Whether the Boy Scouts like it or not, they wouldn’t have enacted a gay ban if there were no gays in the organization, so the gays are there we can be sure that such a large organization would have gays in it. They deserve recognition, not punishment. Their system recognizes the achievement of the Eagle Scouts as their highest rank, it is hypocrisy that they should treat their gay Eagle Scouts with disrespect.
I have no documentation for this, but a commentator on public radio mentioned that the founder of the Boy Scouts was gay.
BTW, I can never understand why people get upset at the sexual orientation of people rather than just actual sexual behavior that affects them or those they have a familial or social relationship with.
As an eleven year old I was invited to a Boy Scout meeting by a neighbor friend. During the free time one of the older (about 12 or 13 year old) boys proudly showed off the hole he had made in his pants pocket so he could play “pocket pool”. I too young to have any ideas about aspects of sexuality like that and was appalled. I decided I never wanted to join that organization. So, apparently they should also ban those who have a mono-sexual orientation.
Early discussion of Baden-Powell’s sexuality focused on his relationship with his close friend Kenneth McLaren. Tim Jeal’s later biography discusses the relationship and finds that there is no conclusive evidence that this friendship was physical. Jeal then examines Baden-Powell’s views on women, his appreciation of the male form, his military relationships, and his marriage, concluding that Baden-Powell might have been a repressed homosexual. Jeal’s conclusion is shared by some biographers and disputed by others, but is not yet examined in any detail by other scholars.
I joined the Cub scouts when I was in elementary school, and quit after a few months because the meetings were boring and somewhat prissy. If I had known what the term “Gay” meant at that age, I probably would have described it that way.
FWIW, even though there’s a stereotype that Scout Leaders are “boy molesters”, mine did seem like that looking back on it now.
Watch-out for those Boy Scout books. That’s how they make their money, selling books and badges to the boys. They’re more about camping folklore, then they are about science. My 1980’s Boy Scout handbook tried to teach me that when in the woods and my friend gets bit by a poison snake (maybe you should avoid camping with snakes in the first place!), heat a razor with fire to clean it, cut the bite open with the razor (kids doing a little surgery in the woods, yeah baby that’s excitement!) and with your mouth suck out the poison from the wound (vampires get out of my way! ). No warnings about finding some anti-venom at a hospital or anything. It tells how to build camp fires too, with no warnings that in Colorado woods that this is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. I hope that Boy Scout handbook and all the other books have improved now-a-days, but I doubt it.
Watch-out for those Boy Scout books. That’s how they make their money, selling books and badges to the boys. They’re more about camping folklore, then they are about science. My 1980’s Boy Scout handbook tried to teach me that when in the woods and my friend gets bit by a poison snake (maybe you should avoid camping with snakes in the first place!), heat a razor with fire to clean it, cut the bite open with the razor (kids doing a little surgery in the woods, yeah baby that’s excitement!) and with your mouth suck out the poison from the wound (vampires get out of my way! ).
That was the standard first aid for snakebites at the time. It has since changed.
Watch-out for those Boy Scout books. That’s how they make their money, selling books and badges to the boys. They’re more about camping folklore, then they are about science. My 1980’s Boy Scout handbook tried to teach me that when in the woods and my friend gets bit by a poison snake (maybe you should avoid camping with snakes in the first place!), heat a razor with fire to clean it, cut the bite open with the razor (kids doing a little surgery in the woods, yeah baby that’s excitement!) and with your mouth suck out the poison from the wound (vampires get out of my way! ).
That was the standard first aid for snakebites at the time. It has since changed.
Watch-out for those Boy Scout books. That’s how they make their money, selling books and badges to the boys. They’re more about camping folklore, then they are about science. My 1980’s Boy Scout handbook tried to teach me that when in the woods and my friend gets bit by a poison snake (maybe you should avoid camping with snakes in the first place!), heat a razor with fire to clean it, cut the bite open with the razor (kids doing a little surgery in the woods, yeah baby that’s excitement!) and with your mouth suck out the poison from the wound (vampires get out of my way! ).
That was the standard first aid for snakebites at the time. It has since changed.
It works; I know first hand.
Nope, it doesn’t. There have been studies done to prove this. You are more likely to get a nasty infection from the human’s saliva. The fact that it ‘worked’ for you could have just been that the snake did not inject venom (they don’t always release their venom, especially the adults. Juvenile snakes usually do).
The kid that was bitten and the asst. scoutmaster who sucked the poison were still fine a year later; which is the last time I saw them. We did all start carrying snakebite kits including a suction device after the incident.
