Boy Scouts Threaten to Kick Out Troop For Supporting Gay Members

[redstar826]

The Boy Scouts council in charge of overseeing scout programs in the Washington, DC-area is threatening to kick out a Maryland troop for posting a statement on its website declaring it won't discriminate against gay scouts. The troop has to decide by tomorrow whether to remove the statement

Comments

[sfrlz]

I wish the pro-gay people of Boy Scouts would just break away and found their own, more inclusive organization.

[lonebear]

I expect they would love to. But the costs involved are staggering. Lands for camps. Uniform design. Paid professional staff. Etc.

[anjak_j]

Me too. But sadly, lonebear is right - the involved costs would likely be prohibitive. For a start, you'd need a whole lot of troops going against the BSA grain for it to even begin to be viable.

And then there's the fact that this will be a whole lot of spending for an organisation that will be absorbed back into the BSA when it joins us all in the 21st century.

[kyra_neko_rei]

I kinda wish the Girl Scouts would decide to become the Scouts and invite this troop and similar-minded troops of Boy Scouts to join it, become gender-neutral, and import various ideas and concepts from the Boy Scouts to make it more like the Boy Scouts in terms of activity offerings. (I will fucking jump for joy if they manage to swipe the Eagle Scout award, though I suppose that might be somewhat tricky from a legal perspective.)

I know my experience is not at all universal, but I was a Girl Scout whose brother was a Boy Scout and I spent far too much of my child and teenage years being jealous at all the stuff my brother got to do as a Boy Scout that my Girl Scout troop never went near.

[crooked_halo]

Oh, how awesome would that be for the Girl Scouts to become gender neutral and start accepting troops that want to have an anti-discrimination policy into their ranks?