So... is this too obvious or am I missing something.

[demiurgent]

So, as a Boy Scout who is a professed Agnostic (they'll let me know if they strip me of my merit badges, I expect), I've had some interest in the vast shift to the Right of an organization that used to be about teaching boys. And it's horrified and humiliated me to see what has happened with it.

So here's my question.

Why aren't we putting together a new organization? One based on the core ideals of community, tolerance, wisdom, woodcraft and the like? Lord Baden-Powell's writings and manuals are mostly long into the public domain, and are ripe to be adapted.

We could call it Youth Scouting, for both boys and girls. It wouldn't be the enemy of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, but exist along side them -- an alternative that gives all children and young adults a place to learn honor, and courtesy, and how to tie knots they'll never use again.

And yes, to learn Reverence. I learned Reverence with the Boy Scouts. I have never taken it to mean I have to believe in a specific God -- I have always taken it to mean I had to be respectful towards Faith. Which I am. Faith impresses me. I denigrate some of the things done in the name of faith, but I won't ever denigrate the possession of it.

The Boy Scouts don't want us. That's their right. Rather than try to break them down, let's create someone that wants everyone instead.

Comments

[akhenaten.livejournal.com]

My dad's a scoutmaster and he's seen a lot of really crap troops. One of the things almost universally seen as a dividing line between a good troop and a crap troop is this: Good troops are led by boys, crap troops are led by adults. In good troops boys try and be better because self-improvement is a good characteristic (or at least because them olda boys are cool), and in crap troops adults--parents and scoutmasters--browbeat them to be better.

The BSA undeniably has military affects, but it needs to be a lot less like boot camp and a lot more like ranger training, metaphorically.