After the Boy Scouts opens up to trans kids, queer kids and girls, the Mormons severed their 105-year relationship to scouting

[zathras]

@kthejoker

Would you really want to be responsible for 2 dozen boys and girls ranging in ages from 11 to 17 on some camping trip to the woods? Or how about summer camp, now it’s 1,000? Feel free to argue that it’s totally doable

Okay. I’ve been doing that as a volunteer for the past 12 years.
Absolutely no problem.

@kthejoker

but there’s a reason it’s not really done

I was also at the World Scout Jamboree in Japan in 2015. 14,144 male scouts and 8,752 female scouts (ages 14-18) were also present. Many (mostly muslim) countries sent gender-sorted troops, but the majority was coeducational. Only a few countries (countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, and the USA) sent male-only contingents. Either way, no one was more than 20 seconds of walking distance away from a tent containing young people of the opposite gender.

So much for “it’s not really done”.
It’s not only “done”, America is the exception to the rule.
We’ve been doing it in Europe since the 70s; WOSM (the World Organisation of the Scout Movement) has been recommending it since 1991.

@kthejoker

and has a lot more to do with liability and risk than moral suasion.

Nope. It has everything to do with “moral suasion” or “culture”.

Unless… maybe it’s all because the for-profit American health insurance industry fails to cover the cost of cooties vaccinations for all kids?

@kthejoker

Again I’m not saying they don’t operate “just fine” I’m saying they’re fundamentally different than an organization that caters exclusively to boys or girls.

I can’t confirm that. While I’ve never been part of single-gender scouting organisations, I’ve interacted with single-gender groups, and I’ve found them to be no different from random single-gender subsets of coeducational groups. Care to elaborate on the “fundamental difference” you’re seeing?

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@JeffreyHayner

Freedom of religion & freedom of association are cornerstones of American Civil Liberties. Are you all suggesting these rights should be somehow denied because you don’t agree with another’s chosen way to practice same?

I find my own view of Mormon influence in the BSA to be very much dictated by the fact that I am a Scout myself, but not an American. The BSA is not just some youth organisation that I can just tolerantly ignore when it displeases me, it is a different local chapter of the same worldwide “movement” that I am part of. These are my brothers (and sisters, yay!) in Scouting, whether I want it or not.
The LDS have been redefining what scouting means in the US, and they’ve been pushing it in a direction that I absolutely cannot identify with. But if a troop of a fictitious “Mormon Boys Organization” ended up camping next to my scout troop, we’d initiate friendly contact and organize some common activities. I’d still think of them as crazy fundamentalists, but I’d do so in a well-meaning way (the friendly rivalry between Scouting and Austria’s dominant catholic youth organization is the stuff of legends).

So, it’s got nothing to do with religious freedom, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my personal opinion of the few Mormons I’ve personally met in my life, when I say that I’m happy about the Church pulling out.

@Gyrofrog

Yes, the 12th Scout Law is “a scout is reverent” but they don’t make any specification beyond that (though as you suggest, presumably Satanism would be out).

I’m a very reverent atheist. And I don’t see why a Satanist couldn’t be reverent. Depending on what form of Satanism they practice, they might have a harder time with some other Scout Laws, but I don’t know.
Also note that the concrete list of Scout Laws is specific to a national scouting organization (in this case, the BSA) and as such, is not set in stone.

Also relevant, something I wrote here a year ago when this happened: Boy Scouts of America to allow transgender boys to enroll - #81 by zathras