Talk:Boy Scouts of America membership controversies/Archive 4

message: I reorganized the article sections. How does it look? I guess the links are messed up now?--Jagz 01:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for all the great recent edits.  I think I fixed the links by converting them to using the ref tag, so hopefully we can reorganize all we want and the order will fix itself. -Alecmconroy 15:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganization 

message: I do not support the merge. The Scouting for All page can give more usefull detail than is needed here. --Bduke 09:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This was already discussed and everyone who commented was against the merge. The discussion is in the archives. I took to the mergefrom tag off once already.--Jagz 21:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but you clearly did not take the 'mergeto' tag off 'Scouting for all'. They go in pairs. I saw it there so added it here. I'll remove both of them. --Bduke 23:45, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge of [[Scouting For All]] here 

message: I was reviewing the article and read the section in regards to membership decline and am seeking consensus to add the following points somewhere in that section.
# Professional staff are responsible for membership development in their respective areas, leading membership numbers to possibly be skewed due to the practice of building numbers at recharter time and allowing memberships to lapse. Thanks to Jagz pointing it out, this is in the article already. 
# While Learning for Life numbers are increasing, this is due to the fact that the Learning for Life division is operated wholly inside public schools, allowing all youth, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, or other factors, to participate in the programs. Same with this. 
# It would appear that in some councils, membership decline is not due entirely to the controversial nature of the Boy Scouts of America's membership policies, but a lack of programming at the Troop, District, and Council levels, which cannot compete with youth sports, school activities, or other demands on the time of young men and women.
Please feel free to leave your comments.  KC9CQJ 14:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Take a look at the old version of the section if you want ideas on what changes to make. --Jagz 16:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I wonder if any research has been done on the declining membership issue. Maybe polls have been taken to find the root cause. Seems like the BSA would have done studies on this.  Right now the article only speculates on the reason.--Jagz 16:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Membership decline 

message: Here we go again.  A mix of footnote types (in-line and ref) means that there are two each of notes 1 through 8.  I just don't have time to fix it right now. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How do you put in a footnote?--Jagz 22:01, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: Despite all the controversy over this page, I am really impressed by all the great information and references! Thank you! -MarkBuckles 22:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thanks 

message: Is this article going to be nominated as a featured article candidate again?--Jagz 19:22, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe later. I guess the article still has a few rough edges.--Jagz 15:42, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I think for a controversial subject, it's particularly hard to find an article everyone can agree is FAC quality.   Not impossible, but a lot harder than say, an article on Baseball.--Alecmconroy 19:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article candidate 

message: The Good article nomination for  has failed
:(It seems to be in violation of the NPOV policy. A pragraph fraught with this is the second to last paragraph in the "Access to public lands and facilities" section:
::One of the issues for many governmental agencies is that for the past two decades, the BSA has asserted that not only is it a private youth organization, but has gone on record describing itself as a religious organization. Not a religion, but an organization that inculcates a religious message to its members. This assertion, coupled with the BSA's public stance on discrimination, has called into question many of its governmental special rights and financing it has received for almost 100 years. Many wonder why the BSA can recruit in the public schools, yet the local Baptist church is denied such access, or why the US Army hosts the BSA's Jamboree, yet provided no financial or logistical assistance when the Catholic Church held their World Youth Day in Denver. As asserted by the BSA, they are equivalent to such religious youth organizations and are thus not subject to anti-discrimination laws.
:With its lack of sources, presentation of the counter argument, and use of Weasel Words, I think that this paragraph alone removes it from the GA running.)
 TonyJoe 00:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Good articles|Good Article]] [[Wikipedia:Good articles/Nominations|nomination]] has failed 

message: If you have any recommendations for improving this article, including specific sections that may need further work, please write your comments and suggestions below.--Jagz 22:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article improvement 

message: In responce to the mark metioned in the header: 
# Unfortunitly, the Supreme Court Backs the Boy Scouts on the choosing to accept or not gays and atheists.  
# In My troop, we fully accept and embrace those that are diffrent for any reason; and we have our own interpretation of the Scout Oath and Law.  On the Law, it says A scout is revrent and the Oath Says to do my duty to god and my country. Despite being chartered at a Prespertiarian Church (and having to say grace at summer camp), we don't force any spirital/philosophical/religous ideas on anybody. Ideally, revrent to us (our at least me) means being true to what you belive and respecting the belives of others.  
# The article is not the place for that. please, if you must put it on the talk page. 
# If needed, please contact someone with authority in government and/or scouts about what you feel and help change it.  Boy Scouts is a great program, even with its flaws, and is changing all the time.  One day it may accept all people irregardless of diffrence (as the founder wished), but it won't happen unless people work at it.  
I hope you understand my points and I displayed them with out much grammaticall or spelling errors.
: This was moved from the Talk page of the Scouting article. In the future please don't move things here as a way of deleting them from other articles.--Jagz 01:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  i think it was just moved due to it being on the wrong article, not so it would be deleted. Bud0011 02:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, it's a posting about BSA specific controversy, not international Scouting.  It belongs here, not in Scouting.Rlevse 19:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know what you're up to.--Jagz 20:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not even worthy of a response. Bud0011 is correct. Rlevse 21:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

text: WP:AGF --Habap 21:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  in responce to "how the boy scouts steal your money" 

message: I can't find a good citation but examples like
"Livestock grazing is permitted under a lease agreement between the Forest Service and the non-profit Hector Cooperative Grazing Association " at Green Mountain National Forest web page indicates that non-profits can lease Federal land.  A discussion on camps on Federal land is at a American Camp Association website.
"In 2002, H.R. 5316 - The National Forest Organizational Camp Fee Improvement Act - passed in the House of Representatives.
 
This important legislation affects 320 nonprofit camps in 25 states. These non-profit camps that lease Forest Service land are facing hefty fee increases as land is reappraised after many years. This bill would redefine the category of appraised land that the Forest Service fees are based on from developable land to rural land. It would also redefine the formula for fees to 5% of the appraised value bringing that formula in line with private cabin permits on Forest Service land.
There are many camps and youth groups affected by this bill including Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Easter Seals, diabetes and cancer camps, church camps, municipal camps, YMCA, and 4H.
Unfortunately, it did not pass in Senate. With the commencement of the 108th Congress in 2003, we hope to resurrect the legislation."
Note that this is apparently a case of all groups having equal access to lease land for camps and not preferential treatment for one group.  This is in contrast to the Jamboree.--Erp 02:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I rewrote the whole section.--Jagz 07:36, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Land leasing 

message: How can I find the comments from the peer review? Supposedly they are archived somewhere.--Jagz 15:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is on it's fifth name- the review was against one of the old names.  I fixed the link at the top of the page, but there isn't much to the review.  BTW: I used "what links here" to figure it out. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:52, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review 

message: Just wanted to say how glad I am that Jagz, Erp, and others are still working hard to polish this article further.  If we ever get to good or featured articles, it will be 100% because of these great new edits.  
Regarding the sentence "Some local governments have enacted anti-discrimination ordinances and have subsequently moved to discontinue special or equal access to the BSA because of its exclusionary membership policies."--   the problem is this wording gives the meaning that there have in some cases been instances where local governments have denied equal access.  I don't know that that's actually objectively true--  for example,  to my knowledge, the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act or the Support Our Scouts have ever actually resulted in a withdrawal of funds.  I tried a different wording by making it more verbose.
  
--Alecmconroy 03:26, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I rewrote it. How does it look now? I try to avoid the word "some". See weasel words.--Jagz 04:25, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks awesome! :)  thanks.      Yeah, I actually love weasel words when properly sourced-- they're a gr eat way to summarize and not trouble the reader with details they don't need to know.  People are alyway admonishing me about that. --Alecmconroy 06:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits 

message: In my opinion this is a good article that will never be recognized as such due to its controversial content.--Jagz 18:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean good in the generic sense or good in that it has received official GA designation?  FYI, for purposes of the WikiProject rating system, only articles with the 'official' GA designation can be given a project GA rating; just as only official FA articles can get a project FA rating.  I think the article has improved enough since it last failed GA.  I'd suggest it be submitted for GA again.  Rlevse 18:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the article should be renominated as a good article candidate.--Jagz 05:25, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, since you didn't do it, I did.  I am a GA reviewer and you can't approve your own nominations, and I never vote on Scouting GA nominations anyway so that I can't be accussed of a conflict of interest. Rlevse 10:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article 

message: Originally, I had been pretty content to try to keep a balance between the BSA and its supporters on one side and the opponents on the other.   But the more that I think about it, if we we're really gonna shoot for FAC-- maybe we should not count the BSA comments as part of the support, but should beef up the Support For section in order to make it roughly equitable to the Opposition section-- might help to make it more NPOV.  So, I've added a few direct quotes from supports-- may add more. 
-Alecmconroy 08:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If we get good article status, maybe we should submit for another peer review, specifically asking about the balance of the article.--Jagz 16:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, we need to be mindful of page length.--Jagz 23:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Support for BSA 

message: ...might be dead.  Their website has not had any activity for almost a year.  Any Google hits either lead back here or to some link page. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This page on their website says it was updated within the last month.  Obviously, if we don't think they're notable enough to be mentioned, that's a different thing.  I emailed them to ask how many members they have. --Alecmconroy 11:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Didn't see that one.  Last entry in the forum is August of 2005.  --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Star Scouting America 

message: So...  what connection does a pedophillic scottish mass murderer who was expelled from the Scottish Scouts for poor leadership have to do with the BSA's gay/atheist policies? --Alecmconroy 19:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep in mind I didn't put it in in the first place, but I did put it back it. The connection, albeit very weak, is membership in general.  If it were in the main text, it definitely wouldn't fit, but as it was in see also, that's the only reason I put it back in. I won't object to it being left out since the connection is weak at best. Rlevse 19:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's also not a very good article.  In my view, the focus is on the failure of the police to revoke his certificate.  There is nothing about his Scouting association and nothing about the actual murders.  --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say that if Hamilton had been involved with the BSA and had been removed for one of the reasons that is controversial (throwing out pedophiles is not opposed by anyone as far as I know), then it might belong in a see also. Otherwise, every article that has anything to do with Boy Scouting should show up in the See Also list here. --Habap 19:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Did he ever campaign for either? If so, did he ever campaign for either in the US? I still don't see the relevance. --Habap 19:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While the inclusion of West makes sense (pedophile in the BSA), I get the sense you are trying to make a point here about homosexuals. The shame is that doing so makes the BSA look worse (terrifying to parents who worry that seemingly straight men like West are actually pedophiles). At least the result is NPOV. --Habap 19:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you say so. Personally, unripe apples (or parts of the male anatomy of  any age) have never appealed to me. Of course, if we follow the logic of your argument, straight men should never be allowed anywhere near girls and married men should be prohibited from speaking to women other than their wives. --Habap 20:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Pedophiles in the BSA is a different issue than Gays/Atheists in the BSA.  The BSA prohibition against convincted child molestors, for example, is not controversial.  The no-gay policy is about morally straight and clean, not about pedophilia.  That's why it applies to youth members as well as adults.  The BSA does not claim that it's homosexuality ban is related to concerns of pedophilia, and even if it did, that still wouldn't mean we should use this article as a clearinghouse for "Lists of Scouters accused of abuse".  If you want to make such a list, make a new article for it.  If you want a fuller discussion of the cases of abuse within scouting, make a new page or add it to Boy Scouts of America.  This page is just about the two gay and atheist policies-- not the pedophile policy.  The people at Feature Article Candidates would eat us alive for have random links to every pedophile who's ever been in scouts. --Alecmconroy 20:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure how we strayed here.  Hamilton had nothing to do with the BSA, thus does not belong in this article, nor any BSA article. I don't know who "West" is, as there is no mention in the article.  Otherwise, I consider 132.241.72.20 to be a troll.  --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thomas Hamilton (Dunblane murderer) 

message: I removed the Jim West link for several reasons. One is because I didn't see that he was legally found guilty of an offense against a Scout. Even if he was found guilty, pedophilia isn't a controversy. If pedophilia was a controversy, his wrongful personal actions would have to help illustrate a general problem within BSA itself.--Jagz 21:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BSA apparently makes no such link and this article doesn't identify any supporters who do. If there are verifiable sources that identify those who support BSA policy for this reason, maybe it should get written into the article. If not, then we're looking at original research, which has no place in an encyclopedia. --Habap 21:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: According to the Scout policy in the UK, there is no link between pedophilia and homosexuality. I have never heard of the BSA stating that there was a link. Also, there are probably a lot of non-avowed gays in the BSA already. The BSA makes no effort to discover the sexual orientation of its members, or at least that is their official policy. Why don't you start a new article?--Jagz 21:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jim West link 

message: I understand that BSA has been using the words "morally straight" as a requirement for its members since around 1910. I haven't been around quite that long but my impression is that the idea that straight means not gay has only been a linguistic concept since the 1960s. What did morally straight mean in 1910? Has BSA's requirement been confused by a change in the meaning of the word?
HiLo48 (talk) 01:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the BSA directly interprets the "straight" in "morally straight" to literally mean heterosexual-- since that meaning is, I presume, relatively new.  I think they go: "I believe practicing homosexuality is immoral, the scout oath promises to be moral, therefore the scout oath implies a promise to not practice homosexuality".  --Alecmconroy (talk) 06:47, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does straight mean? 

message: In the subject section Bduke reverted my changes on a sentence, taking it back to "In 2005, a high-level employee of BSA was fired by the National Council after the organization received a copy of his bill from a gay resort at which he had vacationed."  With the notes: "where is the source that says staying in a gay resort makes you an activist?"  
I would start with two comments: 
:That whole sentence should probably get dropped, as the implied cause and effect is merely inuendo. In that case, per the cited reference (a biased web site, but which did contain some useful info on this)  BSA did NOT make an an issue out of his homosexuality, and did NOT give that as a reason for termination.  
:And responding to BDuke's question/reason for reverting, the sentence as edited said that the discovery that he was an activist FOLLOWED the "gay resort" revelation, it did NOT say that attendance at such a resort equated to him being a gay activist.   
But, my edit confused two cases (i.e. with the Dale case where he WAS clearly a gay activist, and that that activism WAS given as the reason for the action.)   And so, despite the above, my edit was in error and so it is good that it was reverted. 75.24.138.102 (talk) 13:45, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Gay Resort" sentence in "Position on Homosexuals"