Talk:Controversies about the Boy Scouts of America/Archive 3

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Contents

Massive Rewrite

So, I did a massive rewrite that I hope will answer both the POV concerns and the cleanup/stylistic concerns. I want to state off two things:

1. I tried SUPER hard to make this REALLY REALLY neutral.
You failed miserably ! Starting with the simple fact that 20 cases out of 110 million members is not "numerous cases" . Once again, the whole issue is a non-issue for about 5 million members of BSA and the "policies" are never mentioned in any Scouting literature or training materials used at the unit level.
Also the main issues are folks not agreeing to the Scout Oath and "Avowed or known" homosexuals in leadership positions. Keeping your sex life and political activism out of Scouting has been the rule for for years for all adult leaders whatever their preference.
I vote for a revert. --GCW50 16:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
So, what exactly do you object to most of all? Is it the extent to which the controversy's covered:-- i.e. the current version makes the issue seem like more of a deal than it is? That talking about in this much depth is inherently biased because it's not really that big of a deal? Or just that the current version has a systemic bias? I definitely wouldn't object to advertising this on POV-check or RFC to get a lot more eyeballs on it. LIke your own accent, your own bias is generally invisible to you, and if you wrote about a subject or care about it, it's almost impossible for you to figure out if it's biased.
Regarding your specific concern about "numerous"-- granted, there have only been 20 or so law suits, but we have to believe that for every case where someone was expelled but did not in fact sue. I looked really hard to see if BSA publishes any statistics for how many people have been expelled under the policy, but I don't think there's any net counting.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how large of a population we're talking about here. According to Demographics of sexual orientation, something between 1% and 10% of Americans are homosexual. So, let's take the most conservative figure (1%) and also assume that homosexual and scouting interest are independent (which is unlikely-- it seems like gays might either be MORE interested or LESS interested than hetereosexuals). But, very very roughly, we're looking at a population of about about 50,000 people who are either in BSA right now in violation of the policy or would be in BSA if the policy were not in place.
Now, you can totally rip that rough guess apart, because it's totally a bogus statistic, and i'd never ever ever even think for one second of putting anything as heineous and slapshod as that number in the article. But my point it-- we have to believe that the number of people are several orders of magnitude higher than the number of people who've actually filed lawsuits.
I feel like "numerous" is a pretty good guess as how many people have been affected one way or the other, but it is a guess. If people feel it's inapproriate, we could always say "several cases" or so we could also just say "there have been cases".
In defense of "how big an issue it is" and whether this page should really just be a paragraph or two, all I can point to is that the US Supreme Court and two acts of congress have expressed support of the scouts-- this is a national issue that has involved the very highest levels of government, not just a small internal BSA debate. There are many many people who have never wore the uniform or said the oath who are involved in this debate. For better or for worse, the BSA is, in this case, finds itself as the latest battleground in a huge national political debate between two very large and very motivated political groups.
I definitely realize that to the average "scout on the ground" it's not that big a deal, doesn't really come up, and it's most certainly not what Scouting's all about. I myself have was a scout for a period of years after the court battles began, and you know how many times the policies ever came up or were even discuss in my troop: 0. So, I can certainly see how you'd look at this article and feel that by virtue of it's size, it's a making a mountain out of a molehill. In my experience, local troops aren't that "into" the controvery generally-- but that doesn't stop a lot of greater america at large from being very into the controversy, on both sides.
I guess my point is, this is a really big issue, the scouts ARE under attack, and if you want to get a feel for how big an issue it is, don't ask around the troop, ask the Christian Coalition & the ACLU, Fox News & CNN, the Supreme Court and the US Congress.
So that said-- what exactly about the current version is biased?
--Alecmconroy 18:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


Since this is supposed to be an encyclopedia, why did you remove all of the numerical facts that kept everything in perspective, such as 50 out of x number United way chapters, etc., the number of lawsuits versus total members over time, the exact reasons for UUA badge removal (that were found in the letters on their own website) etc?

Some of us on both sides of the argument have been working hard for a number of months to keep it factual and not POV. Feel free to create your own website if you want a sopabox. Look through the old article and put the deleted facts back in or gets reverted tomorrow.--GCW50 20:28, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

1. Regarding: "Look through the old article and put the deleted facts back in or gets reverted tomorrow.". Ordering and threatening aren't, generally nice things to do. Please-- assume good faith-- I assure you, if I was consciously trying to make a soapbox on the issue, for one side or the other, the result would look very different. Please use consensus-- one person had said they felt the old page was POV, I personally feel the new page is an improvement, at least two other people have made comments or substantial edits that make me think they don't want it reverted, and Jagz hasn't gotten a chance to weigh in at all. If there really becomes a strong consensus to revert all my hard work, then we'll have to, cause that's the way it goes. But until it's clear such a consensus exists, please.. don't revert.
2. Regarding your specific concerns about the how many total United Way chapters there were and how many total scouts there had been: sentences like "There have been 110 million members of the BSA over the past 95 years; fewer than two dozen members have ever sued BSA ". I'm glad you asked about it, because those deletions were very conscious ones I had put a lot of thought into. Let me tell you my reasoning, and see what ya'll think.
So, I'll use an example of why I felt including the whole population total in these instances is misleading. Let's say I'm talking about the 2004 US Presidential Election. Suppose I say this:
"Only 60 million Americans (out of the 300 million Americans total) voted to re-elect President Bush."
This sentence is technically true, and it is technically factual, but it is also misleading and unfair to President Bush. The sentence implies that while only 60 million supported the President, the other 240 million didn't vote for him. This is technically true, but it's totally unfair and misleading. The fact is, most American's don't vote, and the majority of those 300 million were "undecided", not "opposed to Bush". And as we know, Bush was, in fact, the most popular candidate. So to say "60 million out of 300 million total supported Bush" is simply very misleading.
In a similar sense, it's also misleading to say "Only two dozen (out of 110 million total) have sued the BSA". Yes, it's technically true, but implicit in that sentence is the idea that the other 109,999,976 members agreed with the policies. But of course, as you know, only a teensy tiny minute percent of the members who disagree would ever sue-- particularly after the court has so strongly upheld BSA's rights to set their own standard. Every legal case-- from Marbury v. Madison to Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade has just a few litigants to represent whole classes of people. To say "only two dozen out of 110 million" implies there's just few lone nuts out there, about two dozen, who oppose the policy. In reality, a substantial minority (about a third) of BSA opposes the policy, and some chunk of the rest of the nation opposes the policy. So, I feel that to list the number of legal cases as a fraction of the total number of members in all of BSA history is simply very misleading.
The sentence "About 53 of the 1350 local United Way chapters have withdrawn funding" suffered from a similar problem. 50 of the chapters have vocally said they're withdrawing all funding. But that doesn't mean that the other 1300 have vocally said "we're going to continue funding the scouts no matter what". Instead, the other 1300 simply "haven't voted". Do the other 1300 even support the scouts at all? Maybe they've never donated to the scouts and so they can't withdraw funding. Maybe they've cut quietly funding to the scouts but not made a big deal about it. Maybe they've significantly decreased funding the scouts but still donate a little. Or maybe they're still deciding what to do. Or maybe they really have decided to support the scouts all the way and have increased funding. I have no idea what status they are. The 1300 chapters are ones that "haven't voted" as far as we know. So, I feel that listing how many have withdrawn all funding as a fraction of the total chapters is misleading.
However, with the United Way issue, we do have one secondary problem. When we talk about how many people have sued, we all know exactly what a person is and about how big they are. But when you hear "United Way Chapter"-- we don't know how big that is. So, to solve that problem, I explicity listed a few "Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle" so that the reader could get a feel for a chapter-- that is, a chapter is "roughly city-sized". I had also wanted to figure out the total dollar amount that used to be contributed by those chapters and compare it to the BSA's total contributions, so that people could get a feel for how much money we're talking about, but I couldn't find a source on that.
3. About the Unitarian emblem. What exactly do you disagree with about the current version. 171.64.22.113 made some really excellent contributions to that section and I'm embarassed that my original version didn't have those things in there, and I think the contribution significantly helps that section to NPOV.
I couldn't really get factually and verifiably feel for why exactly the emblem was canceled. The initial letter from BSA makes it seem like it was just a bureaucratic thing-- the current version hadn't been approved, so it gets cancelled, and once you re-submit, it'll get approved again. The follow-up letters lead one to the conclusion was not the fact that they hadn't submitted it for approval, but that the real problem was that the unitarians were directly preaching to their children some positions that were contrary to the established values of Scouting.
What this section really needs is an official statement from BSA on their side of the issue, but I can't find one anywhere on their website. All we have are a few scattered letters from one employee of BSA which state a few different reasons. The closest thing we have is this quote from a letter from a BSA employee to the Unitarians:
Your letter goes on to say the following: "The new edition of Religion in Life will be available from the UUA Bookstore this summer. Along with each copy , the Association will separately provide a letter from me, along with resources appropriate to dealing with issues of homophobia and religious discrimination." Unfortunately, this simply reopens the entire issue of using boys as a venue to air your differences with the policies of the Boy Scouts of America.
We could quote this directly, but that seems a tad unfair to BSA to take one of their inter-organizational letters and quote it directly as if it were an official policy piece. Instead, the current version just states that it was this revelation that ended discussions, and leave the BSA's reasoning left up to the readers. All and all, I'm not totally pleased with how this section turned out. I didn't want to delete it from the article outright, but the lack of a good official BSA press release on it makes it hard to do the subject justice.
Maybe we should email BSA and ask them directly for an official statement we could quote.
Input from all on all these issues greatly appreciated.

-Alecmconroy 00:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


2. I worked really hard on this, so please, even if you don't like parts, don't just like revert the whole think outright, or it'll give me an aneurysm.

Umm, despite it's different structure, almost everything's still there, more or less, just summarized a tad and moved around. As Jagz speculated it could, the page did, in fact, fit within the recommended maximum article size. Part of the way this brevity was accomplished was:

  • I cut down the "Membership Inflation Scandal" to one sentence-- just a passing mention.
  • I didn't mention the "Girls in Scouting" thing at all-- a few of the advocacy groups mention it, but I didn't really find any discussion of it in mainstream media, so I went ahead and ommitted it.
  • I didn't mention those two scoutmasters that were arrested (one for murder, one for child porn), and I didn't mention anything to do with the sex abuse or that one lawsuit where someone's suing BSA directly for abuse. Maybe I'm biased, but I just don't see it as truly a problem with the organization-- it seems like any group is going to have a few bad apples.
  • I didn't fully get into the on-going "Controversy About Governmental Support"-- I mentioned it, quickly summarized both sides, and linked to the two biggest cases that are involved. Although I did mention the two relevant acts of congress earlier in the article (in the "Support from Government" section), I didn't explicity re-introduce them in them in this section. I didn't get into the curret injuction that's in place, I didn't mention the relevant legal precidents, I didn't really "dig my teeth into it"- I sorta blew past it pretty quickly and only gave a really brief and super informal discussion of the whole "Is it special access or is it equal access" issue. On the one hand, this is justified on the grounds that anything we write now will quickly become dated as those two big cases are decided, appealed, argued, and redecided, and "Wikipedia is not a news agency". On the other hand, it's a big issue, and if anyone felt we really need to get into the legal nitty-gritty of it, sacrificing brevity for the sake of thoroughness, i couldn't totally disagree.

I included a gazillion references inline-- I don't feel most of the links are "needed", as in, someone should really go and visit them, but they are there as references. If we feel that some things are "sufficiently-commonly-known" that we can remove the cites. We also could use a formal reference section, instead of just using the inline style.

I generally used the term "gay" instead of "homosexual"-- Harvard and APA style manuals make me. If you didn't know that, then you probably haven't had to attend a very liberal liberal arts college in the last decade, and if so, I envy you.

What else... PLEASE don't hate me, I went ahead and removed the definitions section since it was so stylistically odd to just have page from the BSA glossary stuck in the article like that. I tried to explicitly make the prose un-ambiguous. So, for example, since "leader" can refer to either adult or youths, I've tried to explicitly use the terms "adult leader" and "youth leader", rather than just lumping them together as "leaders". I think that should help the confusing around that term. I _think_ normal people know what packs and troops are.

I may have gone overboard in giving the background in the "Boy Scouts of America's Position": Baden-Powell, how long and how essential religion has been to the program, and then quoting verbatim the official statements on "Morally Straight" and "Duty to God". Maybe this was overkill, but I wanted it to be crystal clear that scouts didn't just wake up one day in 1981 and decide "We hate gays and atheists, let's kick 'em out". Rather, this was a continuation of the core values of the organization going back to 1910 and the only reason it never came up before 1981 was that there weren't test cases where people sued. At the same time, I realize that that entire section could have been summarized in one paragraph that says "BSA regards homosexuality as immoral, and feels a "duty to god" is essential". But like I said, better to go overboard on explaining the position than having people come away from the article thinking it was some random or arbitrary decision.

Umm... I said that there aren't any pending lawsuits in which people are still trying to actually get a court to directly order BSA to admit them. In all the research i've done, I didn't come across any, but at the same time, I couldn't find any source that explicitly said this is so. But it is true right that since BSA v. Dale, this is a matter of settled law, and since then, the opponents of Scouting have pretty much given up on this, right (well, on that TACTIC I should say-- they're still doing the other stuff obvious). Does anyone know of any cases?

Does anyone know of any openly gay scouts who have been allowed to stay in scouting? My own interpretation of BSA legal policy is that "Morally Straight" doesn't include homosexuality, and if a scout doesn't obey the Scout Law, then he's not a scout, period. But the current wording is ambiguous, and it leaves the minute possiblity that there might be some lone openly-gay scout out there who is so low-ranked and un-ambitious that he in no way whatsoever qualifies as a leader and therefore has been allowed to serve. I'm skeptical, but it's still a possiblity, so I wrote it into the article.

Lastly, I worked really hard to give it that "neutral encyclopedia tone"-- the one that never just says X, but always says "BSA has said X, Critics have said Y. So-and-so alleges X, etc." So, please, everyone, genuinely let's try our hardest to actually BE neutral, and not use this article as a soapbox for an issue we all care about so dearly.

(and I should say-- I'm absolutely not accusing anyone of having done that, I'm not secretly pointing at some one or some side and wagging my finger-- I'm just saying, let's us and try really hard to genuinely keep it 'neutralish' and "encyclopedia-sounding.)

Anyway, I really hope everyone likes it a lot and I hope everyone thinks it's at least an improvement on the old version. --Alecmconroy 08:52, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I haven't had a chance to read the new article yet. Why is the table of contents not showing on the top of the Talk page?--Jagz 01:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see the article changed again to add in the quote from the BS vs. Dale decision that was taken from the BSA's own policies and mentioned that homosexuals may not be members. It's the most unambiguous source we have for the BSA prohibiting gay members, and I don't believe it was ever disowned by the BSA. Ken Arromdee 19:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Also, it says that scouts must be morally straight in "*thought*, word, and deed". This seems to indicate that the limitation applies to non-avowed homosexuals. Ken Arromdee 20:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Which quote? Is this is? it's from their 1991 policy: “The Boy Scouts of America has always reflected the expectations that Scouting families have had for the organization. We do not believe that homosexuals provide a role model consistent with these expectations. Accordingly, we do not allow for the registration of avowed homosexuals as members or as leaders of the BSA.”-Alecmconroy 20:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Right. It's an older quote, but it's not as if the BSA ever said "the policy prohibiting members is now rescinded". Their newer policy is just silent about it, so it's still their latest word on the subject of gay members. Ken Arromdee 06:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

This is utterly ridiculous. The article seems, once again, to have had all traces of the ban on gay members removed. The only argument even close to a rationale I've seen for this is that the newer policy only mentions leaders but not members. However, despite this:

  • the older policy does prohibit gay members, and the BSA has never disavowed this policy or otherwise claimed it doesn't apply
  • the rest of the article is meaningless if the policy doesn't prohibit gay members. For instance, "Some have interpreted the National Council's policy as requiring that local councils actively inquire about their members' sexual orientation". This clearly implies a ban on gay members (not just leaders). Or "seven Cub Scout packs announced they would admit gays in violation of the national policy". Unless Cub Scouts are directly admitted as leaders rather than as members, this implies that gay members violate the policy.
  • The requirement that members accept Scouting's "values and beliefs", which include a belief that homosexual conduct is wrong, excludes homosexual members (who generally don't believe such conduct is wrong)
  • The article itself says "Some people claim that the BSA allows openly gay youths to join or does not expel such youths; however, the BSA's policy of prohibition is clear on this issue." If this statement is true, then the BSA's policy prohibits gay members (since youths join as members and only become leaders later)
  • Even if the policy only limited leaders, the distinction between members and leaders is not what a non-Scout would immediately think of upon seeing those words. To a non-Scout, "only leaders are restricted" misleadingly implies that the prohibition only applies to a small subset of Scouts. Most non-Scouts would consider a restriction on "leaders", when all Scouts are expected to become leaders, to be a restriction on (in the vernacular, non-Scouting sense) members.

Many of these points were once in the article in various forms but have been gradually edited out, and I'm tired of editing them back in. How can this get fixed for good? Ken Arromdee 05:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Had all traces of gay banning removed? The first sentence of the article states "The Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the most prominent Scouting organization in the United States (U.S.), has certain highly controversial policies which prohibit gays and atheists from participation in their organization. So, can you be more specific? ..because that opening statement is pretty bold and quick to the point of the issue. --Naha|(talk) 05:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that the Boy Scouts bans gay leaders and members. The references to members keep getting removed, leaving us with a misleading statement that says only that the Scouts ban gay leaders. Ken Arromdee 14:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Read the section in the article titled, "Official position on homosexuality".
Currently that section says "Official position on homosexuality: The Boy Scouts of America's position is that known or avowed homosexuals cannot participate as Scouters (as registered BSA adult member salaried empolyees or adult volunteers), Scouts (youth members) , or charter hosts" - which should suit you fine.
Yeah, it does. Someone put it back in at 17:45, March 29, three hours after my comment and less than an hour before yours. Ken Arromdee 05:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
There is no way to keep people from vandalising a page or continuely sticking their POV in it outside of getting the page locked by admins, which means we, who make good edits to the article, would also not be able to edit it. So its kind of a win-lose situation. There is, however, a way to get it locked from unregistered users being able to edit it though, that may cut out some of the problems. Feel free to request it, I'd support it. --Naha|(talk) 18:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Idea for Controversies about BSA article

How about if the main article was changed to just a couple of introductory paragraphs with a link to the old article and a link to the new (rewritten) article? The old article could be modified to make it pro-BSA and the new article modified to make it anti-BSA. By presenting both points of view, we should be able to achieve NPOV.--Jagz 01:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think what you're describing is called a Wikipedia:POV fork, and supposedly it's "naughty" for the reasons expressed in that article. hehe. I personally think there's a lot of merit to the "This is what side 1 thinks", "This is what side 2 thinks" style of writing has a of merit, and I tried to do it in this article: "BSA's position, Critic's position, Critics of the Critics position", but I'm inferring you feel the current version than admirable explaining BSA's side? -Alecmconroy 02:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Inline Cites

Nahallac Silverwinds, incredible job on all those inline citations! you're my hero.

Jagz, I think the table of contents onlys show up after there's several different headings. Maybe this post will bring in back. -Alecmconroy 18:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem, I like fixing things and making them pretty :P --Naha|(talk) 05:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Definitions

For consistency, please use the following definitions when editing the article. These definitions are based on The Language of Scouting:

  • Adult- A person 18 years of age and up, male or female.
  • Charter- BSA authorization for an organization to use the Scouting program.
  • Chartered organization- A religious, civic, fraternal, educational, or other community-based organization that has applied for and received a charter to use the Scouting program.[1]
  • Commissioner- A commissioned Scouter who works with packs, troops, teams, and Venturing crews to help the units succeed.
  • Committee- A local chartered organization has a unit committee, composed of volunteers, to administer the affairs of each unit it operates.
  • Council- An administrative body chartered to be responsible for Scouting in a designated geographic territory.
  • Leader- All Scouters are classified as leaders regardless of position held (Scoutmaster, troop committee member, etc.). A leader is also a Scout in a leadership position (Assistant Patrol Leader, Senior Patrol Leader, etc.). Every youth advancing to the Star, Life, or Eagle rank must serve in a leadership position. ("Leader" is commonly used to refer to a registered adult, however, in this article, "leader" refers to a youth or an adult as discussed above.)
  • Member- A youth or adult who is registered with BSA.
  • Pack- A group made up of several Tiger Cub, Cub Scout, and Webelos Scout dens, including their families and leaders. (For boys younger than Boy Scouts.)
  • Professional- A salaried employee.
  • Scout- A registered youth member of a Boy Scout troop, synonymous with "Boy Scout".
  • Scouter- A registered adult member of the BSA.
  • Scoutmaster- A volunteer Scouter, 21 or older, appointed by the chartered organization to lead a Boy Scout troop.
  • Troop- The unit that conducts Boy Scouting for the chartered organization.
  • Unit- The entity that conducts Scouting for the chartered organization; it consists of registered youth members and registered adult volunteer members. A unit may be a pack, troop, team, crew, or ship. Its affairs are administered by the unit committee, which is appointed by the chartered organization.
  • Volunteer- Individual who donates service, time, or funds to support the program of the BSA.
  • Youth- A boy or young man, 10 or older (additional rules apply to minimum age) to 17 years old (under age 18).

Note: Venturing is a BSA program for young men and women who are 14 through 21 years of age. Some of the definitions above do not apply to the Venturing program.

--Jagz 15:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Request for Comments

I went ahead and put the page up on RFC to get more eyeballs on the page.

So for anyone just joining our program already in progress: There was an old version of the page, here. Some people felt it was POV, too Pro-Boy Scouts of America. Some feel the current version is POV, too anti-Boy Scouts of America.

So, the questions we're looking at are:

  1. Which version is better, old or new?
  2. How can the article be made more neutral?
  3. How can the article be improved in general?

--Alecmconroy 03:18, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

OLD: I'm not an editor of this article but visiting from the RFC. The old article appeared to me to be neutral and should have been the starting point to make incremental changes to reach a consenus around neutrality in the usual way. The replacement article is irredeemably biased against the Boy Scouts. patsw 19:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Please, talk, don't revert

GCW50,

I tried very hard to make a neutral article. I tried very hard to explain in detail why I made some of the choices I have, and see other people's opinons on the specific cases you've raised. I put up a request for comments to get more opinions on it. If we need to, we can go to mediation for this, but after all the time I put into trying to improve the old article, I feel very strongly that the improvements should not be reverted in the absence of a strong consensus.

Please, reply the above discussion regarding the United Way statistics. Please, don't revert wholesale again. Let people come to the site via the RFC and be able to weigh in the new versions.

I'll only make this one revert to make my objection, but i won't revert-war. If you rever again, we can go forward in the dispute resolution process. Right now, you're the only person who's suggested that the new version is so attrocious that it should be deleted in its entirety.

-22:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

-Alecmconroy 22:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

GCW50,

The job done re-vamping this article was (in my opinion, of course) superb. I feel that it is extremly neutral. Wording in a few places could, perhaps, be tweaked but a complete revert is very far from anything remotely related to "necessary."

Assuming good faith, as pointed out above, is very important here and on all obviously well-intentioned edits. I don't know User:Alecmconroy from Adam, but I looked around really hard after reading comments on this talk page and I couldn't find any soapboxes!

Wikipedians try to work together to create the best articles possible. When disagreements arise, instead of telling someone they "failed miserably" in their editing, and that you will "revert again tomorrow" if x and y are not changed to your liking is not acceptable behavior. Please provide here, in detail, changes that you think should be made to the article and allow time for response and discussion before reverting the entire article. These comments should include, if possible, citations to your own sources if applicable.

Trust me, if someone provides incorrect or non-factual information in an article, they DO want to know about it so it can be fixed - but letting them know by flaming them is not the best way to get them to work with you. Constructive criticisim is the way to go.

Wikipedia is really easy to "do" if everyone works together and assumes good faith! I promise! --Naha|(talk) 05:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Violence and other controversies

If we feel there are other controversies worth mentioning, they should probably be in a separate section at the end of the article, so that it's clear that they're totally unrelated to the "big" gay/atheist controversy.

As for the violence controversy, I ommitted it during the re-write because i'm skeptical that it's really notable-- one report of some bullying and a few lone scoutmasters condoning it that happened at some scout camp twenty years ago. Is it part of a larger on-going problem throughout scouting, or really was it just an isolated event that almost no one remembers. I don't know. I mean-- if it was a big enough incident that it was being talked about on CNN at the time, and "No history of the controversy of the boy scouts would be complete without mentioning this incident", then i guess it would be notable.

In any case, if we include it, we should source it. I did a few googles but couldn't come up with anything (other than the wikipedia mirrors and forks of course). -Alecmconroy 09:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I was an eye witness to the incident. It occurred in the summer of 1986 at Goshen and involved troop 1802. The scout was pretty much beat half to death by three other boys and had to go to the hospital. The people that beat him went to juvi-hall. I saw similar incidents in my 5-6 years of Scouting where kids would get beat up on camping trips (but nothing as bad as Goshen). If I ever have kids, I will keep them out of Scouting for that very reason. -Husnock 17:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
The controversies presented in this article should be current or recently resolved controversies. Also, just because the BSA has a problem, doesn't necessarily make it a controversy.--Jagz 02:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
The constant removal of the information about the 1986 beating by certian users strikes me as article ownership. The incident happened and, even twenty years later, the kind of attitude that allowed such violence has affected present BSA policies to prevent future occurences. Blatant removal of an entire section of the article would only be justified if it was proven factually inaccurate. Violence in the scouts is an issue, it should be in the article. I hope certain users discuss this instead of simply removing the material over and over again. -Husnock 02:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
What? Why would we include only current controversies? Just because something happened a long time ago doesn't make it unworthy of documentation. By that standard, we should delete all the history articles from Wikipedia because they aren't "current." If something has been a noteable controversy within the organization it doesn't matter when it occured. I'm not pointing at any particular situation/mishaps/controversy - just in general. We don't discount something because of when it happened ..I can't even fathom that. --Naha|(talk) 19:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to concur with Jagz and the anonymous user. There's a couple of problems with the violence section. For one-- does an isolated incident that happened twenty years ago qualify as notable? Secondly, does that act of violence have any relevance to this article-- there are many many isolate acts of violence among youth each year-- what does this one have to do with the national organization of the Boy Scouts of America. Just because it happened at scout camp doesn't mean it's "about" the Boy Scouts. Lastly, it's not really a "controversy" so much as it's just a very regrettable thing that happened-- for example, six people were accidently killed at the 2005 Jamboree-- a horrible thing, but it's not a "controversy" and so it probably doesn't belong on this article. For all these reasons, I think that even if we could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of the events you describe actually happened, I still don't think the event qualifies for inclusion on this page.

But, there's a whole second problem with the paragraph. At the moment, the events you describe don't meet the requirements of Wikipedia:Verifiability-- there aren't any published sources that I can find that describe the material, and using your own personal recollections of the material would violate Wikipedia:No original research prohibition of using unpublished editor-provided eyewitness accounts.

Now, that second objection it's as important to me as the first arguments-- I don't doubt the events you describe happen, and I'm not trying to say you fabricated the whole thing-- on the contrary, such behavior problems are endemic to high-schools across the country. But, it's just that if we started letting everyone include their own personal recollections directly into the articles and didn't require verifiability, we'd wind up with a lot of problems. Now, if the violence section was really important and essential to the article, I'm sure we could find a way to verify it-- there's gotta be court documents, for example, and probably a press mention somewhere or other from back when in happened. But, as of this moment, the section doesn't isn't verifiable.

But setting aside the verifiability issue for the moment-- Do you really feel this inicident is an actual controvery about the scouts? It seems to me, it's not a controvery, just a problem they had one day twenty years ago. They punished the offenders, they reprimanded the scouts, and they instituted new policies to help prevent it. No controversy-- just a thing that happened once.

To use a different example, I saw a really bad fight once when I was college. Two guys in the dorms got drunk and fought each other, police got called. Bad scene. But if you go to the article on my university you won't find any discussion of this incident, because-- people fight all the time. What does that incident have to do with my university? Yeah, they were both students, and yeah, it took place on university property, and yes, the university expelled the students and increased funding for campus police-- but what does it really have to do with my univesity?

-Alecmconroy 10:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

A good solution would probably be to start up a new article, called something like "Violence in the Boy Scouts", giving a history of incidents in the organization. There was at least one case I saw on a documentary where somone went into a BSA camp and killed a scout (back in the 60s). The guy was a serial child killer who got caught years later. Then there was the beating I saw and I'm sure, back in 1930s Scouting could get pretty rough. The mentality from thsoe days (or so my grandfather used to tell me) was that a boy had to "take care of himself" and I imagine the BSA of the 30s encouraged that (but I dont know for sure). So, if the info needs to be removed from this article, thats fine. We can start another article, and if still there are problems we can go down VfD road. If such an article was VfDed that would pretty much be the end of the issue. -Husnock 13:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
There are probably several current BSA problems that could best be covered in a separate article. It's important to distinguish a problem from a controversy.--Jagz 17:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I attempted to cover violence in the Boy Scouts in a separate article but it was attacked and nominated for deletion less than 24 hours after its creation. As such, I fully intend to reinstate the violence and hazing section in this article. Since specific examples are being frowned upon, I will cite articles and other primary sources about the action of hazing, and how it has gotten into several groups, the Boy Scouts among them. -Husnock 15:09, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
If you establish it as a documented current controversy then it can probably stay in this article. If it is a recently resolved controversy then maybe it can stay. Otherwise you should find another forum. This article doesn't cover racial segregation and other controversies from years ago. I'm sorry but I was a Scout for 7 years in two different regions of the country and worked as a Scout summer camp staff member several times but can not relate to your section on violence. Sounds like you were traumatized. I saw a guy almost cut their thumb off with a hatchet during a Camporee event but I'm not writing an article about the dangers of Scouting.--Jagz 16:30, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Reminder

Scout, Scouting, Scout master, Scout troop ..and basically all instances of the word "Scout" as they pertains to the context of this project are CAPATALIZED. While this is a talk page, and grammar isn't quite as important as it is in article space, some of the people who have commented on this page using the word "Scout" spelled "scout" are the same ones who have consistantly not capitalized the word correctly in article space. I know this because I've corrected dozens of instances of the word in various articles, hehe. Please check your capitalization of the word before you click "save page" when editing articles. Thanks! --Naha|(talk) 19:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Naha,

I'm really new here so I don't know if this has been covered elsewhere, but the source of the capitalization rules is the BSA itself, and it has an interest (mainly because of trademark law) in making terms like "scout" and "scouting" into proper nouns rather than generic terms. In the context of this project, this rule above is probably pretty safe, since we're only referring to members and programs of the BSA. However, the terms should probably not be capitalized if they are referring to the scouting movement or scouting programs in general, rather than BSA members or programs. I know it's nitpicky, but there are legal cases being fought about this issue even as we speak. --packanimal 00:18, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

See The Language of Scouting. Also see Scouting.--Jagz 01:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
packanimal, these are for all areas of Scouting, not just BSA. --Naha|(talk) 04:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes

I've been cleaning up the footnotes: the works and titles did not match in most instances. I am updating the access dates as I update the titles.

  • Footnote 5 is a bad link: anyone have any idea on this?

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

  • F5 is fixed- thanks. Next problem: there are 45 references, but only 43 footnotes. There must be some in-line links that will have to be rooted out. My head hurts. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • And some of the footnotes are out of order, so the numbers don't match. This is tedious. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • OK: The footnotes are fixed for now. Two notes were referenced twice, so I simply duplicated the footnotes with a different reference tag. I want to look at the new footnote system using Cite.php [[2]] that will help with these types of issues, but I'm going to try it on something shorter first. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Other Controversies

Not surprisingly, all references to enrollment scandals, abuse scandals, and other issues including removal of volunteers criticizing or questioning paid staff on finances, enrollment claims and property sales are regularly removed from this site. BSA's Chief Scout Executive has one of the highest compensation packages of all non-profit CEO's - $915,000 in 2004 (from Guidestar.org) despite continuing drops in membership. The head of Youth Protection efforts was assested and pled guilty to distribution of child pornography in 2005. A CDC report was highly critical of BSA's National Jamboree during the summer of 2005 where hundreds fell ill from heat exhaustion. Questions have been raised concerning the unusually high number of Scouts killed in accidents in 2005 as well.

This was added to article by 69.124.137.249 on 17:01, 11 March 2006 and moved here where it belongs by --Bduke 07:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Page organization and headings

The page looks pretty well-organized, but I find the headings verbose. The TOC is a little overwhelming - it should give an overview at a glance, but with the headings the way they are, you have to actually read the whole thing to understand what's going on. --Smack (talk) 06:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Manual Contents

Like it less. Let it be done automatically. Why do you think it should be done manually? --Bduke 22:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Smack suggested that the current headings were overly verbose, so this was a way to trim the TOC down. I'm kinda ambivalent about it too. -Alecmconroy

Governmental vs Government

To me, it feels like fingernails on a chalkboard when I read "governmental entities" and "governmental support". Isn't "government entities" and "government support" more common usage? While the "als" are technically correct, they just don't sound like American English. --Habap 19:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm a native speaker of American English and they sound just fine and normal to me /shrug. --Naha|(talk) 04:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Unitarian-Universalist Conflict

I have a concern about a few bits in this section. I've put in a bit about the Cubs and the Boy Scouts often (always?) having separate awards and also that the BSA withdrew recognition for both UU awards. I wasn't sure whether to add that the Girl Scouts also participate in the Religious Emblem programs. I did add 'Boy' in one place so as not to imply that Girl Scouts cannot wear the UU award on their uniform (they can)

1. There is the statement that

"The UUSO had no official connection with the UUA and in fact was created through the BSA's Religious Relationships Committee as a means of circumventing the UUA."

The first part is true; however, is the second? My own gut feeling is it was initiated by some UU scouters not by the Religious Emblem program committee, but, that is only a feeling and could be changed by some evidence. If there is no evidence, the second part of the statement should be chopped.

2. Also the statement "Curiously, the BSA does not mention this program on its official website" should probably also be dropped. It is possible that no one has bothered to update the page.

I will note that the UUSO did participate in the 2005 Jamboree UU 2005 Jamboree service and information for the award was handed out there and formally unveiled then (I have a couple of cites for that). The BSA list of religious emblems web page was last updated in June 2005 before the Jamboree.

3. And "while Boy Scouts could not wear the Religious Emblem Square Knot on their uniform, many wore their UU Religious Emblem as a "temporary badge," in compliance with the BSA's Insignia Guide."

Evidence? I've heard of Boy Scouts not being able to wear the medal but are wearing the knot (which only apparently indicates that that an emblem has been earned not which religion)

4. Do we want to include external links to both UU programs?

5. Given the size this section has gotten, perhaps a separate article on the Religious Emblem program should be written. Said article won't mention the controversies in depth but would refer back to this article and this article refers to the religious emblem article for details on the program.

6. Are there reasons why info about the refusal to recognize the Wiccan award should not be included in this article?--Erp 23:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


I agree wholeheartedly that we should cut the allegation that the UUSO "in fact was created through the BSA's Religious Relationships Committee as a means of circumventing the UUA." Very anti-BSA, and pure conjecture as far as I can tell.
I tend to think we should deleted the entire paragraph that discusess the UUSO. It's simply too much reporting on a current event. As far I can tell, the BSA has never said it approved a program with them, the UUA doesn't know what's going on, and PRAY just made a wild announcement that turned out (so far) to be false. Our getting into this relatively trivial can of worms isn't worth it-- it's reporting that there was a false report.
More thoughts later.
--Alecmconroy 01:40, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure it is a false report. PRAY does co-ordinate most of the religious emblems for the BSA and it did announce it in an official newsletter. I've also seen a couple of announcements that it was officially unveiled at the 2005 jamboree (for instance the Capital Area Council chaplain newsletter) The UUSO web page claims to have their emblem recognized by the BSA (and that web page has been updated recently). PRAY has not corrected their announcement. The Detroit Council Religious Relations Committee reports it. If the emblem is not recognized, I'm surprised the BSA has not yet issued a denial as it is showing up on council web pages.

Homosexual employees

My understanding is that they cannot legally ban employees based on sexual orientation, so that, at the very least, they do not officially ban them. I have not changed the top section which speaks about what has happened and does not state the official position. I could, of course, be wrong about the official position.... --Habap 17:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. Reverted without discussion. I found a link about it. I thought it had been James Dale that was asked by Ron Carroll (the National Capital Area Council's Council Executive at the time) why he didn't just apply for employment, but it was Roland Pool, a DC-area man denied adult membership in the BSA.
Some weeks before, at the end of yet another day of long and detailed testimony, Pool found himself on the Metro with Ron Carroll, who had just that afternoon testified that the Boy Scouts probably would have welcomed Pool as a volunteer if he had just kept his homosexuality a secret. Carroll was heading back to Bethesda, Pool to Woodley Park, and so for a few stops the two men made awkward small talk. Then, just as Pool was getting to his stop, he says, Carroll surprised him by asking him if, given all his scouting experience, he had ever thought about joining the Boy Scouts as a professional staff member. Carroll doesn't remember asking that, but Pool does, vividly, though he was so surprised that he doesn't remember his reply.[3]
So, though I thought it was a rumor I remembered, this seems to support the idea that the policy does not include denying employment, which would be a violation of laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation. --Habap 19:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
BSA policy on employment:
"With respect to positions limited to professional Scouters or, because of their close relationship to the mission of Scouting, positions limited to registered members of the Boy Scouts of America, acceptance of the Declaration of Religious Principle, the Scout Oath, and the Scout Law is required. Accordingly, in the exercise of its constitutional right to bring the values of Scouting to youth members, Boy Scouts of America will not employ atheists, agnostics, known or avowed homosexuals, or others as professional Scouters or in other capacities in which such employment would tend to interfere with its mission of reinforcing the values of the Scout Oath and the Scout Law in young people."[4]
I stand corrected. --Habap 17:05, 5 April 2006 (UTC)