Can everyone writing blog posts about the Boy Scouts of America please make sure to never drop the “of America” in the title of the blog post?
It gives the rest of us Scouts worldwide a bad name.
I’m an active volunteer in Scouting here in Austria. I am an atheist. I work together with believers and non-believers alike. I have worked with gay volunteers. There has never even been any discussion of “membership requirement” or any such exclusionary practices. Scouting has always been about Tolerance and Inclusion.
Every time some blogger writes “The Boy Scouts” instead of “Boy Scouts of America”, someone elsewhere on the planet reads it and does not know that the problem is basically limited to the US and to countries where gay people have worse problems than being kept out of the Scouts. A perfectly friendly, open, tolerant and inclusive local scout organisation will have to spend extra effort on public relations.
Article II, paragraph 2: “Adherence to a Promise and Law”
All members of the Scout Movement are required to adhere to a Scout Promise and Law reflecting, in language appropriate to the culture and civilization of each National Scout Organization and approved by the World Organization, the principles of Duty to God, Duty to others and Duty to self, and inspired by the Promise and Law conceived by the Founder of the Scout Movement in the following terms:
The Scout Promise
On my honour I promise that I will do my best—
To do my duty to God and the King (or to God and my Country)
To help other people at all times and
To obey the Scout Law.
In order to accommodate many different religions within Scouting, “God” may refer to a higher power, and is not specifically restricted to the God of the monotheistic religions. The WOSM Constitution explains “Duty to God” as “Adherence to spiritual principles, loyalty to the religion that expresses them and acceptance of the duties resulting therefrom.”
Yep, still sounds like religious bullshit to me. This was definitely the nonsense I had to pay lip service to when I was a scout in the UK. Ditto for the air cadets. Most youth organizations still seem to operate at best a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to atheism. In the UK at least, secularism is desperately needed.
ETA: looks like there was a rather unenthusiastic change made in the UK recently.
