Screw 'em. They knew this was going on and enabled it. Burn the farking Boyscouts to the ground and salt the earth.
I don’t understand how this is going to have more victims than the Catholic Church’s sex abuse problems. The Catholic Church has issues everywhere the BSA operates, plus everywhere else in the world.
I’m confused, are we talking about the Scouts, the Church or the NRA?
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And that is very true, people’s experiences vary GREATLY over different times and places. Many volunteer organizations suffer from this. You get the volunteer that you get, so you get good troops and bad troops, and one can turn into the other as leadership changes. At the national level, they were slow to realize the extant to which pedos would be drawn to adult positions. And to the extant that they DID realize it, their initial response was to double down on keeping gays and atheists out.
On the other hand, the are one of very few organizations that DOES provide appropriate levels of responsibility to kids that age. Sometimes that can go wrong, with a toleration for bullying and “boys will be boys,” but other times it gives experience in leadership that will stand those boys very well when the reach adulthood. It IS difficult to provide a guiding hand but not simply make all the decisions for the kids.
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The complicating factor is that unlike (say) the Catholic Church, the people who enabled sexual abuse in the BSA are by and large no longer part of the organization.
That doesn’t absolve current BSA leadership of financial or moral responsibility but it does influence what “taking responsibility” should look like.
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This is a goldmine of material (none good, unfortunately).
Merit badges - Camping (along the boarder wall), Citizenship in the Nation (lying to Congress), Citizenship in the Community (lying to everyone), Crafts (how to use a Sharpie), …
Now to work “perjury” into the oath… Eh, a work in progress.
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Ironic since my dad pulled me out of scouting after a camping trip that ended early due to numerous (nonsexual) safety issues. The need to not have people lose face IMHO also lead to idiotic troop leaders fucking up in basic ways like assuming someone else brought the firewood/propane canisters necessary to make the trip doable safely.
I learned a lot from my dad but it sucks people who don’t have parents with knowledge of nature had to choose between a dumb organization or nothing.
(Weirdly the girl scouts I’ve met all had better practical skills than the boy scouts in terms of starting fires, basic campfire cooking, navigating the woods etc. I think they boy scouts often were glamping more than camping…)
every girl scout i’ve met knew how to swing an ax and work a blade, maybe that had something to do with it.
(and to be frank, people are more protective of girls)
But I am only half kidding - boy scouts had a weird process to be “eligible” to use an ax, and part of why one trip ended is there weren’t enough certified people to chop firewood to keep us safely warm.
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It might be the end of the BSA, but I doubt it will be the end of scouting in America.
With a bit of luck the evangelicals and other religious fundamentalists will move to an organisation like the Boys Brigade, while scouting will become more secular.
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Which is how the BSA was put in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to apologize for Trump’s speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree gathering in 2017. “We have invited every President since 1910 to attend the event, it honestly never occurred to us that one might use the opportunity to brag about all the chicks he banged.”
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let it be a lesson: change is in the air, and tolerating abuse is an existential threat to your organization.
let the bridges we burn light our way
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They could maybe rebrand as The Komsomol of America? 
So if I understand the issues properly, the BSA, while touting itself as a bastion of civic responsibility and moral rectitude, systematically denied and obstructed the uncovering of serious problems within the organization which were diametrically opposite to their stated purpose? At the same time they demonized and excluded potential members for being gay?
Great example, guys! Well done!
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I think Trump Jugend is more likely and accurate.
Or maybe these lot.
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I didn’t get bullied, but now that you mention it, when I was a Cub here in Canada (entry level Scouting) it wasn’t that different from school. I earned the badges and stuck to myself, no real connection to the other kids.
Actually, I joined up because my friend across the street joined. He moved away a couple of years later, and I didn’t stick with it much !onger. I never had an interest in moving up the ladder.
I did have a Golden Book about camping (like the chemistry book), and it certainly had Scouts front and centre, so I guess I picked up some of that from the book.
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A youth organization banning agnostics and atheists? Ironic that the religious bigots ended up protecting only the “unworthy“ children! 
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See also: Camp Fire. It’s been co-ed for about 45 years, although after all that time, some over a certain age will probably still remember it as “Camp Fire Girls”. In my family’s experience, it is much more chill and informal than Boy Scouts, though this could have as much to do with who is running the respective Camp Fire or Boy Scout troop (and I’ve heard the same about GSUSA). In our experience there is way more emphasis on the camaraderie, and going camping together a couple times a year, than on the levels of achievement (which exist, but they seem to happen, anyway).
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I’m right there with you. I loved scouting as a kid. Now as a more adultish person I’m a scout leader for my son’s cub pack. The level of support from national is laughable.
I’ve heard BSA best described as a franchise model. It’s a turnkey youth program, unfortunately as with any franchise the franchisee and their managers (volunteer leaders) are the folks that actually do the heavy lifting. For each scout that pays in $60 a year we get the benefit of being able to buy rank advancement badges and a dodgy online tracking system.
I do think Scouts BSA has moved forward with one of the best youth protection program of any of my multiple volunteer positions. And their “two deep leadership” policy will work on protecting youth in the future.
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When my father was a scout (starting in, I guess, the mid 20’s) it was
a kind of gang, the clean living gang,
But I’m sure this kind of stuff happened then.
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Campfire kids is also really cool. Sadly there are no groups locally (and I have neither the time nor temperament to be a group leader for other people’s spawn. Mine’s bad enough.)
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