“In the boy scouts, they came first for the homosexuals,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a homosexual;
And then they came for the atheists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an atheist;
And then they came for the fat people,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a fat person;
And then… they came for me…”
Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled May 5, 2024Flash forward to 2094, when people who are ten now will be like "the internet was different back then! We were all friendlier... there were hardly ever trolls... Now it's all gone to shit."
- Untitled May 4, 2024This is either incredible stupidity or incredible dishonesty from the cops, and I honestly can't tell which.
- Untitled May 2, 2024I love that Caterpillar boots were among the returned items, and in this photo an Amazon worker took, you can clearly see the "CAT" logo near the cat. Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away wapo.st/3JJ3vqT
- Untitled May 1, 2024A new cartoon for May Day! This has been an incredible year for unions in the USA - may next year be even better. Unions Have Always Done The Impossible! #PoliCartoon #Union #LaborDay2024 #MayDay2024 #May1st #UBI #LivingWage
- Untitled April 30, 2024People on reddit are fighting about a cartoon I did about why the US health care system sucks and I am enjoying this too too much. https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1ch0l0r/why_us_health_care_is_such_a_terrible_system/?sort=old
- Untitled April 30, 2024I just posted a new cartoon! It's patreon supporters only for now, but in a week or so I'll make it public. :-) https://www.patreon.com/posts/deus-ex-machina-103359912?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
- Untitled May 5, 2024
You’re perfectly OK with a genocidal reference but you’ve got a problem with “thumb in the eye?” That’s more than a bit odd.
In any case, as PG correctly pointed out, one can always say “this policy is one we disapprove of.” What makes such a statement a slap in the face or a thumb in the eye is often the context in which it is stated.
Saying “I hate the BSA” (me, on numerous occasions, in various locations) is not a thumb in the eye.
Saying “I disapprove of the BSA” at a BSA meeting where I am the invited guest is a thumb in the eye.
Similarly, saying “I disapprove of the BSA’s policy on homosexuals” in the context of a BSA badge is a thumb in the eye.
PG:
– 501(c)(3) status for the national and local councils. This is huge; it means that for every dollar given to the BSA, up to 35 cents is lost in tax revenue. The government has revoked 501(c)(3) status in the past for entities that violated anti-discrimination law, most notably for Bob Jones University due to its racial policies.
Boy Scouts of America, et. al. vs. Dale established that the BSA does not violate anti-discrimination law.
Furthermore: money that people earn belongs to them, not to the government. Money that people give to the BSA is their money, not the government’s money. Government assistance is money given by the government to an entity after it has first taken it from people. Money that the government never had in the first place can’t be counted as money that the feds are giving to the BSA. To say otherwise seems to me to adopt the attitude that the money you make properly belongs to the government and that what you have left after taxes is that the government has deigned to let you keep.
– jamborees and other events that take place on federal property, including military bases that have to be readied at a cost of $7 million for such events.
There’s a quid pro quo for that. It provides training to military personnel that would otherwise cost money for them to set up. I should also note that the BSA is moving the National Jamboree from Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia to Goshen Scout Reservation, which is BSA-owned land.
– Boy Scouts license plates, with the monies going to support the Boy Scouts.
Here in Illinois, at least, that’s a pass-through. The state takes it’s usual fee for the plates, and only an extra charge is given to the BSA. There’s no loss to the state, other than what labor might be involved in tracking the money and cutting the check.
– federal law that requires schools receiving any federal funding (thus going beyond just public schools) to permit Boy Scouts to meet.
What that law does is to put the BSA on equal footing with any other youth eductional organization. It does not give them any privileges over and above what other organizations get. It simply prevents school districts from discriminating against either the BSA or any other youth organizations on the basis of their membership policies. BSA units must still pay any fees or other costs that are assessed to anyone else.
– local support for the Boy Scouts, including subsidized use of government-owned property. One of the more famous cases dealing with this is in Philadelphia, where the fair market rent for the building they were getting for $1 a year was $200,000 a year.
But they don’t get that deal any more. That’s an example of what the BSA used to get, not what it currently gets.
Regarding the UU’s materials for their award; remember that kids in the GSUSA, Camp Fire Girls and American Heritage Girls also earn these awards. Do the UUs create different sets of materials for each group? I know that in looking at the materials for my denomination’s award (God and Country) they are not BSA specific. If the UUs are handing out materials that condemn the BSA to members of groups other than the BSA it’s even more a thumb in the eye.
B. Adu:
Are you talking about pre- or post-incident? Most of the incidents that come to my mind (and that I’ve heard others relate) have all occurred on trips that would not have been subject to the BMI policy; those that did occur on such trips occurred on non-National High Adventure trips, where this policy did not extend to until now.
They have. It’s an ongoing process. The form you’re looking at looks a lot different now (and is a lot more extensive) than when I first started in Scouting, and that’s due to experience from review of various incidents that have occurred through the years.
They do bear that in mind. However, surviving spouses and parents and their lawyers have historically taken a different viewpoint. So have juries presented with grieving relatives and pictures of children in what look and sound like pretty routine situations to Scouters and people who spend a lot of time outdoors but incredibly dangerous and risky to urban and suburban people who wouldn’t sleep in a sleeping bag in their back yards on a bet and who proudly tell people like me “My idea of roughing it is room service”. People who can’t even conceive of going somewhere where you have to think about things like how to store food outdoors to reduce the risk of bears coming into your campsite at night.
If the BSA didn’t have tax exempt status, there are three other things that would happen in combination:
-the BSA would get the donations anyway, and the government would get its taxes;
-other exempt organizations would get the donations, and the government would get no taxes; or
-people would not donate.
Assuming you take the math-happy position that there is little functional difference between a lost benefit and a cost, #1 certainly seems like the choice of giving the BSA exempt status is costing the government money, and increasing the BSA’s take. that is a benefit.
#2 demonstrates the reality that the government gives benefits which are also INDIRECT, like providing incentives for people to give. By allowing BSA to be tax exempt, the government has granted others an added incentive to give to BSA in particular, as opposed to other non-tax-exempt organizations. (Don’t think this incentive is worth anything? Let’s drop it, then, for the BSA.)
#3 also addresses the incentives of tax-exempt status as well. hidden in #3 is the fact that money donated to the BSA is pretty much forever out of the tax loop. 501c3s don’t pay sales tax, they sometimes don’t pay property tax, etc. OTOH money which is maintained by the individuals is taxable now, and probably in the future. So if people donate to the BSA, it is a BSA benefit and a government cost.
My understanding is that the UUA material the BSA disapproves of is (a) separate from the actual manual and (b) consists of the UUA stating it is opposed to discrimination on religious views and sexual orientation but leaving it to the individual to reconcile this with the BSA views (the UUA is big on the individual coming to decisions not just accepting the organizations views). The UUA program consists of three awards. One for young children (cubs/brownies age) which never contained any of the controversial material but still had its recognition removed by the BSA. The others consist of one for Girl Scouts and one for Boy Scouts. UUA Scouting info.
I do find it disturbing that the BSA has now recognized an UU award that is officially not recognized by the Unitarian Universalist Association but is put out by a different organization..
No, it established that “applying New Jersey’s public accommodations law in this way [requiring the BSA to retain a homosexual member] violates the Boy Scouts’ First Amendment right of expressive association.” That’s what’s in Rehnquist’s opinion, not that the BSA is somehow in compliance with NJ’s anti-discrimination law.
I suspect we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether there’s such a thing as a citizen’s tax obligations. By either living in the U.S. or retaining U.S. citizenship, I agree to abide by U.S. tax law, and if I know I have an income in the top bracket, then for every dollar I earn, about a third is pre-marked for the government. As soon as I earn the money, a third is owed, and it is “money the government had in the first place” in the same way that money I spend on my credit card is money the credit card company still has, just now in the form of my debt to them. Tax obligations are a debt owed to the government (and like credit card debt, money owed for income taxes often is dischargeable in bankruptcy).
Yes, due to litigation, not because they feel self-conscious about claiming to be a private expressive assocation while also grabbing government benefits.
Yes, but specialized license plates aren’t available to every group. The state has to approve your application and be willing to administer the process of selling the plates, collecting the extra fees and passing them on to the group. The state won’t do that for everyone — heck, in Florida they took away a guy’s “ATHEIST” license ID, which doesn’t even involve the state’s producing a specialty plate or giving extra fees to a particular organization.
There very clearly are some messages that conservative legislatures will approve, such as “choose life,” and will send the money along to conservative organizations, and others that won’t be approved. The Boy Scouts get a license plate with fees to benefit their organization; has any state approved a plate to benefit a gay rights or atheist organization?
Wrong. The law specifically mentions the BSA and is particular to “patriotic” youth organizations. If I run an organization that violates a school’s anti-discrimination policy — e.g., I run a club for the study of South Asian history that forbids Muslims to join — the school can exclude me. You know how some conservatives claim that adding sexual orientation to anti-discrimination law, or allowing people to marry without regard to sex, is giving “special rights” to homosexuals? To me, it’s pretty clear that a group is getting a “special right” when it is specifically named in the legislation. (Whereas every anti-discrimination law I’ve seen forbids discriminating against straights for being straight just as much as it forbids discriminating against gays for being gay, and I still haven’t seen a marriage law that allows only same-sex marriage.)
The BSA is litigating to keep that deal. They claim that they’re being punished for their “expressive” activity of discriminating against homosexuals and thus not being given $199,999.00 worth of building space annually is a violation of their First Amendment rights.
Going back to the original discussion of the Scouts’ BMI-determined measure of fitness, I think there can be a level of obesity severe enough to affect that, for example if belly fat causes extra weight to press on the chest wall and rib cage and thus impedes lung function.
However, this is still a lousy headline: “Survey Finds Link Between Obesity and Flu Severity.” Where is the disaggregating of income, education and English speaking (all important to accessing medical care) from obesity?
Well, and since the Religion in Life badge involves learning about the teachings of the associated church, it does not seem unreasonable for the church to emphasize one of the ways in which their principles differ from the BSA.
I mean, you have to learn about and understand what the church teaches, and this is one of the things they teach.
Which I think has something to do with why they didn’t take the path PG suggests and just separate utterly from the program. Instead, they said, in part, “Here’s what we think,” and, “If you think that too, you might have trouble with some of the BSA’s teachings.”
I am also very concerned about the conflict with Wiccans that ERP mentioned. Of course, I’d need to do more research on how that whole thing has developed.
—Myca
This is something I sometimes forget too, so I don’t want to sound uppity in saying this, but: people don’t like to be called “homophobic and discriminatory” even if you and I consider that an accurate description.
To a liberal, “the homophobic and discriminatory attitudes of the national leadership of the Boy Scouts of America” may sound just like “the BSA’s policy toward non-heterosexuals and atheists does not comport with the UU teaching of tolerance and equality.”
But I can assure you from much experience with conservatives that they do not consider the two to be the same. They see a big difference between my saying, “I disagree with you about how to treat people with different sexual orientation” and my saying, “You have a homophobic, bigoted attitude,” even if they mean the same thing to me because I consider treating people different based on orientation to be homophobic bigotry.
I know it seems bizarre for someone simultaneously to think there is something wrong with being homosexual, and to be offended when he’s labelled with a term for people who think there’s something wrong with being homosexual. But it’s how it is, and if you don’t take the boycott posture — if you claim to want to remain in dialogue with people who disagree with you — then it is Not Constructive (if “thumb in the eye” is too harsh a metaphor) to keep telling them their attitude is “homophobic and discriminatory” and to expect them to be OK with being called that.
You can engage with people or you can (accurately) name-call them, but you can’t do both. Since I like to reserve my right to tell harsh truths, I go for disengagement. If the UUs want to engage, they’re going to have to learn to be more polite in describing attitudes that diverge from their own.
PG,
That is well put.
If I “disagree” with you and you “disagree” with me, then we may not end up meeting in the middle–but we might. Or I might end up adopting your position, or you mine. OTOH, if you label my position with certain words, it can show that you would never be willing to adopt my position, in whole or in part.
Say I’m talking with someone who “disagrees with my position” on an issue. Perhaps they’ll convince me, perhaps not; I’ve had people change my mind all the time. But in exchange for opening my mind to the possibility of adopting their position, I generally expect their mind to be open to the possibility of adopting my position.
If they label my position in a manner that makes it clear that they would rather be burned at the stake than adopt my position, then there’s not much point in talking to them.
No, I’ve got that, and I agree with your post, pretty much down the line.
That language wasn’t from something written specifically to be included with the badge materials, though, but was reprinted from a 1992 UUA General Assembly resolution … and, after reaching a compromise with the BSA, was removed. Probably it shouldn’t have been included in the first place in that form, though I do think that the UUA had and has an ethical obligation to include something.
The only material the UUA includes with the badge study curriculum now that makes reference to LGBT discrimination is the pamphlet “In Support of All People,” and the only place this pamphlet even mentions scouting is in the, “Questions To Consider,” section, which reads:
This seems pretty low-key, as such things go.
—Myca
It’s probably a silly thing to get involved in a thread with over 100 comments that has strayed a bit from the original BMI discussion, but I think there is an aspect of the BSA policy that is being overlooked. I have no doubt that there was a deep, underlying institutionalized stigmatization of fat people that consciously or not led to this policy, but the criticism of that policy has focused on the risk of injury to the individual caused by his high BMI compared to other individuals with other mitigating health risks.
Ron touched on it above, but the BSA also has to consider the risk factors to group once an injury has occurred. Given an equal probability of injury to all participants as a starting point, does an injured person with high BMI pose a higher risk to the group than a diabetic with an average BMI? If an overweight person falls out of a canoe, does his weight pose an avoidable risk to those group members left to pull him back out? I think that that is a perfectly reasonable position to take, that given an injury, heavy people are more likely to cause injury to the group than not-heavy people. Thus the risk factor of a high BMI is not what risk high BMI has to the health or safety of the individual, but the risk factor to other members of the group.
That said, the policy would be less discriminatory on its face if there was an upper weight limit, period, rather than an upper limit of a height/weight ratio, because a 350 lb man with a broken leg is still 350lbs that needs to be carried down a mountain, regardless of how tall he is.
The UUA took a pretty fierce attitude against the BSA’s initial objections to the original version of the UU Religion in Life material that included the statements about BSA national leadership being homophobic:
After the compromise ran into trouble with the inclusion of pamphlets that the BSA claimed it had not approved, the UUA president at the time also said,
Neither of these statements lives up to good faith engagement with the BSA. The BSA has a Memorandum of Mutual Support with the Unitarian Universalist Scouters Organization, which serves UU families but is not under the control of the UUA, and the UUSO has a Religion in Life program that has been approved to dispense badges that can be worn on a Boy Scout uniform.
While I think that the BSA has dug in its heels somewhat by refusing to approve the “In Support of All People” pamphlet, I can see how they’d worry that the pamphlet may create a false impression by focusing on asking questions rather than providing facts. For example, the “Imagine that you invite a friend to join the Scouts, and he tells you that he’s not sure he would be welcome because his mother is a lesbian” easily gives a child the impression that the BSA bars members based on their parents’ sexual orientation, which I never have heard to be the case.
Well, but difficulties moving injured people corellate to their size and weight, not their BMI or fatness. Big injured people are hard to move, and that goes for a supremely fit large person who broke their leg/had a seizure as much as for anyone whose BMI is deemed innapropriate.
It’s not a good faith effort to include UUs in a program if the fact that UU religion is very supportive of, among other things, people of all sexual orietations and atheists, is going to be problematic. From my perspective, it seems like it would be better for BSA to refuse the award and have that be one of the issues UU scouts and their families would have to consider, but I can see it both ways. Especially since there’s a lot of variation among congregations.
The Wiccan thing could be an issue too. There are a lot of pagan UUs.
No. Heavy people pose the risk, not fat people.
To use an extreme example, my (skinny, strong) 6’6″ relative weighs a buttload, is so large that he is almost impossible for me to carry, and would generally be a hellish person to have to evacuate from somewhere. He’s not fat, though.
OTOH, my (short, fat) friend is 5’1″, and weighs about 145, I think. If I had to carry her weight or pull her back into a raft one handed, or carry her a ways, I could do so.
between the two, I’d rather be responsible for evacuating her than him.
(actually, it’s sort of an interesting dynamic. Most people are incapable of carrying their own weight very far. You need to get a ways under your own weight before you can carry someone any serious distance, unless you are specially trained. When you have small groups in remote areas, it’s the more-poundage people who are at the highest risk, all else being equal; they can’t be easily carried out.)
Another 2 cents worth:
Claims of undue discrimination are tough. It is rare that any policy will function as a perfect remedy to a problem; the policy will almost always apply in some contexts it was not designed for, and fail to apply to some contexts that should arguably have been covered. Whether you think a policy is unduly discriminatory, therefore, does not depend on whether you think the policy is a perfect remedy for a problem; it depends on how close a fit you require. If the fit between some legitimate problem and the proposed remedy is poor, the more likely it appears that the problem was merely a pretext being used to mask undue discrimination.
In this case, most people seem to acknowledge that the BSA has a legitimate interest in monitoring the health of people in its programs. The disagreement arises regarding the policy the BSA has chosen to protect its interest. Given the BSA’s other issues with discrimination, I sense people are disinclined to extend to the BSA much benefit of the doubt about the merits of the BSA’s proposed policy. But it looks like a judgment call to me.
But regarding the BSA’s “special status” in law:
This reflects my view as well. The government can only discriminate on the basis of legitimate governmental purposes. Private organizations can discriminate on nearly any basis they like. But beyond a certain point, government’s “entanglement” turns private discrimination into government-discrimination-by-proxy.
As I’ve previously discussed, I support the freedom of association, and I’m not wild about the Bob Jones precedent. If BSA were truly a private organization like the Klan, then I wouldn’t have any problem with it claiming absolute right to control its membership. But the fact that the BSA has been sucking at the public’s teat for so long really undermines the claim that it’s just another private organization. And the fact that it continues to enjoy privileged status at law completely destroys any remaining pretense.
The law RonF and I were talking about is in the Code at 20 U.S.C. § 7905, and actually was passed and is cited as the “Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act.” It specifically and solely benefits “any group officially affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, or any other youth group listed in title 36 (as a patriotic society).”
The Boy Scouts excluding homosexuals and atheists? They have a statutory right to stomp on the school’s anti-discrimination policy. My crazy uncle wanting to run a South Asian club that only allows Hindus, because he considers Islam and Christianity to be foreign parasites on Mother India? The school can keep him out.
It would be kind of awesome if the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association (one of the organizations listed in Title 36) started having official affiliates in schools that forbade white people from being members or leaders, just to make a point about having discriminatory organizations operating in our public schools. Sadly they probably aren’t counted as a “patriotic society,” and anyway are Serious about preserving Douglass’s memory.
On the contrary, I think that you may be reading ‘he’s not sure he would be welcome’ to mean, ‘he’s not sure the BSA would welcome him as a member,’ where I read it to mean ‘he’s not sure he would be made to feel welcome to an organization that discriminates against people like his mother.’
I think that it is both true that he would be accepted as a member, and not unreasonable to be concerned about being made to feel like an outsider due to the discrimination of the organization.
Either reading of the phrase seems reasonable to me, so absent any compelling reason not to, I choose to accept the meaning that does not involve assuming that they’re saying untrue things.
—Myca
The BSA doesn’t bar members on the grounds of their parent’s sexual orientation or atheism; however, parents who are gay/lesbian/atheist can’t join the troop as adult leaders (though many of them probably do and just hide what they are). And atheist parents probably can’t in good spirit sign their kid’s application because of the Declaration of Religious Principles which is part of the application and which denigrates non-theists. The Wiccan religious program is the Hart and Crescent for those interested.
As far as weight, perhaps a test would be whether a group going on the outing can carry the heaviest member for a certain distance in a certain time given the materials they will have available on the trip. This is in addition to a doctor signing off on the physical preparedness of all members for the trip.
I just have to comment on this little bit of stupidity:
Given an equal probability of injury to all participants as a starting point, does an injured person with high BMI pose a higher risk to the group than a diabetic with an average BMI? If an overweight person falls out of a canoe, does his weight pose an avoidable risk to those group members left to pull him back out?
Well, the hypothetical monkies that fly out of my ass on the weekend to write Shakespeare could always levitate him.
But in my experience, when I was in Scouting I was 5’10” and 120lbs dripping wet. My weight, positioned on the edge of an otherwise unsupported wide-bottom canoe, could easily swamp it. And in fact, we had a lot of practice doing just this as part of our safety training. A person of any size will have a difficult time getting into a free-floating canoe without tipping it.
So once a person is out, they are out. And unless there is an overriding reason for them to get out of the water right now, you give them a tow to the nearest bank where they can board safely and properly. If in whitewater, (which is where an accident is most likely to happen) the safest bet for them is to either grab onto the stern, or ride it out feet first.
If the person is injured, then it’s unwise to yank them out of the water without assessing spinal injury and support, which requires at least three people. Have someone jump in to keep the airway open, and tow them to shore where you can immobilize the injury before removing them from the water.
Of course, there are always exceptional cases involving sea bass with laser beams, but those are exceptional cases and should be handled as such.
And in fact, the heroic task of dragging the injured person out of the wilderness hasn’t been standard operating procedure since I left Scouting 20 years ago. When I went to the Maine high adventure base, the guides had radio contact facilitated by a network of VHF repeaters, and a 12-hour check-in schedule. Even in the unenlightened days of Reaganomics they pounded into us the rule that you move an injured person as little as possible.
…I have never pulled someone into a canoe, no matter their weight. I’ve coached them into pulling themselves in, seeing as my weight on the same side as theirs would be very, very bad for the balance of the canoe. I don’t see this as a great example. 1) it sounds like the people in your example are hurt by thoughtlessness, not weight, and 2) the person in this scenario should probably be asked if he can pull himself back into a canoe, rather than “what is your weight?”)
Maybe I have a special experience here, other folks who canoe more than me? But this doesn’t seem like a great argument to me, as long as the person has met weight requirements for the boat to begin with.
(CBrachyrhynchos got to this first! And yes, my first thought was exactly that, from my crew days, where such an action would swamp the boat. You can do it in a canoe sometimes, if you have some experience and you’re in a safe environment. Plus, it’s a lot easier when someone else is around and can help balance the canoe.)
(And hey, don’t disparage the monkeys. Those monkeys have totally saved my ass! They’re also great at finishing my research paper while I sit here reading Alas! and thinking about my next hike in a few weeks.)
I’m not convinced by this argument, mostly because rule one of the first aid training I’ve done is “don’t put myself at risk of injury”. You give me a 350 lb man who can’t walk, and I’ll find a way to work with the situation that isn’t going to endanger me or the people around me.
Seems to me that the boyscouts is an institution designed to accomodate the early indoctrination practices on children by parents who refuse to embrace diversity. Curious as to what your reaction is to another early indocrtrination practice by parents who in 2005 boycotted the Amercian Girl Dolls because the parents disapproved of the company’s choice to embrace diversity by way of temporarily affiliating themselves with Girl’s Inc., who embrace prochoice and lesbianism & yes the fat kid too.