:39, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to learn more. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:15, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I checked old versions of that morally straight page. The entire "policy" section was there before and has been removed. But the policy on atheists remains and is as stringent as ever. North8000 (talk) 22:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, the policy statement on the website in question is gone, but the policy against gays in leadership is unchanged and in place. A person can still piece together the policy from other sources. The BSA seems to have an aversion to stating their policy on gay membership clearly in one place. Cwgmpls (talk) 18:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, the policy or stance against avowed homosexuals in leadership positions was previously explicitly stated, and there is no indication that it has changed, except that it disappeared, while the policy against atheist members remains in that same place. We have a dilemma in the article that we are saying that such a policy exists but have no source for that statement. I think we should leave it as is while we try to learn/figure out/ find sources. In the meantime, if necessary we could refer to the deleted page (use Time Machine or other web archive) and say "as of 2010 date", according to....., the policy was stated as....... North8000 (talk) 02:33, 4 June 2011 (UTC) Substantially re-edited North8000 (talk) 15:00, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Jamboree moving from military base to BSA-owned land

Rather old news, but future Jamborees will no longer be held at Fort A.P. Hill but on land owned by the BSA as explained here.

This should be mentioned in the section on Jamboree lawsuits.