For reference, the UK version is as follows:
On my honour, I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people, and to keep the Scout law
That’s it. (and the whole thing about duty to the queen is basically the same as saying “to the flag” in the U.S.)
You are aware that it was only the homophobes who interpreted “morally straight” to mean “straight” as in “heterosexual”? Shame on all American scoutmasters who fail to explain that difference to the kids.
Or, if you’re an atheist temporary resident in Britain: “To uphold our Scout values, to do my duty to the country in which I am now living”.
It might also be worth noting that many scout associations encourage their members to use “their own words” for the Promise.
In my own experience as a scout master, 10-year-olds tend to stick to the official text, but are reassured that they are allowed to think for themselves. A few of them just leave out the “serve God” part that’s in the official Austrian text, but the rest usually remains untouched. Fifteen-year-olds on the other hand will leave no stone unturned and come up with a Promise that truly fits their own values.
I’m really unfamiliar with the format at this forum.If I had inadvertently posted a reply to the wrong victim
feel free to copy and paste it to the proper party. I can only make disparaging remarks about the …
What the fuck am I doing.Look at the fucking post we"re commenting on
2015-The U.S.Army wants transgender fodder
Boy Scouts says Fags are O.K.
The Fucking headline speaks for it’s self.
Unfortunately, your post doesn’t, and I can’t quite guess what you’re trying to tell me.
Perhaps you missed where I pointed out that one troop was an outlier. I can validate that his experience of seeing the BDA from the outside, that way is possible. I switched troops.
I place no value on “excellence of our close order drill” - but I was taught to do it by men who did. Most of them have passed away by this point in time, so there’s really no point being scared of them.
Also, could i remind you of the courteous and kind parts, good sir?
The Republican Party of the U.S.A. embraced queers
Disneyland embraced queers
The U.S. Army Air Force Navy Marines embraced queers
The Russian Army accepts queers
Mossad,them queers
and after 35 years reluctantly
The Boy Scouts of America give their thumbs up to anal sex.
I should be going Ya Hoo
Better late than never just pisses me off
Sorry, I certainly did not intend to violate those. If some of my statements require further clarification (none of them were intended to be either un-courteous or un-kind), feel free to point them out.
As for my “scarily militaristic” comment, that was not intended to offend; I just consider it a fact that Austria and America due have vastly different levels of patriotic and military symbolism in their respective cultures. I do tolerate and accept these differences, but I still flinch when American media refer to soldiers as “proud warriors” or “heroes”.
My point was that the underlying cultural differences between Austria and America make me personally unqualified to judge what level of military-inspired ritual in scouting would be appropriate for America. I will happily take your word that the troop you chose and many others have an “appropriate” level of military-inspired ritual, but that doesn’t tell me anything in “absolute” terms, and it doesn’t tell me what proportions of Americans in general would consider it “too militaristic” or “too lax”.
You simply can’t generalize about BSA troops. Some are into the military thing and wearing snappy uniforms, some (like mine) are just into leadership development and getting outdoors and only put on the uniform for special occasions, and couldn’t be less interested in the whole God Guns and Guts thing. It really flows from the local sponsoring organization and the families involved. That’s why it was so frustrating having the right wing assholes at national setting policy which many of us found profoundly offensive at our local level.
I would be surprised… there is apparently, starting in 2013, a new group, based on American Heritage Girls, for boys:
I can’t find anything on it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some racists assholes back in the 60s tried to “save” scouting by splintering… Never underestimate the tenacity of a racist. Of course, if it did form, perhaps it just didn’t go anywhere, hence everyone forgot about it? Not unusually for organizations that peter out to just get forgotten. Happens much more than we realize.
The ones that I linked to are real, though. I have nieces in AHG, so that’s how I knew about that - my Nephew is in BSA, as is his dad.
So Mormons are the most dominant? I guess this makes sense, since both the LDS and Catholic church are far more highly organized, as a religion. SBC is more of a lose confederation of churches, and encompass a wide variety of practices.
Thanks… I just posted the link to that. I wasn’t aware of that until I read through the AHG wiki…
Allowing self-declared atheists should be next, IMHO. I am an Eagle Scout – proud of it too – and when it came time for my the final interview (or whatever it’s called) the scoutmaster asked me (maybe not in these words) “You believe in God, right?” as he nodded. I was to say yes. So … I lied.
We had the Scouts and the three branches of Cadets in our school. I almost joined one of the cadet groups because they did look fun, but the Scouts were less militaristic and I had no interest in looking that loyal to the British. The Scout oath of allegiance is open to a lot of interpretation if you don’t believe you actually owe anything to God or the Queen:
On my honour, I promise that I will do my best, To do my duty to God and to the Queen, To help other people, And to keep the Scout Law.
Yeah, but at that age I wanted to be a Harrier pilot in the RAF. So the military and guns stuff wasn’t a turn off. The Duke of Edinburgh award stuff was good too.
I always hated having to pay lip service to religion and monarchy though, and I’m a terrible patriot, I just wanted to fly fast jets.
I’d have been a rubbish fighter pilot with too many moral objections anyway, glad I didn’t end up flying planes over Iraq and Afghanistan.
I have several uncles who are RAF/ex-RAF and my grandad was ex-Royal Marines and a little bit anti-war, so I knew from an early age that wasn’t a life I wanted.
My group fell apart, so I never finished it. I had done most of it too 
Same here, although my Boys Brigade company being connected to a (then) liberal CofE parish made it easier. Sometimes things there could even be fun and low on religion.
I think it has more to do with the SBC being pretty limited regionally. But they lack the money, raw numbers, and borderline creepy obsession with scouting that the Mormons have. So have little influence outside of areas where they have their greatest concentration. Catholics are still the largest single religious denomination in the US, IIRC. There are a fuck ton of them, and they are everywhere. They’re also global, where as Mormons and the SBC aren’t so much. So they have some significant ties with scouting world wide. Then again I might be remembering old numbers. But I also do no recall the Baptists of any sort being even mentioned in the religious materials I was given as a scout decades ago. For merit badge purposes I only recall the official materials acknowledging Catholic, Episcopalian/Anglican, Mormon, Jewish, and then generic “Protestant” and a faint acknowledgement that Islam, Buddhism and other “alternative” religions might possible count as credit for merit badges related to faith (or maybe not ask your scout leader). It was very encouraging for a young Atheist.
I think I read somewhere that Methodists charter the most troops, but Mormons have more individuals in the BSA.
Good to hear that.
Especially considering the fact that the BSA’s reputation amongst decent people has been suffering recently, and the fact that the people setting the national policy seem to have slightly more power in the BSA than they seem to have here in Austria. At least I haven’t heard of any charters being revoked due to policy disputes in Austria.
Also note that my earlier comments were not meant to generalize about all BSA troops, just an observation that I probably wouldn’t be able to reliably tell the difference between “not militaristic at all” and “slightly militaristic, but not excessively so” in a culture that is foreign to me but more patriotic and militaristic than my own on average.
I never really got the sponsoring organization thing. We don’t have those in Austria. Do they pay a lot of money in exchange for being able to control policy? Can’t scout troops survive on membership fees alone?
Hear, hear.
What’s the situation on the ground on this matter?
The “current” situation (2011 poll) among Austrian 16-24 year olds is that 16% believe in a personal God, 35% believe in “some kind of a higher being or power”, and 20% do not believe in a higher power. The rest are labelled as “undecided” or “don’t know”. By contrast, a 2012 PEW study claims that 68% percent of American millenials say “they never doubt God’s existance”. Which, I take it, is a sharp drop from 83% in 2007. I don’t know the corresponding number for Austria, but it must be somewhere in the 10-15% range.
So is the issue of how atheists deal with a scout’s “duty to God” even on the radar for BSA troops who welcome the changes in official policies with respect to LGBT people?
To be fair, the Harrier’s a pretty slow jet.
