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

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, there's a few obstacles, which all come back to the same thing. The Boy Scouts have like a hundred+ years of tradition. Now, while I may diss tradition, and it's stupid to think something's the way it should be just because it's always been that way, I have to admit that the orginization surviving for a hundred years shows they're doing something right. And, to dip into stupid marketoid speak, it's a huge "branding" advantage. Everybody knows about Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts even have some kind of national recognition thing and deal with the govt, which I don't recall the specifics of, I think. Any new group wouldn't have all that.

And also, it'd be probably seen by some as the "liberal boy scouts", or something like that, and be dissed for that reason, even aside from the usual fundamentalist hysterics.

But the biggest thing is just that the Boy Scouts have been around a hundred years, and have all the kinds of resources, connections, and other stuff like that that a new group wouldn't have. And that would be the biggest obstacle to overcome, I think.

There's also the matter of not allowing fundamentalists to keep hijacking all sorts of good orginizations and ideas and claiming them as their own. They've done that too much already.

And I went through all the Cub Scouts, but gave up on the Boy Scouts because the local troop was crap. Quit after the second meeting.