Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/boy-scouts-of-america-files-fo.html
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"Be Prepared!
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I have mixed feelings about this; scouting was a really good, important part of my childhood. I learned a lot about the outdoors, self-reliance, and confidence. I can’t condone the sex abuse, but I’m wondering if this is the end of the BSA, and if so, what will be lost?
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I find myself wondering if the writing was on the wall, and this is the real reason why the Mormons stepped out in 2018.
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No. I 100% buy they walked away because they didn’t like the national organization liberalizing membership/inclusion rules for the local organizations.
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It doesn’t look like Boy Scouts Canada has been affected.
Also, if you’re in Canada (and not a pacifist as such) I can heartily recommend our Air Cadets (183 Typhoon was the squadron my Dad commanded), Sea Cadets, or Army Cadets.
Friends of mine have sworn that Katimavik turned their life around.
I was more of a Junior Achievement kid.
(… until the on-line world and AD&D ate my soul…) 
Civic engagement for youth, goals, “rites of passage” can be a tough one for our extremely diverse and more individualistic society, but it’s perhaps that last point that makes it more crucial than ever. You need to find a “tribe”, and it can be hard to find a good one. For most of us, life no longer really hands you one at birth any more. I can imagine that the BSA is going to be a hard gap to fill.
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I get the feeling they got this strategy from all those Catholic Church diocese filings.
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When you have to go to such lengths to “protect” yourself against a tsunami wave’s worth of sexual assault lawsuits… maybe the core of who you are is rotten, and deserves to be put out to pasture? The organization has always been an untenable mixture of good and bad; it’s taught generations a few noble skills and personality traits while also being deeply discriminatory, racist, sexist, homophobic and acted as a shelter for pedophiles and rapists.
But, hey! They taught a lot of white kids how to start a camp fire, so… gold star for them!
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“Since the PC-crazy liberals are killing the Boy Scouts of America, I am taking steps to replace it with a beautiful new organization called The Junior Space Force. Just you wait until you see your kids in their new Space Cadet uniforms!” - D. J. T.
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I honestly had the opposite experiences in my scout troop as a kid, which involved bullying and harassment by other kids in the group. I have zero inclination to have my kids in scouts.
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Why not both.gif
Join the Girl Scouts
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Step aside old man, we have YouTube to teach outdoor skills now
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Can Youtube teach you how to bond with your peers? My quick Google search tells me, “kinda”? But I’ll choose to interpret that as “no”.
Please do not give the crazy old con man that’s acting as POTUS ideas, unless they are ones that will lead to his own undoing.
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been in Irving, Texas since 1979.
Since the founding of the BSA in 1910, the President of the United States has served as the organization’s honorary president during his term in office, former presidents serve as honorary vice presidents for their lifetimes.[96]
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It should be noted that this is the national organization that is filing Chapter 11. The regional organizations, the ones that actually do stuff, are still around. The boys and their immediate leadership are not affected yet. Even if the national organization collapsed completely the regional councils could carry on pretty much indefinitely.
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I’m glad to see BSA losing some of its scope, especially since they recently started admitting girls. That sounds like a good thing, except that it was an attempt to compete with and take participants from the Girl Scouts, a legitimately progressive and laudable organization. Strange how GSUSA hasn’t had the waves of lawsuits that BSA have had!
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Like a lot of people, I have some mixed feelings about this. My brother, who is several years older than me, had an excellent experience in scouting - lots of fun, went to a big jamboree, got his Eagle badge. For me it was just the opposite - bullying, harassment, at 13 my patrol leader made me run “the jockstrap” for calling him a dumbass. I loved the outdoors, camping, hiking, knots, all those things and it broke my heart that the program wasn’t what it was supposed to be. It was hard enough being weird in the 60’s, and that kind of experience did nothing to make it better. Later on I made a point of excluding them from my United Way donations because of their treatment of the gay community - as a private organization I believe they have the right to their own membership, but I’m not gong to pay for it. I guess what’s sad is the loss of our perception of them, but not so much their reality.
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