“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…”
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This is awful, and I can only imagine how painful it must be to be excluded from an organization that it sounds like these folks really were really committed to … but beyond saying “I told you so,” which isn’t really useful, I think it’s worth saying that acceptance of discrimination leads to acceptance of more discrimination.
It’s going to be really rare, I think, to encounter an organization that’s okay with excluding gay people, black people, women, atheists, etc. but is really scrupulously inclusive when it comes to other groups.
—Myca
Another reason I’m glad I had a girl…Girl Scouts of America is far more inclusive than BSA is.
I think it’s worth saying that acceptance of discrimination leads to acceptance of more discrimination.
Yes, this.
Your “first they came for” framing of the boy scout issue is excellent. We wrote about this recently on Body Impolitic but I really like how briefly and effectively you put it.
Given its various problems with discrimination, the BSA is probably a generation away from becoming culturally irrelevant. Is there some alternative to the BSA? If not, maybe people could form one?
I can’t help but think of this article, and wonder about the future of the Boy Scouts…
Campfire is a good alternative for a lot of people. The BSA decided Unitarian Universalism wasn’t a real religion, so kids that did UU things couldn’t earn a badge for religious service. The BSA was taken over by the LDS, and all LDS boys are required to join, so its probably better to see it as an extension of LDS.
I’m not sure that you can link atheism (a belief) or sexual orientation (whom a person loves) in the same category as a health issue. The Boy Scouts aren’t banishing fat people. They have decided that at a certain point of being overweight, going on adventure hikes, which stress the body, far from health care providers is too risky. You can argue that point. You could provide evidence that being overweight isn’t risky or that there are people who have other kinds of health issues who are not excluded from these particular trips and that would be valid. But invoking prejudice (which I’m against) doesn’t address the health issues. Does an organization have the right to insist that people have clearance of health risks before going on one of their physically demanding excursions? Maybe not. Maybe so. What do you think?
So, Lillian, I know several thin people with health disorders that you wouldn’t guess at by looking at them.
Maybe if your issue is that you don’t want people to drop dead, you could ask for medical certification. Then the doctors could say “this fat person is about to drop dead” and “this one isn’t” and “this thin person is REALLY ABOUT TO CROAK RIGHT NOW, oh look they’re dead on my floor” and “this one isn’t.”
Actually, as far as I know, they already do this. The girl scouts do, at any rate. So now the boy scouts are saying they know better which people are medically able to hike — based on nothing other than a single number — than their own fucking doctors do.
Fat is not an acceptable proxy for health. And even if it were, excluding fat people without also excluding anyone else who is even minimally as unhealthy as the fat person is bigotry.
Besides, if we’re going with bad weight-as-proxy stuff, then people who are severely underweight do worse than people who are severely over. So if there’s no corresponding policy to get rid of everyone too skinny…
…well I could go on and on about all the ways in which this bigoted ass policy is bigoted, but then I’d be wasting my time.
Well, the problem with this issue about fatness in relation to health risk/liability on boy scout activities is that it opens a can of worms in regards to discriminating against the disabled.
It is one think to say, look this activity requires this amount of strength,endurance, etc. and will be this far away from medical care. Sign this form (everyone) that says you understand the risks and will use your best judgment when deciding to participate (and not hold us liable, etc.)
It is another thing to start having arbitrary requirements. I am deaf blind. I have done rock climbing, cycling, hiking, etc. but yet I was not allowed to ride a Ferris wheel at an amusement park. There is no risk to me to ride a Ferris Wheel, yet perhaps some other person with Vertigo or something that you can’t even see might be at risk. But the park people are making arbitrary decisions based on nothing that is factual. A person one pound above the weight maximum can be healthier (better BP, cholesteral, endurance level, etc.) than a person one pound below it and the Boy Scouts are never going to know that the person they include has much greater risk of injury.
Their responsibility is to explain the extent of the activity’s risks, not make arbitrary decisions based on factors that are often irrelevant to exclude people. The fat people will likely be followed by the down syndrome kid, the blind dad, the kid with the artificial arm, etc.
Really?
Fuck those fucking fucks.
—Myca
A lot of UUs I know are involved in either Spiral Scouts (more Pagan/earth religion based) or Earth Scouts (more secular environmentalists). Both are co-ed and are more or less established in different areas of the country. Both involve camping, community building, leadership, survival/environmental conservation training, etc.
So there are alternatives, but unfortunately they are not as well established and supported as BSA.
Also, I’m jealous of those with girls (I have two boys) because the Girl Scouts seem pretty ok as far as inclusiveness goes.
My husband was really into the Boy Scouts when he was younger, and almost made it to Eagle (his troop pretty much disbanded before he could though). Being a pagan, I was not comfortable with our eventual sons joining BSA, though he was still fighting for it. Between this and this, he’s now decided he wants nothing else to do with BSA. Our sons will not be Boy Scouts (our daughters won’t be Girl Scouts either as I think the Girl Scout program sexist and underdeveloped).
“our daughters won’t be Girl Scouts either as I think the Girl Scout program sexist and underdeveloped”
Do you have any information backing this up? (Not that you aren’t entitled to the opinion; I just don’t know what it’s based on.) Everything I’ve ever heard has been very positive.
Yep, I have a boy who was a cub scout and he had to have a medical form before he could go to camp. There’s no need to second guess the fat kid’s doctor, none whatsoever. My boy is rather letting scouts slide and I’m not pushing.
We tried Campfire, but it just isn’t as established around here, and the group only had girls in it; and they wanted to do all sorts of fine motor stuff he just wasn’t good at. So that went by the wayside too. Sigh.
Everything I’ve ever heard has been very positive.
My own experience in Girl Scouts was horrible, though I’m sure it’s not fair to extrapolate from one troop 20 years ago to the program as a whole. My mom and I were ostracized and treated like freaks for wanting to do stuff like camping. It was incredibly clique-ish, and there was no intervention from the adults to address the girls from more well-off families treating the girls from the poorer (and browner) families like shit. I was never particularly popular in school, but almost all the worst stuff that happened to me (including several “Christ-killer” incidents) happened in Girl Scouts.
My brother was in Cub Scouts, though he didn’t continue on with it, and it always seemed like a lot more fun.
I’ve heard very good things about the Spiral Scouts, though I have no first hand knowledge.
The whole Boy Scout thing is very upsetting for my family … my dad and his best friend were both Eagle Scouts, and the Boy Scout camp at Silver Lake has a lake nearby named after his friend. Unfortunately, that was another era. My dad’s friend is gay, and wouldn’t be welcome in the scouts these days. It’s sad.
—Myca
@Lillian – a few years ago, you might have seen a big fat woman (me) and her small, skinny mother on a three-day hike, carrying large packs. Both were quite tired. What you don’t see is that my mother was too physically weak to carry her 15kg pack for more than an hour, so I took her tent, sleeping bag, water, stove and first aid kit for all three days, bringing my pack to 25kg and hers to 5kg. These were manageable weights for both of us. And yet, I’d be the one barred from volunteering. Health and weight are not often correlated – and there’s no reason why the Boy Scouts couldn’t have a health check rather than discriminating on appearance.
I’m sorry, but I call Godwin. The BSA being prejudiced against fat people is bad, but it’s not very similar to genocide. I really dislike people quoting Niemoller in such a relatively trivial context. Yes, it’s true that prejudice against “other” people ultimately affects everybody, but really, not being able to join in scouting activities is hardly comparable to being sent to death camps.
Lillian,
Isn’t the onus of proof on the prosecution?
Well, look. How’s a bigger person gonna fit into the small-sized flak jacket, anyway? They’d have to buy a whole bunch of medium and larges and they spent all that money on pellet guns.
I totally agree and I’m surprised no-one else has said something similar.
As I read this, it was a real WTF? moment.
Nothing’s wrong with pointing out a slippery slope; nothing’s wrong with pointing out the inexorable rightwards progression of BSA. But the comparison chosen was a very poor one.
A person one pound above the weight maximum can be healthier (better BP, cholesteral, endurance level, etc.) than a person one pound below it
With few exceptions, a person 50 pounds above the weight maximum would be healthier and more capable than a person 50 pounds below the weight maximum (on average, it’s healthier to be fat than to be extremely thin). A lot of people can be way, way over the cutoff for “obesity” and be as fit as the average thin person – especially if they’re physically active. BMI may be a risk factor for certain health problems on a population basis, but an individual’s BMI doesn’t tell you anything about their level of fitness. As someone who spends a lot of time walking around a big city, I can say that people who appear to be up to 100 pounds “overweight” don’t even predictably walk more slowly than average.
There’s no guaranteed disability, no guaranteed health problems, and no guaranteed lack of physical resiliency. A lot of fat people are quite fit – and, as someone pointed out, we’re great at lifting and carrying the heavy stuff. Who wouldn’t want big, strong people along on a camping trip?
The health thing is a red herring. It’s pure discrimination. They probably don’t want fat role models for the boys – then the kids might think that being fat is a normal build that some people happen to have, rather than a disgusting and shameful aberration.
If fat people agree this is all trivial, will that put an end to fat phobia? If so, I say, it’s all really, really, trivial.
Eh, the, “first they came for the …,” setup didn’t bother me.
On the other hand, I’m not Jewish, so maybe I’m being insensitive.
On the third hand, Mandolin is, so I feel like I ought to give her take on it more weight.
I guess sort of my gut reaction is that if we only use Niemoller’s quote in situations that are comparable to The Holocaust, it loses too much of it’s utility, and it’s very useful to have a compelling and poetic way to say, “prejudice leads to prejudice, and you can’t just ignore it when it affects other people, because it will eventually affect you too.”
—Myca
I’m inclined to think that Mandolin just didn’t really consider this in depth, because it seems sort of “un-Mandolin”, to invent an adjective.
I say this not because she’s Jewish (so am I, and in any case being Jewish doesn’t mean a thing about one’s personality, political leanings, or very much else) but rather because she has written on the exact issue of hyperbolic language:
https://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/05/23/q-since-when-is-being-criticized-like-having-your-limbs-blown-off-by-a-landmine-a-since-that-criticism-came-from-someone-with-less-privilege-than-you/
and
https://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2008/04/26/q-when-is-criticism-like-wilding-a-never-never-never/
I assume there are more, though those were the only two that I could easily remember and which popped into my head as soon as i read this.
Heck, I could picture Mandolin herself writing the “since when is being denied membership in the Boy Scouts like being sent to the Auschwitz gas chambers?” post, so I’m quite inclined to give her the “oops!” benefit of the doubt while maintaining that I still don’t like the post.
What’s wrong with the scouts not letting atheists in? It is a religious organisation, and surely voluntary religious organisations should be allowed to exclude people who don’t share the organisation’s beliefs? There doesn’t strike me as being anything wrong with this. I can see how the non religious would prefer that scouting wasn’t relgious, but it is. And given that is it I can’t see what’s wrong with them excluding the non-religious.
OK, James, and as you say they’re a religious group, so is it a problem that they exclude gays, too? Or does that cross a line for you? Why or why not, and show your work about how atheists deserve less consideration than homosexuals.
They boyscouts *can* do whatever they want. But given their apparent propensities toward bigotry, it’s not surprising to me (and shouldn’t be surprising to the fat man in the article, however personally injured he is, for which I do feel sympathy) that their bigotry will soon find a new target.
Totally. I just feel like members of the in-group probably ought not be chastised by members of the out-group for saying things that might be offensive to the in-group.
Like, it’s not really my place to police the language of POCs, even if I find it uncool that they’re using the n-word. Something kind of like that is more what I mean.
—Myca
No, gay and fat crosses the line.
As for atheists, scouting’s a movement encouraging the personal development of young people. That’s always included their spiritual development, and the belief in a higher power. Excluding atheists is obviously different from excluding the gay or the fat. It’s a slander on fat people to call them unhealthy or a slander on gay people to say they’re not appropriate around children; but it’s not a slander on atheists to accuse them of not believing in god. It’s just factually correct. Atheists disagree with the movement’s goals – any honest atheists would agree with this – it’s not ‘bigoted’ to point this out, or exclude people who don’t want to promote the movement’s goals.
At one extreme we’d all (presumably) think it’s okay to exclude atheists from bible discussion groups. Scouting about religious development too, albeit to a lesser degree. I can’t see why the same rules don’t apply.
I really wish the Boy Scouts were better because they were so much cooler than the Girl Scouts– they went camping, they made Cubmobiles, they set things on fire, while my Junior group watched a video and then the girls swore at me and pushed me off the playground equipment. Boy Scouts went on trips! Dad was a Boy Scout, and so they got to do cool Dad things.
My brother’s a third-generation Eagle Scout. I wish the BSA were better because then I could feel good about a hypothetical fourth-gen nephew.
Man, my girl scout troop was awesome. We went camping, learned how to use a dark room, did gun safety, and got taught the facts of life by a visitor from Planned Parenthood. But I grew up in a fairly liberal town.
Concerning atheists participating in groups with a religious background – after high school I did a year of volunteer service with a Christian organization. At that time I still was a Christian, but some people in my orientation group weren’t (we had a few atheists/agnostics and one Buddhist). From my perspective that worked pretty well – we were supposed to be open to the religious background of this particular organization and to participate in information sessions about it, but although there were a few religious ceremonies (such as foot washing, or prayer before meals) we had the choice to opt out of it – in fact, some people did and there were no negative consequences for them, they were just as much part of the group as everyone else.
So why is it always Gentiles who yell “Godwin!” on posts like this that are written by Jewish people? And why is that okay? Shouldn’t it be Jewish people (especially fat ones, in this case) who decide if such an analogy is too much?
My fat Jewish ass doesn’t think so. Because my fat Jewish ass knows that violent uprisings against Jews (of which there have been multiple, not just in the last century) didn’t come out of nowhere. Scapegoating happened, and escalated over a period of decades, long before there was violence. Jewish people in Europe were portrayed in the media in a manner eerily similar to how fat people are today, as the Greedy People Whose Fault Everything Is And Aren’t They Gross And Disgusting Too, as more and more activities enjoyed by “regular” people got closed off to them.
And you’d better believe that many Jews who could “pass” for Gentile chose to change their names and join churches and do so in order to avoid anti-Jewish harassment and discrimination, so don’t give me the “fat people can do something about their condition but Jews can’t” line of BS, either. Whether “passing” is physically possible for some members of a group should never, ever be the factor that decides whether discrimination is acceptable.
(Godwin himself wasn’t Jewish, AFAIK, and I don’t remember even him favoring redlining every single comparison to Nazism, just not whipping it out at every possible opportunity.)
I can understand needing people (ALL people) who take these trips to be cleared by their doctors for them. I do NOT understand overruling said doctors on the ludicrous grounds that someone who’s “overweight” is more likely to need medical attention than someone who is not. It’s pure spite.
Why?
(I mean, it’s not generally clear to me why an atheist would want to join a bible study group, but I see no reason why we should be specifically excluded from them…)
“not generally clear to me why an atheist would want to join a bible study group”
The bible’s interesting.
To be fair, at least some of the objections are coming from Jews.
That said, my fat Jewish ass agrees with Myca, as does Ampersand’s. And I think our opinion should be treated as valid, and not ill-considered or somehow self-hating (i.e. bigoted against ourselves). The poem is not only used to comment on the Holocaust.
(As an aside, I think the Godwin law is… only relevant when the comparison comes out of nowhere. Commenting on the scary ass militant practices of the boy scouts, and how that seems disturbingly similar to past scary ass militarization of youth groups, shouldn’t be considered a meany pants conversation ender. Saying “you believe Macs are better than PCs because you’re a Nazi” should be. Note that this post does not compare boy scout exclusion to the holocaust; it compares tolerating bigotry and then being surprised when you’re subject to it to… tolerating bigotry and then being surprised when you’re subject to it. This is at least one of the accepted American cultural uses of this poem.)
The BSA being prejudiced against fat people is bad, but it’s not very similar to genocide.
I see your point, but remember, the Nazis didn’t wake up one day and say, “Let’s start the genocide now.” First they prepared their countries to accept genocide by scapegoating their victims and closing more and more activities to them. Probably including the boy scouts, if they existed in Nazi Germany. This, of course, meant that fewer non-Jewish people had any contact with Jewish (or Gypsy, etc) people in their everyday life and so made it easier for the Nazis to portray them as the abstract symbol of evil. Analogously, though less severely, the BSA’s not allowing fat people in their organization will make fat people more othered to BSA members and their parents, easier to portray as just lazy slobs who bring their problems on themselves.
So while I’m not think the BSA’s prejudice is part of an organized attempt to isolate fat people and leading to an organized genocide of people over a certain BMI or even legally enforced weight loss attempts, it is on the same continuum and it isn’t crazy or minimizing to make the comparison. IMHO anyway.
And does anyone else find it ironic that fat people aren’t allowed to go out and do physical activity, the sort that might lead to weight loss or at least muscle gain and better health? If fat is a health issue shouldn’t overweight but healthy kids in particular be encouraged to go out there and have fun while doing some physical activity? Just asking.
mandolin, my problem is that, by and large, Girl Scouts sell cookies and do crafts, Boy Scouts learn survival skills, go camping, etc. It might have just been my area, but the GSA was nowhere near as neat as the BSA, and I think the lack of interesting programs for Girl Scouts is based out of sexism (girls not camping, girls don’t need ot learn how to play with fire, etc.).
not generally clear to me why an atheist would want to join a bible study group
Because a lot of us like to learn about other belief systems. I have Muslim relatives, and I want to know about their religion. I have Christian relatives, and I want to know about their religion. My employers are Buddhist, and I want to know how their beliefs influence their business.
I like to KNOW stuff, even if I personally don’t believe in it. It’s a big world, and we can’t look at it through our perspective all the time.
At one extreme we’d all (presumably) think it’s okay to exclude atheists from bible discussion groups.
Uh, no. I would love an in-depth study on the Bible. Whether or not you’re atheist, the Christian belief system has had a huge influence on American culture. I’d like to know some of the mechanics behind these beliefs.
This is very similar to my Girl Scouts experience. Our GS manual included makeup tips and how to wear clothes that flatter our body. While I did go to camp, it wasn’t “camping”. The tents were permanent, and our activities involved more making crafts and cooking than the things my brother did. My brother, in the Boy Scouts, went camping with actual tents that you can carry around and erect yourself. They actually built campfires. They learned how to shoot a bow and a gun. All of the cool stuff I did in GS was done in BS too, and more often, and at an earlier age.
Anyway, on topic, I agree that this rule is utter bullshit. If the Boy Scouts are so concerned with the health of their volunteers they should require a doctor’s approval from all of their volunteers, as there is nothing whatsoever stopping a thinner person from having severe health issues. This is just another attempt to isolate and exclude fat people, in order to shame us into slimming down or, more likely, shame us into hiding from public sight.
It’s a slander on fat people to call them unhealthy or a slander on gay people to say they’re not appropriate around children; but it’s not a slander on atheists to accuse them of not believing in god.
It is a slander on atheists to say they can’t be good citizens, though — which is the BSA’s rationale for excluding atheists.
While I did go to camp, it wasn’t “camping”. The tents were permanent, and our activities involved more making crafts and cooking than the things my brother did.
Meh, that was my Cub Scouts experience; we camped out in an area with permanent tents, and that was a perfectly cromulent way to do it; I only lasted about six months in Boy Scouts (my troop was very disorganized and had a highly hunter-friendly bent. De gustibus non est disputandum, but I myself don’t like hunting).
My feeling on Girl Scouts is that much is dependent on the troop leader — and that used to go for Boy Scouts, too. But while Girl Scouts is still okay with irreligious, fat, lesbian participants and leaders, the Boy Scouts are not. That, to me, is the major and irresolvable difference between the two.
(As far as the cookies go, I can tell you that as a Cub Scout, I would much have preferred selling cookies to selling wreaths or candy bars; Girl Scout cookies rock.)
RonF is absent from this conversation s0 far, but I remember a post of his recently in which he explained that some scouts carry drugs to self-administer for anaphylaxis or diabetes. So they let in kids that have an actual bonafide medical condition that could cause things to get really bad in a big hurry. But you know, that’s true for each and every one of us – things can get bad fast for anyone, a condition of our existence. I agree, the health thing is a red herring.
And I had a great time in my high school girl scouts troup – long backpack trips, canoeing, sailing – just lucky I guess.
And the religious thing? a private club should be able to exclude whomever they wish (I pretty much agree with the Supreme Court scouts vs. gays decision). but a private club should not get ANY special treatment from publicly-funded institutions if it violates anti-descrimination policies.
The atheist & gay exclusions pretty much browbeats kids into professing a love of god and heterosexuality, probably even before they’ve really thought about it. And they accuse queers of trying to indoctrinate kids!
Ok. Good point. I concede I was wrong. I was reading it as “not letting people join club= as bad as genocide”. “Excluding some people usually leads to excluding even more people” is true and makes sense.
FYI, I am not Jewish, but as someone who is disabled, as someone who has a history of psychosis, and as a queer person, the Nazis would have exterminated me too.
Also, I am fat, and yes, I think this whole thing is BS.
The scouts aren’t like this in the UK. (Also, the Scouts are open to both genders, although the Guides also exist and they only let girls in.)
Re: atheists doing Bible study. My Church had a study group that taught people to read the New Testament in Greek and about half the people who came were atheists and agnostics. Nobody had a problem with that.
I’ve actually traded a couple of e-mails with Amp on this one asking him for some advice on the matter before this post was put up. I was out all weekend – my son graduated from University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Now let’s see if he can get a job ….
Anyway; what’s going on here is risk mitigation. Not perhaps an optimal job I’ll readily grant. There’s quite a bit of controversy going on in the Scouting blogs and e-mail lists. Let me do a bit of clarification, though.
Philmont Scout Ranch is a ~170,000 acre reservation in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico owned by the BSA. About 40,000 or 50,000 Scouts and Scouters from all over the world (as well as members of other youth groups) go on back country trips on it every year. Mountains, trout streams, wild beasts of all kinds, horses, bison, etc., etc. Lots of activities and great fun. Hot, though. You’re hiking about 5 to 10 miles a day from section camp to section camp for various activities in a rather arid area. This is what the BSA calls “High Adventure”. You have to be at least 14 years old and First Class rank to go. The place is in great demand; you have to enter a lottery to get a spot 18 months in the future.
This year’s annual report for the Reservation has a sentence in it reading essentially “This was a good year; nobody died.” That sentence wasn’t in the report the year before. It’s not uncommon for it not to be in the report.
Death by misadventure is extremely rare. The usual cause is heart attack out on the trail. The last victim was (IIRC) 18 years 0ld, but it’s usually a Scouter (i.e., an adult). It’s a terrible thing to have to call up a parent or spouse and tell them that their son or daughter or husband or wife is not coming home from a trip that was eagerly anticipated and was supposed to be a high point of their lives. My father had to do it twice. I’ve always dreaded having to do it.
That’s the motivation, folks. Not anti-fat discrimination. Not a desire to put forward particular role models or ideology or religious precepts. I’ve seen Scouters with XXXXXL shirts. There’s no thought to trying to drive them out of Scouting. The impetus here is to make sure they stay alive.
Now if you think that BMI tables are a ham-fisted way to do that, I can introduce you to a whole bunch of Scouters who agree with you – there has been a lot of discussion, some of it quite heated, on the Scouting e-mail lists and blogs. I’d be very interested in alternatives that I could recommend to National Council.
As to what exactly is going on here; National Council operates 3 High Adventure programs. Philmont, Northern Tier (canoe trips in Minnesota and Canada) and Sea Base (Sailing, snorkeling, etc. out of Key West and the Bahamas). This policy has always applied to those bases. What the BSA is doing here that’s different from years past is to extend the policy to trips run either by local Councils or by units themselves. If at any time you are more than 30 minutes from medical assistance – which means, will it take you more than 30 minutes to get to someplace that an ambulance can get to – you have to meet those height/weight criteria.
Right now, I don’t. I either have to lose about 35 or 40 pounds or grow 3 inches. As it happens, I have an alternative – I have enough expertise and gear that I can guide my own canoe trip into Canada and work though a private outfitter for my canoes and permits. I’ll just tell the kids to leave the uniforms at home and I’m willing to accept the liability on my own account, and I’ve got the trust of people in the community that they’d be willing to send their kids out with me without the blessing of the BSA. People who don’t know how to work that out and who can’t afford to do the whole trip through a private outfitter are SOL. However, I won’t be going out to Philmont on a trek. That’s out. Too bad, too – I have been there on a guided trip and it is absolutely gorgeous.
My Troop’s camping trips to the local state parks and forest preserves and the annual week-long summer camp and just about all the rest of our activities are unaffected. Only a minority of Scouts are eligible for a High Adventure trip (remember the age and rank requirements), and only a minority of those ever go (summer school, soccer camp, lack of desire or motivation, etc.). This policy will actually affect very few Scouters and Scouts. That’s not an excuse for a bad policy, but the news stories and headlines make it look as those overweight Scouters are being excluded from the BSA, which is so wrong as to make me wonder if it’s deliberately misleading and evidence of bias.
Many people have said “If it’s O.K. with my doctor, why isn’t it O.K. with the BSA.” Well, doctors aren’t God and a lot of them have no clue what kinds of stresses a backpacking trip in Philmont or elsewhere actually represents. There’s also the issue of legal risk mitigation – will the signature of a doctor on a form actually release the BSA from any share of the legal repsonsibility of the death of a participant in such a case?
There’s one other thing to note; if someone who weighs 350 pounds gets hurt, what happens to the other participants when they try to get him out? What’s the risk to the other participants in rendering aid?
Finding a way to ensure that people who don’t belong out on the trail aren’t out there with the BSA’s blessing is a problem that the BSA has to deal with. I’m by no means defending the particular method they’ve chosen. But I will stand behind the concept that this is what they’re trying to do and what the motivation is.
I think it is a sad reflection of today’s society wants to take all of the decision making out of the individuals hands and place it is some organisation that “knows best”.
In this case, the BSA are clearly judging this chap to be a potential risk and therefore believe that to mitigate that risk they need to exclude him. What they should be doing is ensuring he is aware of the risks he is taking and then let him take the responsibility for himself.
By the way, here’s a side note on that NYT story about the kids training in Law Enforcement. Those kids are not Boy Scouts. They are Explorers, and they belong to an Explorer Post, not a Boy Scout Troop or a Venture Crew. The Exploring program became part of the BSA’s Learning for Life division back in the mid-90’s when the ACLU threatened to sue the Chicago Police and Fire Departments for sponsoring units because of the BSA’s membership criteria.
What that means is that neither those kids nor their leaders are subject to the BSA’s membership criteria for the BSA’s traditional programs. They can be homosexuals. They can be atheists. They can be female. What you’re looking at there is part of the BSA’s “progressive” program.
You should also understand that what kind of area of career-oriented specialization a given Explorer Post concentrates on is the choice of the Post’s sponsors and leaders. It’s not dictated by either National Council or the local Council. If you wanted to start up an Explorer Post that specialized in social work I’m sure your local Council would be glad to have you.
I was out all weekend – my son graduated from University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Now let’s see if he can get a job ….
May I offer you and your son an off-topic congratulations on graduating and best of luck getting a job?
Maybe I’m missing something, but the fact that these fat people have already endured these onerous physical tests and in the main, survived, indicates their safety is not paramount here.
Fat people are supposed to be engaging in physical acitivities, why discourage them and then complain that we should be making more of an effort?
I’m afraid there does seem to be something ideological about this; whenever anyone wakes up to the fact that actual fat people are actually doing some kind of physical activity, they seem to want to stop them, as if it breaks the lore that insists we are all lazy (and that’s why we’re fat).
People complain about our laziness, but they seem offended by our activeness.
Also, it would be nice if you could pass up this level of condescention when talking about this issue.
I know it’s hard to believe, but a lot of us aren’t looking to be discriminated against, we are just trying to unravel this descending mindtrap before it is inescapble. I don’t want to wait until there is no chioce, it’s hard to get rid of discrimination that has become ingrained.
Maybe I’m missing something, but the fact that these fat people have already endured these onerous physical tests and in the main, survived, indicates their safety is not paramount here.
What you’re missing is where I said
Meaning that these fat people (to use your phrase) have NOT already endured those onerous physical tests.
Fat people are supposed to be engaging in physical acitivities, why discourage them and then complain that we should be making more of an effort?
Hyperbole like this does not serve to further constructive debate. How does this policy discourage physical activity? In fact, there’s a program for adult Scouters that actively recognizes them for doing so. What this policy does is to exclude people who don’t meet a particular criterion (and again, I make no case for the criterion itself) from a very limited subset of physical activities that would present (in the BSA’s opinion) extreme risk. For example, two summmers ago I earned the BSA’s Mile Swim award. I expect you’d agree that swimming a mile in one session without being allowed to touch the bottom or any kind of support is physical activity. This policy would not affect any future attempt to earn the award again. It won’t stop you from going on that weekend 100-mile cycling trip with the Troop either.
RonF-I’m sorry to see that you’ll be affected by this new policy. Although in my heart of hearts…maybe it will give you new perspective on the gay policies that you defended so zealously on this blog in the past.
What is the BSA’s policy on people with diabetes and so on that was mentioned up thread? Are these people who actually have health problems allowed to go on these High Adventures trips that heavy people won’t be allowed on now?
Thanks, Dianne. It was a real struggle for him and it took him longer than some of his classmates. But out of > 800 freshmen who started the ME program with him, about 225 graduated with a BSME. I’m proud of him – not just the degree, but the fact that he persevered when things looked bad for him. Yesterday was a good day for him and for us.
In this case, the BSA are clearly judging this chap to be a potential risk and therefore believe that to mitigate that risk they need to exclude him. What they should be doing is ensuring he is aware of the risks he is taking and then let him take the responsibility for himself.
I agree. But answer the following questions;
1) will the BSA be held harmless if a Scouter makes a fatal misjudgement, or will the survivors be able to work around that and collect millions from the BSA?
2) what is the risk to the other members of a back country trek (who had no say in the principal’s decision, especially the youth) in attempting to evacuate someone who’s been injured, and what effect does a given level of weight have on that?
3) what’s the effect on the other members of the group, especially the youth, to be present when (most likely) a leader keels over and dies in front of them?
I’m in the “if my doctor says it’s O.K. and I’ve made an informed decision about my own abilities then the BSA should stay out of it” camp. But realize that there’s a lot of adults who, shall we say, overestimate their own abilities. The BSA has to be concerned not only about a given individual but about the others have to bear the burden of that individual’s bad judgement.
It doesn’t have to be as extreme as a heart attack. It’s not just preventing a death or injury. Consider a group of 2 Scouters and 8 Scouts on a trek. Day 3 of a 10 day trek Scouter A just can’t go anymore. No MI yet, but he’s having problems catching his breath and he can’t dump heat fast enough to stave off heat stroke or heat exhaustion. He’s got to be evacuated. What happens? Everyone has to go home because you can’t have a group on the trail with only one adult. Two deep leadership applies to every outing or meeting, even a Den meeting in someone’s home or a Troop meeting at the local school. There goes all the money spent on transportation, food, equipment, fees, etc. There’s all the time that the adults took off as vacation and the kids took off from home and that everyone spent on preparation. There goes what was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime.
What is the BSA’s policy on people with diabetes and so on that was mentioned up thread? Are these people who actually have health problems allowed to go on these High Adventures trips that heavy people won’t be allowed on now?
You have to disclose that you have diabetes (and a myriad of other conditions) on the annual medical form, as well as what medications you are taking for it and what the schedule for taking them is. If you are a youth, you must give any necessary medications to an adult who will dispense them to you. Having done this, whether or not that makes you an unsuitable candidate for a given trip is between you and your doctor.
Have you read this, RonF?
http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/
Why not have the BSA draft up a form that the individual’s doctor needs to read and sign that makes clear, in friendly bold letters, what the stresses are? Then they can sign that they are specifically saying this patient’s health and health history appears to be up for these stresses.
Would the inclusion of the BMI policy release the BSA from any share of the legal responsibility either, if the doctor’s form does not? Isn’t the BSA going to be sued either way, or even if there’s no good cause?
I’m no lawyer, and have no experience with this sort of liability anyway, so I’ll keep from sharing my speculations on this issue.
Ok, that bit about the UUs is weird. Just this weekend I witnessed the UU Coming of Age of an Eagle Scout. But then, I guess you don’t need the religious award to get that? Boy Scouts around here are either LDS or megachurch subsidiaries. Then again, this kid is going to Jesuit high school. He likes to test his beliefs.
My militantly agnostic husband is an Eagle Scout, too. He really fudged all the questions about belief in a higher power.
plunky – like I say, I’m supporting the BSA as far as the concept that they need to mitigate risk in these kinds of activities, but I’m not supporting the concept that this is the best way to do it.
plaid, I can’t answer those questions either.
lonespark, what’s a UU Coming of Age? I should ask my brother, he’s the head of religious education for a UU congregation. No, you don’t need a religious award to get your Eagle Scout rank (and it’s not a BSA religious award, see below). I’d hazard a guess that most don’t have it. If your husband didn’t actively hold that there was no such thing as a higher power, an Eagle Board of Review would have no reason (at least, no reason that would hold up on appeal) to not give him his Eagle rank.
sanabituranima said “The scouts aren’t like this in the UK. (Also, the Scouts are open to both genders, although the Guides also exist and they only let girls in.)” Do the UK Scouts operate any High Adventure bases like Philmont? Because that’s what you need to compare the two. And the BSA’s programs are partially co-ed. It operates programs in their traditional programs for boys/young men from approximately age 7 through 21, and for girls/young women from ages 14 to 21. In the Learning for Life division, all programs are completely co-ed and cover the entire school age range and up to 21 years old.
Carol said:
and Myca seems to have accepted these statements. That was a mistake, Myca, as these statements are completely false.
There’s an organization called Programs of Religious Activities with Youth. They have created and administer religious awards for youth who complete various knowledge, tenure and service requirements. They cover just about every religion I have ever heard of, including various Christian denominations, Baha’i, Judaism, Islam, LDS, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, etc. I know the BSA promotes the program, but so do the Girl Scouts, the Camp Fire Girls and American Heritage Girls.
P.R.A.Y. is completely separate from and independent of the BSA. When you want to earn one of the awards (in some cases, adults don’t work to earn them, they are nominated for them) you work through P.R.A.Y. and your local minister or priest or other denominational officer. They decide whether you’ve earned the award, they award it to you, and the award is made at one of their functions, not at a BSA function. You do not work with anyone in the BSA to earn the badge (actually a medal). You do not submit any paperwork to the BSA. The BSA does not know you’re working on it, nor do they have any hand in approving or disapproving your receipt of the award. This is not a BSA religious award. The BSA itself does not have religious awards.
The BSA does permit you to wear the award on your uniform if you have earned it, like other awards that other organizations give out that the BSA has approved for wear on the BSA uniform. Unless you’re a UU, for reasons that get into the UU’s promotion of their opposition towards the BSA’s membership criteria in the materials for the award, which none of the other denominations do. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you can earn it. So the idea that “kids that did UU things couldn’t earn a badge for religious service.” is completely false. Again, the BSA does not give out badges for religious service. In fact, nowhere in the BSA program is there even a requirement to perform religious service. Service work for a UU congregation is perfectly acceptable for credit towards service hours requirements (part of the requirements for 2nd Class, Star, Life and Eagle ranks), and stating that you are a UU and that you follow their tenets is perfectly acceptable when the issue of whether or not a given Scout conforms to the “Duty to God” and “A Scout is Reverent” parts of the Scout Law and Oath come up; say, during an Eagle Scout Board of Review. Which shows that “The BSA decided Unitarian Universalism wasn’t a real religion” is also completely false. In fact, there are UU congregations in the U.S. that sponsor Scout units (and there’s a quite lively mailing list for UU Scouters that I monitor).
Carol also said
I have not heard that all LDS boys are required to join. I do know that the LDS uses the BSA as an official part of it’s male youth programs. The idea that the BSA was taken over by the LDS is absurd. About 7/8 of the Scouts in the U.S. are not Mormons. There’s as many Lutherans as Mormons, so it’s about equally valid to say that the Lutherans have taken over the BSA.
Car0l, you are rather misinformed about the BSA.
I wanted to be a Boy Scout because there was a much better chance of getting to do really challenging things and wilderness camping. My experience in Girl Scouts sucked (when my mom was a leader) and then really, really blew when I had to join another troop. I’d like to maybe get involved in Girl Scouts if my daughter is interested, or maybe even if she isn’t, to offer offer what I consider the good stuff…but my mom tried that and failed, so I don’t know. I suppose being responsive to individual girl’s preferences can be a strength, but Scouts should challenge kids and not completely lose touch with the roots of the program.
I foresee a tough choice if involvement with Boy Scouts looks like a good option for my son. There’s no question it was valuable for my husband and many others I know. But I’m trying to raise my kids as religious UUs and/or Heathens. I don’t want my son to end up in an organization that treats his faith as less valid than others, that tells him his godmother and a lot of other people he respects and loves are not people of good character who would be welcomed as leaders.
That conflict would come up if we found a local organization that my husband wanted to be a part of. When he tried before here in Arizona he was disgusted by the degree to which they tried to shove LDS beliefs down his and the kids’ throats. I suppose I’ll be looking into Spiral Scouts, just in case.
The fat thing sounds like a policy designed to accomplish an understandable goal, being enacted in a stupid and discriminatory way. But combined with everything else, from where I’m standing, the organization is taking stupid and discriminatory policies and running with them. Especially since I would guess heart problems are a pretty common cause of Bad Stuff that happens on backcountry hikes, and weight/BMI is a poor proxy for that.
The BSA provides specific religious awards to everyone from Baha’i to Baptists, from Anglicans to Zoroastrians, but specifically excludes atheists. It’s not about being a religious organization which happens to exclude atheists by definition; it’s about going out of their way to be unwelcoming, and it’s unjustifiable.
For my own part, I had a series of unpleasant experiences with the various Scout troops I was part of. I stuck with it because I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me quit. I put up with their shit for a few extra months, but I got to keep the Eagle rank.
Of course, while it primarily means perseverance and self-reliance to me, it represents naked bigotry to everyone else. So fuck you very much, recent rightward tilt of the Scouting movement.
RonF, I think the concerns that you bring up in regards to risks out in a “high adventure” activity are valid. It would be a terrible thing to have someone have a medical emergency or even death on one of these outings.
You also say that scouts have to fill out a yearly medical form and disclose illnesses and medications. Fair enough.
The problem here is that BSA has apparently chosen one specific arbitrary possible health risk to exclude outright, that of being fat. The question is, are diabetics, epileptics, those with other heart conditions, blood pressure problems, and other health problems arbitrarily also excluded? Or is it sort of taken on a case by case basis. Perhaps looking at an individual’s control of the illness, doctor recommendations and past performance and also personal understanding and willingness to put oneself at risk?
If fatness (BMI) is the only particular instance when BSA is saying, “look, we have this cut off, no matter what other mitigating factors, you are out” while sort of going case by case on other potential risk factors, then that is discrimination.
I don’t know the answer to this, I’m asking.
“and other health problems arbitrarily also excluded”
Are underweight people arbitrarily excluded, given that they suffer more health problems than overweight people?
I expect that to happen right around the time “healthier” stops being used as a euphemism for “thinner”, regardless of the size or health status of the person in question.
How does this policy discourage physical activity?
Finding a way to ensure that people who don’t belong out on the trail
You also said the people concerned can get around it at cost and inconvienience.
People who don’t know how to work that out and who can’t afford to do the whole trip through a private outfitter are SOL.
Making it seem a tad ideological to say the least.
What I was responding to above all was this;
Sorry, I got interrupted.
You seem to be suggesting that the desire to object to these kind of meaningless impostions are about the psychopathology of fat people; we are hypersensitive, self pitying etc failing to understand principles such as duty of care and legal liabilities, therefore our querying is bogus.
You more than anyone have shown this up as false. Was that your intent?
BMI is simple and easy; like the SATs it trades off a significant amount of accuracy in the name of expediency.
One could of course require stress tests and VO2max for all applicants, but that is unlikely to happen, just as it is unlikely that a college applicant will receive an in-depth personal interview from every college to which she applied.
If you want to do something quick and dirty and you are willing to have a relatively high error rate, then BMI is probably going to meet your needs. It would make sense to have a second tier so that someone who was rejected could then get a much more in depth report, if they chose to do so.
But of course, as I’ve said like 6 times on this thread, people who perform worse by the same easy-to-use but imperfect proxy but who are not part of a stigmatized group are not being excluded.
So that’s enough of “the poor boy scouts just can’t help that it’s bigoted, because it’s also useful information!” They’re ignoring the useful information, except when it allows them to exclude members of a stigmatized group.
grendelkhan:
No, it does not. It permits you to wear religious awards given out by a different organization, in the same way that the GSUSA, the Camp Fire Girls and the American Heritage Girls do. See my post #61. Walk into a Scout Shop and ask to buy a BSA religious award and you’ll walk out empty-handed.
Lexie:
Well, first let’s remember that they’re not excluding anyone from all activities outright. They’re excluding a particular group of people from a small subset of their activities.
Having said that, you’re right – that is how they handle it. In fact, here’s the form in question, the first page of which is a discussion on how it is to be used. While various conditions are listed as being particular risk factors, judgement as to how to handle any of them exept weight is left up to you and your doctor. You might want to take a look at the form, it’s pretty extensive. The idea of the form is to a) ensure that you and your doctor have properly evaluated your health, b) ensure that the tour leaders and camp health staff have a medical record and information regarding any health risks you have and any medications you need, and c) provide a medical record and a treatment waiver to any physician that may need to treat you.
Mandolin:
If you look at the form you’ll see that the height/weight ranges have a lower limit as well as an upper limit. I presume that means that someone under the range is also excluded.
Ah, foo. You lost me on that one. By “easy-to-use but imperfect proxy”, are you referring to the BMI table? And then who are the groups that perform worse by a particular standard (and what is that standard) that are not being excluded and who are the ones that perform worse by that standard that are?
B. Adu:
Actually, in my case the BSA’s height/weight requirements for High Adventure trips encouraged me to increase my physical activity in an attempt to meet them so I could go on a canoe trip out of Charles L. Sommers Canoe Base (part of Northern Tier) in June of 2000. While I’ve gained some of the weight back I’ve kept some of it off since then. So in my case in particular the standards have had a salutary effect – I do feel healthier at the lower weight and have permanently increased my physical activity. YMMV, but I’m not the only person I know that this has happened to.
Which does not mean that I consider that the particular standard chosen by the BSA for this purpose is the best way to do it, mind you.
Sailorman:
A lot of people on the Scouting lists have proposed this, and it makes sense to me. Right now there’s no appeal process; if you don’t make the BMI cut you’re not going to Philmont. A number of people have pointed out examples of Scouts (usually their sons …) who are, say, linebackers on their high school football teams and who miss this cut because they are essentially made out of muscle, while Scouts with a much higher body fat ratio and a lower level of fitness but are lower weight can go.
I can’t really articulate why, but RonF’s responses in this thread are really bringing me down. I re-read the Philadelphia BSA thread yesterday…and it seems like the BSA can just do no wrong to him. Even as they exclude him from their activities. And comment #73…damn. He’s _thanking_ them for helping his health by looking at a chart and telling him he’s too fat. Ignoring everything he’s done for the Boy Scouts in decades of being a scout and then a scoutmaster…they looked at a chart and told him he doesn’t belong. And he _thanks_ them for it.
To say that I don’t understand this attitude is an understatement. It makes me want to never put my daughter in any kind of institutional learning environment where this kind of shit can be ingrained into her head.
If you look at the form you’ll see that the height/weight ranges have a lower limit as well as an upper limit. I presume that means that someone under the range is also excluded.
They do have a lower limit, but there is not a minimum acceptance weight like there is a maximum acceptance weight so it seems to me like underweight people are not automatically excluded.
Well, RonF, Thank you for showing me the form. It looks like, because they do consider case by case mitigating factors on pretty much every other health condition imaginable and seem to show that there are no automatic exclusions for other health conditions except in the case of fat people, then this is discrimination plain and simple.
They have targeted a specific group of people to exclude based on a physical feature that does not necessarily directly correlate to health, while working with (or at least not banning outright) other individuals who have a documented health issue.
I don’t know what else to call that except unfair and unethical discriminatory practice.
You may have said it 6–or even 7!–times, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense. There’s a lot of stuff cited about how being fat is healthier, but we’re not talking about generic “health” here.
For example, a big proxy for “fat = health” involves “fat people tend to live to be older.” That’s handy, sure, but it may not be particularly relevant to whether or not someone can hike safely. Similarly, I’ve read some things which suggest that obesity is linked to joint issues. That may be handy for determining who gets to go on hikes, but it may be entirely irrelevant in determining other things. And so on. For all I know, the costs of being thin apply most to Class V whitewater kayaking, and the costs of being fat apply most to high altitude desert hiking.
This is merely restating the obvious. BMI as a whole has a tendency to produce fairly inaccurate but arguably useful generalizations about people. Since the spectra of conditions is wide, it is certainly possible that there will exist areas where not all BMIs are viewed equally, and where high BMI is thought to produce more of a risk than low BMI.
It may be that the BSA believes that the risks of high BMI as applied to the activities for which BMI is being considered as a screen are greater than the risks of low BMI as applied to the activities for which BMI is being considered as a screen. Depending on the activity, that could well be reasonable.
Now, *is* it reasonable? I don’t know. Certainly from my own outdoor experience and my own experience with athletics–both of which are considerable–anecdotally it doesn’t spring out as obviously incorrect. Since this seems to be an anecdote-heavy thread, most of the fat people I have done activities with were not in especially good shape and were apparently hampered by their weight.
those are only anecdotes, of course. But I don’t think we actually know the statistics. Again, remember that the goal here isn’t default “live longer” or even “be healthier” (whatever that means) but rather “fitness for a particular purpose” or ‘fitness to do a particular thing.”
Are there fat people who are able to perform whatever the BSA thinks people should be able to do? Sure, of course. Are fat people more likely to be unable to perform? Who knows–but if they are, then it would be statistically appropriate to exclude them. If skinny people are also more likely to be unable to perform, then it would be statistically appropriate to exclude them, too.
[shrug] I still think they should have a “second chance” tier for those who want it, though; any screen like this will have a fairly high error rate as these things go.
Ron F,
Actually, in my case the BSA’s height/weight requirements for High Adventure trips encouraged me to increase my physical activity in an attempt to meet them so I could go on a canoe trip out of Charles L. Sommers Canoe Base (part of Northern Tier) in June of 2000.
I think it’s more the other way around.
No, Sailorman. What FA people say is that being fat or thin or “normal” or whatever is not a predictor of one’s health.
And my point is that “health” is such a vague term that it is relatively meaningless in this context. BMI may or may not be linked to health; whether or not it is so linked has a lot to do with how you define “health” and the attendant quality of life issues.
Irrespective of whether weight is linked to some ill-defined “health,” it it appears to be linked to some other MUCH more narrowly defined factors*. Superhigh BMI, for example, seems on average to be not so good a thing if you are selecting people for a volleyball team or to run a marathon, while it seems on average to be good thing if you are selecting people to put a shot or lift heavy weights.
I will assume for the moment (please correct me if this assumption) is incorrect that you
don’t seriously disagree with the paragraph directly above.
If so, then you can see that from my perspective, the question “is being fat/thin unhealthy?” is the wrong question. So is “is the BSA discriminating against fat people?”
The first question is irrelevant, and the second is premature.
What we should be asking is “are the activities for which the BSA is considering BMI those activities for which BMI is relevant?” IOW, is this more like selecting philosophy professors, or more like selecting water polo goalies?
If we conclude that BMI is irrelevant, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s healthy or not; the BSA would be improperly selecting on an irrelevant characteristic, like a dean rejecting a philosophy professor based on BMI.
If we conclude that BMI is relevant, then it also doesn’t matter whether it’s healthy or not; the BMI is making a choice based on a relevant characteristic, like a volleyball coach selecting people to try out based on BMI.
[ETA] The “is the BSA discriminating?” question is premature, because you can’t answer that until you figure out whether they are accurately using BSA as a predictive tool. Assuming, that is, that you are using a definition of “discriminating” with includes the modifier “without cause.”
Ali:
Good point. And in support of your point I also note that in the explicatory paragraph above it on that page they make a point about excluding people who exceed that limit, but not people who are UNDER that limit.
Lexie:
See Sailorman’s post immediately after yours. The BSA is not excluding people on the basis of the overall status of their health; they are excluding people based on a specific characteristic that (at least in the opinion of the BSA) correlates to their ability to complete a specific kind of activity. If conditions like diabetes, asthma, etc. have been shown to not be a risk to completing this kind of activity successfully if certain measures are taken, then there’s no reason to bar them from that kind of activity.
I will continue to note that I suspect, and have see support for that suspicion here, that BMI is not necessarily a good characteristic to use in this case. Can anyone here tell me is what kind of metric would correlate better towards evaluating the ability of someone to complete such an activity? For example, hiking 5 to 8 miles a day in arid conditions and 85 degree heat for 8 days, or paddling and portaging the same distance on a lake in Canada or Minnesota for that length of time. I’ll say this; the BSA by this system equates the two, but they are not equivalent. I’m sure I’m plenty fit for the latter, but not for the former.
Egg on me; you’re quite right. Then again, I doubt the national scouting organization would accept an award given for service to Secular Humanism, or one given by American Atheists; while they don’t administer these particular awards, they do recognize them. Though the specifics are delegated out, the BSA is, at the very least, involved.
Well, I would think specific factors that actually put you at risk to do those activities. For example, (and keep in mind, I’m not a doctor so I am only putting out hypothetical. I am not knowledgeable enough to state specific criteria), Blood Pressure could be one. One of the risks of being fat is that you might have high blood pressure. Or you might not. High blood pressure is also a problem with some diabetics, others not. So, if high blood pressure is a risk factor for being able to safely trek 30 miles with 50 pounds on your back…then make THAT the criteria.
Also, pulseox, or oxygen saturation might be another one. Some asthmatics may have a problem with this, some may not. Some fat people may have a problem with this, some may not. If a person can do a stress test and keep their saturation levels above say 95% (arbitrary number) then they can go. If not, they can’t.
If these trips are so once in a lifetime and so dangerous that people actually die on them, then it doesn’t seem like it is asking too much for everyone who wants to go on them (or gets to the final stage of the selection process or whatever makes the most sense) to get a complete health work up based on specific criteria that apply to the activities in question. This would be the safest thing the BSA could do to make it as safe of a trip for everyone.
The BMI criteria has to little of correlation while targeting a group of people who are vulnerable to getting the short end of the stick while doing nothing to protect other people who might have legitimate risks to their safety on these trips.
When I did my Peace Corps application, they required a complete physical, and they also asked a series of questions about your physical capabilities – can you lift 10 pounds unassisted? 20 pounds? 50 pounds? Can you squat and rise again without assistance? Can you walk X miles? People with disabilities can serve in the Peace Corps, but they need a lot of information about your abilities to make sure they place you somewhere you can function. Depending on the limits of your physical capabilities, there will be countries and sites where you cannot be placed.
That kind of approach relies on self-reporting, but it also treats everyone like an adult and the process as a cooperative one aimed at meeting the needs of the individual and the organization. It also seems like it would get at the relevant information better than something like BMI.
This gets at something else I’ve been wondering about. I would think this type of thing is more likely to exclude bigger people who are moderately fit because I would think that people who very obviously could not do the activities in question would not sign up to do them. Am I wrong about that? Do leaders who are very unfit regularly sign on to take kids on extended trips like this when they are just not capable of completing the trip? I have a normal BMI, and I would hesitate to go out on on an eight-day trek at this point in my life. I used to do four and five day treks a few times a year, but I’m not in nearly as good shape right now, my normal BMI aside.
(slight edits)
I agree with Lexie’s criteria. I did a cross continent cycling trip a couple years back and we had several pages worth of health questions relating specifically to our trip to take to a doctor for a pre trip physical. I don’t see why this shouldn’t be the case here.
I can see how in certain instances that weight can be an issue when it comes to specific equipment (like RonF noted somewhere above), but even in that case, BMI has nothing to do with it. Just have something saying that X equipment can not be used if you (and any gear you’re carrying) weigh over Y pounds.
For the minimizing of egg on the face, it probably would be a good idea for those who are challenging RonF’s assertions about the BSA to cite a source for their own claims. He seems to know an awful lot about the BSA (personally, I only know the stuff that relates to Boy Scouts v. Dale). Also, I’d point out that the BSA was excluding atheists long before it articulated a policy against non-straights, so the chronology of the OP is slightly off.
There are different kinds of “Bible study” groups. As a Hindu agnostic who briefly attended an evangelical campus group’s Bible study when I was in college, I can tell you that it’s sort of impeding what the people who organized the group wanted to do with it when you raise historical/cultural/literary/etc. points about the text under discussion, and no one else in the group is interested in those because they honestly read the Bible to get direction in their lives.
I find the Bible very interesting, and as an English B.A. probably know the KJV better than the majority of Americans who identify as Christian, but what I want to get out of Bible study is not what most evangelical types want to get out of it. The group I joined didn’t have a “Christians-only” policy because it would be stupid for evangelicals to exclude people whom they could hope to convert, but that’s not going to be true for a group that isn’t by its very nature out to convert people.
That said, I don’t think the Boy Scouts should receive any government subsidization in any form so long as they exclude people based on religious belief/lack thereof, sexual orientation, and other protected categories of identity. You can be an organization composed solely of heterosexual believers, or you can pay $1 annual rent for a city-owned building, but you can’t be both. The fact that the BSA is a 501(c)(3) and gets lots of government assistance makes it very different from, say, a commercial airline, and means that we should impose higher standards on its behavior.
This is the award that the BSA will not recognize if it is granted by the Unitarian-Universalist church?
—Myca
Ronf is mostly right on the UU stuff except the BSA also banned the wearing of the UU cub scout religious award which does not have the associated stuff the BSA was complaining about. We should probably not get into the kerfluffle where the BSA recognizes a UU religious award that the religion did not create or recognize (the Unitarian Universalist Scouters created it but not the UUA).
The BSA also does not recognize the Wicca religious award on the grounds that they haven’t sponsored enough scouting units (it is alleged that Wiccan circles attempting to sponsor a troop haven’t been allowed to do so).
The BSA does issue one religious item which is a religious emblem square knot to indicate the scout has earned a religious award (presumably one recognized nationally though individual troops may turn a blind eye to scouts who earned the UUA or Wicca awards wearing the knot).
Myca,
The manual for the UU’s “religion in life” award, unlike the process for obtaining the “religion in life” award from other religious organizations, involves disparaging the Boy Scouts’ policy against atheists and homosexuals. While I like the UUA much better than the BSA, I can see why the BSA would object to recognizing an award that involves telling the kids that the BSA is wrong and stupid for its positions.
(I’m basing this on the first hit for a Google search on “unitarian universalist boy scouts.”)
Well, it’s sort of an interesting bind, though, isn’t it?
What do you do if you are a church that opposes bigotry and exclusion, but membership in a bigoted and exclusionary youth group is important to some not-insignificant percentage of your members?
Their solution was, “participate, while clearly opposing the bigoted stuff,” which seems like about as good a solution as you’re likely to find.
—Myca
Myca,
I don’t think “specify your opposition to the bigoted stuff in the materials for a badge that is intended to be worn on the sash of the bigoted organization” is quite the way to go. If I ran a church that had BSA members who attended, I might talk to the BSA members about how the BSA’s philosophy was in opposition to our faith’s teachings about tolerance and equality, but I wouldn’t get involved in a program for a badge to be worn on a BSA uniform. If the members were asking for such a badge, I’d tell them that our church could not in good faith have such an association with the BSA. I wouldn’t come up with a badge that would be a thumb in the eye to the BSA.
That’s rather overstating the case, isn’t it? A thumb in the eye?
If saying, “this policy is one we disapprove of” counts as a thumb in the eye, I shudder to think what might count as full bodily assault. A soft tsk, perhaps?
—Myca
Lexie:
I would think that people who very obviously could not do the activities in question would not sign up to do them. Am I wrong about that?
Unfortunately, yes. Just about every Scouter who actively leads Scouts on hikes, etc. can tell you a story of an unfit (a much better term than unhealthy, and to be considered as relative to the level of fitness required for the activity) Scouter or parent who went on a trip and both had a problem and caused problems for the rest of the group because of it.
Do leaders who are very unfit regularly sign on to take kids on extended trips like this when they are just not capable of completing the trip?
Well, not to the National High Adventure bases, because they’re weeded out. I can’t answer that question for non-National High Adventure trips. I’m thinking, though, that the BSA didn’t make this change and draw up and promulgate a new form for no reason. The BSA tends to be reactive. So my guess is that it’s probably happened, and that’s why this change was made.
PG, I’ve been active as a leader in the BSA since September of ’92. I’m currently a Pack Committee Member, an Assistant Scoutmaster, the Advisor for a Venture Crew and District Commissioner. A Unit Commissioner’s job is to advise and coach unit leaders and be a conduit of information between the units and the Councils. My job is to recruit, organize, train and advise and coach Unit Commissioners for a specific geographic region (a District being a sub-region of a Council). I have about 10 Commissioners reporting to me – though I could use about 10 more. I’ve also been on the Council training staff for a number of years. I’ve been a leader for contingents to Canada and Japan – Canada by organizing the group myself, and Japan upon invitation.
PG, Myca, with regards to either participating in the BSA in general or in their (the UU’s) religious award in particular, the UU’s are all over the map. Some do, some don’t, some do with caveats, etc., etc. Then there’s the knot. Some awards that you earn in Scouting (or from organizations outside of Scouting that the BSA recognizes) are symbolized by a badge or medal, but for those occasions where you don’t want your uniform looking completely like a Christmas tree you wear a 1 cm x 3 cm patch that has a square knot depicted on it in it’s place. The combination of the color of the knot and the color of the background symbolize particular awards. They’re worn in rows of 3 each above the left breast shirt pocket. The one for a PRAY religious award that is earned as a youth is a silver knot on a purple background.
The question has come up – if a Scout earns the UU award, the Scout cannot wear it on his shirt. Can he or she then wear the knot symbolizing it? So far I haven’t gotten a straight answer on that one. If a Scout asked me I’d tell him or her to go ahead and sew it on.
But then, I’m that kind of guy. A few years ago my Pack lost it’s Cubmaster to a heart attack. Very sad, he’d been Cubmaster (and a damn good one) for 6 years. The Pack Committee proposed to mourn him for a year by wearing a ribbon on their sleeves. They couldn’t decide on a color, so they decided to wear a rainbow ribbon. Now, I was at the meetings that this was decided at. These suburban soccer moms had absolutely no clue as to the symbolism that certain people might see in a rainbow ribbon, and the incongruity of wearing it on a Scout uniform in that context. I was all for it. Unfortunately it fell apart, which cheated me of seeing the look on certain people’s faces in other units and at Council and dealing with the questions they might ask.
PG, what would be the “lots of government assistance” you’re referring to?
The manual for the UU Religion in Life badge referred to UUs’ “ongoing concern regarding the homophobic and discriminatory attitudes of the national leadership of the Boy Scouts of America.” Calling people “homophobic and discriminatory” is a tad more severe than simply saying “this policy is one we disapprove of.”
I agree with the UUA that the policy barring homosexuals is homophobic and discriminatory, and I wouldn’t let my son join as a Cub Scout because a) I don’t want to support a homophobic organization, and b) I don’t want to cope with the possibility that my son would realize as he grew older that he was gay and get kicked out of the organization on that basis. I’m not going to hazard my kid’s emotional well-being on what I’m guessing his sexual orientation to be at age six.
But I also don’t expect the BSA to provide a platform for me to criticize them, or to endorse my criticism by recognizing the badge that I’ve granted that’s closely-associated with that criticism. As I said, my preference would be to boycott the BSA myself and to talk to others about looking for alternatives to the BSA that would be more in line with our shared values regarding equality. Making my criticism part of the process to get an award, and then demanding that the award be recognized by the BSA, is not my style. I want nothing to do with the BSA so long as they bar non-straight people, and I think others should take a similarly up-front attitude instead of trying to have it both ways.
RonF,
Government assistance to the Boy Scouts:
– 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.
– 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.
– Boy Scouts license plates, with the monies going to support the Boy Scouts.
– federal law that requires schools receiving any federal funding (thus going beyond just public schools) to permit Boy Scouts to meet.
– 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.
I could keep going if I did more research, but these are the ones of which I was aware off the top of my head.
I’ve led a few hikes in the Grand Canyon, and I’ve spent a lot of time acknowledging that people tend to underestimate their abilities. The park service has a hard time with tourists who say “Oh, I’ll just leave at 2pm with a 16 oz. bottle of water in my tiny bag, and hike to the bottom and back again in a day!” … no flashlight, no nothing! I have met so many of them on the major trails there, it’s stupefying. And it’s not like you can talk to them about it. You meet these people and they talk about what great shape they’re in, and how they’ll be out again before it becomes dark, and they don’t like to eat on the trail, and who needs more water than they have….
The BSA? Very wise in understanding that people will overestimate their abilities. People who overestimate their abilities can and will die. Full stop.
Using BMI as a criteria? Probably not very wise, particularly when park officials from places like the Grand Canyon have put out a campaign saying, “Who dies or needs an airlift out the canyon? YOU! People who look like you! People who are in the best shape of their lives!” I don’t want to give those smug people I see on the trail another reason to think they can do the impossible. (“My BMI is normal! I can totally do this! They are talking to someone else!”)
BMI, in general, correlates with some health conditions. BMI does not correlate with thoughtfulness or overestimation of abilities. It sounds like this is the issue that needs to be addressed by the BSA.
—
Side note the first.
Forget BMI/numbers/etc for a second. How many fat people have you found that haven’t been browbeaten into *underestimating* their physical abilities, forget about overestimating them? We have a culture that says if you look fat, you “obviously” can’t do X, Y, or Z. (“Run a mile without stopping? Puhleeze.”) I’d be interested in a study that measures who is more likely to overestimate their abilities: people who look fat, or people who do not.
Side note the second.
RonF, you mentioned that you may hire a private company and run a trip outside of the BSA. Why can a private company be OK with taking responsibility for your safety, despite your BMI, when the BSA says no? Why are they different? To me, that image illustrates a disconnect between the BMI policy and the real world.
Side note the third.
It’s hard for me to come up with an interpretation of your pleasure in your hypothetical situation of dealing with certain people’s faces and questions that isn’t demeaning to me. It is probably not your intent. Regardless, I needed to point out that it’s not very clear.
RonF,
Can anyone here tell me is what kind of metric would correlate better towards evaluating the ability of someone to complete such an activity?
You’ve answered your own question;
If conditions like diabetes, asthma, etc. have been shown to not be a risk to completing this kind of activity successfully if certain measures are taken, then there’s no reason to bar them from that kind of activity.
Ditto BMI.
Unfortunately, yes. Just about every Scouter who actively leads Scouts on hikes, etc. can tell you a story of an unfit (a much better term than unhealthy, and to be considered as relative to the level of fitness required for the activity) Scouter or parent who went on a trip and both had a problem and caused problems for the rest of the group because of it.
And the analysis of these unfit people ascertained what about their weight, health status?
The BSA should find out whether those who ‘have/cause problems’ are more likely to come from a certain group. When they find this out, they can take it from there.
They should bear in mind that they are not god and cannot prevent any and all death at any and all times. Anyone testing themselves to extremes, including 18 year olds are subjecting themselves to an element of risk. That includes those who do aerobic exercise in their homes or local gyms in the attempt to reduce their fat stores.
Which is why anyone setting out on this course is recommended to see their doctor beforehand, to try and identify whether they will keel over as a result of the strain of both the exercise and any potential weight loss.
As always, the ratio of cost to benefit must be taken into account in all activities.
RonF, you mentioned that you may hire a private company and run a trip outside of the BSA. Why can a private company be OK with taking responsibility for your safety, despite your BMI, when the BSA says no? Why are they different?
Because when I contract through a private company it’s understood that I’m doing so at my own risk. They are handling getting camping permits and fishing licenses from the Ontario government and are renting me equipment. Absent equipment failure, it’s clear that all the liability for what I do is mine, as well as anything that might befall any minors I’m taking with me.
OTOH, when I’m on a Scouting trip the trip is sanctioned by the BSA. I file a National Tour Permit with the BSA. It provides them with all kinds of information about me and the other leaders, our training and qualifications and our itinerary and plans. In it I promise that I own a copy of the BSA’s rules and regulations for such trips (the Guide to Safe Scouting), that I’ve read it and that I promise to follow it. In return I receive the BSA’s blessing for the trip; I can call it a BSA trip, I can wear BSA uniforms and take advantage of any considerations people extend to Scouts (many organizations will give youth groups a cut rate), I’m covered by BSA liability insurance, etc. When I last crossed over into Canada I and every member of our crew was wearing BSA uniforms. The Canadian customs staff were searching a bunch of vehicles. One look at us, a few cursory questions, and we were waved through. The BSA accepts responsibility and liability for our actions that a private company does not and makes representations to the parents of the minors accompanying us that a private company does not.