Members of Congress Demand Boy Scouts End Gay Discrimination

The problem is that they receive federal money and land to conduct their group activities. When you take money from the public purse, you have to abide by non-discrimination rules. The Scouts are perfectly free to pursue their organization without public grants and land, but as long as they want that privilege, they must abide by the rules.

so they can squeeze into your sleeping bag

Every troop is different. And boy scouts is full of gays. I remember a flamboyant scout master who would open the flaps of his tent every time he would change his clothes. It wouldn't be problem except his tent was in the middle of the camp and he always seemed to think it was a good idea to change when the young boys were coming got out of the back from the dinning hall., The point I am trying to make is, you can't have boy scouts without the gays because the majority of people involved in boy scouts are Gay (save for the Mormon troops).Instead of boy scouts, it should be more appropriately named scouting for young boys.

You are so full of shit

Its a regional thing. In Most troops the members and scout masters are openly homosexual. In mine most of the scout masters were gay. They would shower with us at camp, and sleep with each other in their tents and wasn't a big deal to us. Everyone, including the parents were cool with it.

It seems to be in Mormon troops, Salt Lake city regions, were don't ask don't tell hasn't ended..

my reason for posting this was not to entertain the idea of 'flamboyant scoutmasters', or ones who undress with their tents open, but simply to say that i had a great experience in scouting from a young 'tenderfoot' to 'explorer', and new nothing about a so-called
DADT policy--i was just a kid. but knowing what i know now about their policy, it is shameful that so many young men and women would not join from fear, and miss out on great social and practical learning.

I sure do agree.

And the bigotry -- jesus! Anti-gay, anti-atheist.......

I've been ashamed of them for some decades.

And the GIRL Scouts aren't any better, especially with their selling MANUFACTURED cookies for profit. Why shouldn't these children (and notice I say CHILDREN, not girls only) develop their own recipes, bake the cookies, package them -- the whole deal. THAT might teach them something other than batting their eyelashes and making cute little curtsies to sell a box of over-priced cookies (and I'm saying this as a former lover of those damn Thin Mints!).

Screw that. I don't want homemade cookies, I want Tag-Alongs.

Actually, the Girl Scouts have far more open policies regarding things like homosexuality. And they provide a lot of great opportunities for girls to learn any number of skills.

On the cookie note, it would be a major liability to sell homemade cookies. What happens if someone gets sick from them? Or a girl gets hurt baking? Besides which, the profits are used to fund activities for the girls, and facilities like Girl Scout camps and yes, some administrative costs. While it would be nice to think that those types of things could be handled by volunteers, it's not as easy as you'd think. Plenty of parents want to use scouts as place to dump their kids for a week and are not at all interested in helping out. Finally, there have been steps taken to improve the relative healthfulness of cookies, including the fact that there are now no trans fats (resulting in the lamentable demise of the lemon pastry creme. Sigh.)

And, as a former Girl Scout for many years, selling cookies takes a lot more than batting eyelashes and smiling pretty. It teaches a lot of things, including the fact that you have to be outgoing (which may come natural for some, but for they shy among us, is a pretty major thing to learn) and responsibility, since you also have to keep track of and deliver all those cookies.

Your are correct! Thanks.
Moon

You must have had a better experience than I did. I'd easily rank Girl Scouts with the worst experiences of my childhood.

There was good and bad...but more good than bad, for me. I think a lot depends on the troop. The stuff that was bad for me, had to do with the specific group of girls (and parents) not anything about the organization itself.

That's may be true. I just had a tyrannical she-demon of a scout leader.