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Roy wrote:
What I like about scouting is that earning an eagle scout rank or serving as a scout leader is something that is recognized and respected outside of the church. I feel that any replacement program would lose that benefit.That’s actually one of my criticisms of the “but the YW can get a Young Womanhood award!” explanation for why girls don’t need Scouts. My husband has been putting his Eagle Scout on his resume for years. I don’t list my YW award because outside the MorCor, it’s utterly meaningless.
I’m really curious to see how the LDS Scouts will handle this. They can’t exclude a boy from scouting because he was born with female parts. But they CAN exclude a boy from YM and MUST exclude a boy from holding the Priesthood if he was born with female parts. Problem is, we’ve got the PH, the YM, and Scouts so intertwined that you can’t really have one without the other.
I remember reading (no idea where) that there were some problems pre-1978 with the Church’s involvement with scouting because they had decided that some positions within a troop could only be held by the Deacon’s quorum president or whatever, which meant that boys of color were automatically excluded from that position.
Joni wrote:I remember reading (no idea where) that there were some problems pre-1978 with the Church’s involvement with scouting because they had decided that some positions within a troop could only be held by the Deacon’s quorum president or whatever, which meant that boys of color were automatically excluded from that position.
That’s a really interesting historical tidbit, Joni. I’ve never thought of that before. It didn’t affect me, because we didn’t have any black kids in my ward, but it is true that while I was in the DQ, which was during the ban, our DQP was the Troop Leader and the two counselors were the Patrol Leaders. I have no idea if that was Church Policy or if it was common practice, but that’s how we did it in my ward.FWIW, when I was the DQ Adviser, I made a concerted effort to separate the Quorum from the Troop, and PH from Scouting. But I think the lines are too easily blurred unless you are conscious about it.
The Church had scouts before the Boy Scouts. They were organized so that the saints never again would be subject to the kind of ignorance that resulted in death and so much suffering on the trail west, for example, the Martin and Willie handcart companies. When they heard about Baden-Powell Boy Scouts, the Leadership sent people to look into it, and they accepted it for the Church. So, we’ve done it our own way before. That being said, I think there is much to be gained by staying in the Boy Scouts, and I hope we will find a way to stay and share.
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