Un extracto llamativo:
Boy Scouts of America Reorganize to Protect God
It is important that the atheist community be aware that the Boy Scouts
of
America National Executive Board officially adopted changes to their
program on
Feb. 12 which they presented at their May annual meeting of the National
Councils. These changes, which took effect Aug. 1, were defended by Jere
Radcliff, the Chief Scout Executive, in a letter to the Council Scout
Executives
as helping to "... protect our core traditional program from legal
challenges".
This is presumably a reference to the success of some lawsuits in
challenging
BSA's implementation of its restrictive membership policies,
particularly when
the chartering organization is a government agency.
BSA is organized into two divisions: The Boy Scout division and the
newer
Learning for Life (LFL) division. Although participation in the Learning
for
Life program has always been unrestricted, the adult leadership
requirements
were identical to the Boy Scout division. Thus, all adult
leaders had to
sign a
Declaration of Religious Principles which claimed that
belief in God was
requisite to the best kind of citizenship. Exploring
was a program
introduced
into the Boy Scout division in 1950 which was divided into different
specialties
including Career Exploring. Exploring was for older youth ages 14-20
who
completed the 8th grade.
Under the reorganization this has changed. Career Exploring has been
moved
to the Learning for Life subsidiary and all other Exploring Posts have
been
renamed Venturing Crews. The leadership criteria for Learning for Life
units are
now decided by the chartering organization. This means that it will
be
the
responsibility of citizens to ensure that their local public schools
are
not
discriminating in accordance with local, state and federal laws. Please
speak
with your local school officials and make sure that they are aware
that
subscribing to the DRP is no longer required and should not be enforced.
Also,
the new Venturers oath drops the aggressively sectarian "I believe
that
American's strength lies in her trust in God ..." from the Explorers
oath. The
Venturers oath is now as follows: "As a Venturer, I promise to help
strengthen
America, to be faithful to my religious duties, to help others, and
to
seek
truth, fitness, and adventure in our world". Unfortunately, no
substitution for
religious duties will be allowed. Finally, Scouting advancement will
no
longer
be allowed in LFL Career Explorer posts. This eliminates the anomaly
of
male
Explorers earning the Eagle award while their female Explorer
counterparts could
not because they did not have an opportunity to earn the prerequisites
in all
male Scouting troops.
Overall these are positive changes that should be acknowledged and
applauded by the anti-discrimination community. The reorganization
goes
a
significant way towards eliminating the more egregious discrimination
problems
resulting from the religious mandates component of Scouting mixing
with
career
training and government. Several problems remain, however. Units in
the
Scouting
division continue to be chartered to government agencies. These units
continue
to mandate _expression_ which is inconsistent with non-theistic
worldviews. Also,
units chartered to Parent Teachers Associations continue to recruit
inside
schools with the assistance of public school personnel. Furthermore,
the
Boy
Scout division remains closed to atheistic _expression_ and therefore,
by
implication, it remains antagonistic to atheistic worldviews which
are
not
comfortable or not compatible with public theistic self-identification.
[Matthew Goldstein of the Nonbeliever Antidiscrimination Project at
nap en infidels.org prepared this report.]