CA Judges must disavow Boy Scouts

[jminn1]

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/16/392360308 ... boy-scouts" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is just wrong. Krazyness I expect from Kalifornia... but this is way beyond that.
How far must political correctness go before it becomes a bias in and of itself?

This is near and dear to my heart as I spent 20 years as part of BSA. Neither one of my boys would be the proud men I'm proud of without that organization.

[Pawpaw]

You would think that at least one judge would file a civil rights lawsuit.

It doesn't seem like it would be hard to tie membership to an organization to first amendment rights.

[Gaidheal]

Unfortunately, many BSA troops are discriminatory on the basis of religion and sexuality. The same is not true of the Girl Scouts, by the way. BSA merely needs to clean up its act and this all goes away, as it is they are facing lawsuits and rightly so. Your beliefs are your business but they don't permit you to infringe the rights of others.

[chuck j]

The BSA was neutered and it's purpose defiled several years ago . I was a supporter of scouts (I was one) for years but I have withdrawn my support . I would rather see this great organization die than to continue on it's present perverted course . It is a shame .

[jmra]

The BSA was neutered and it's purpose defiled several years ago . I was a supporter of scouts (I was one) for years but I have withdrawn my support . I would rather see this great organization die than to continue on it's present perverted course . It is a shame .

in its current state it would be better off dead.

[Cedar Park Dad]

The BSA was neutered and it's purpose defiled several years ago . I was a supporter of scouts (I was one) for years but I have withdrawn my support . I would rather see this great organization die than to continue on it's present perverted course . It is a shame .

Clarify please? Other than attending a friend's son's Eagle Scout ceremony I'm not familiar.

[jamminbutter]

BSA is now a dying organization, it has lost the way from it's roots and and as chuckj stated was neutered and defiled many years ago. I no longer state that I AM but WAS an Eagle Scout. If they desire, my children will be involved in Trail Life and Heritage Girls but not BSA or GSA.

[2farnorth]

Unfortunately, many BSA troops are discriminatory on the basis of religion and sexuality. The same is not true of the Girl Scouts, by the way. BSA merely needs to clean up its act and this all goes away, as it is they are facing lawsuits and rightly so. Your beliefs are your business but they don't permit you to infringe the rights of others.

IMHO
Their beliefs are theirs not mine. It doesn't permit them to infringe on my rights or beliefs either. By forcing an organization that I loved to adopt/allow their beliefs, they are infringing. This whole business has gotten agonizing.

[jminn1]

The BSA was neutered and it's purpose defiled several years ago . I was a supporter of scouts (I was one) for years but I have withdrawn my support . I would rather see this great organization die than to continue on it's present perverted course . It is a shame .

Clarify please? Other than attending a friend's son's Eagle Scout ceremony I'm not familiar.

CPD,
Members of the Boy Scouts of America, as part of their membership in the organization, recite an oath as follows as part of meetings, outings, an other activities, kinda like the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America.

The Boy Scout Oath
On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

Many Boy Scout Troops are chartered by Faith based organizations which are decidedly biased in their acceptance of gay people, and the Troops naturally inherit that bias, especially with respect to the clause "and morally straight." in the Oath.

With that said, I will leave you to draw your own conclusion as to how that bias is perceived.

I was very active in the BSA for 20 years, was part of the creation of a brand new Troop as a board member, and actively participated in the adult leadership of two others, so I feel I'm qualified to say that what is happening is, in my opinion, just plain wrong.

I have friends who are Scouts! And I'm proud of it! If you don't like it, go build your own sandbox!

[mods: I tried VERY hard to keep this above-board and respectful while sharing my opinion]

[TomV]

BSA is THE youth program for the LDS church. As such, they are rather strongly anti-gay.

Many still hold that homosexuality is a morality issue and a violation of the scout oath jminn1 posted. I grew up in the BSA. My dad was an assistant scout master, so I was camping with my troop long before I was old enough.

There is a splinter organization called Trail Life which is also anti-gay.

I still feel the BSA is a great organization with much to offer today's young boys.

[cb1000rider]

I don't think the subject of sexuality should be imposed onto ANY children's organization - but perhaps that's just me.

I don't either.

The argument here isn't just about BSA. The issue is, simply: Can professional judges have personal ties to organizations with discriminatory (IE - against a protected class) memberships without impacting their ability to judge appropriately on issues affecting that class?

An extreme example would be: Can judges be KKK members and still be expected to rule fairly? The argument is that if judges are BSA members/supporters, they're supporting an organization that discriminates against a protected class - is that mindset going to affect their judicial work?


That's the basis for the argument, at least. I don't think the BSA is the KKK - that's just an extreme example.

[The Annoyed Man]

I don't think the subject of sexuality should be imposed onto ANY children's organization - but perhaps that's just me.

Andy, just by way of explanation, BSA had a strong Christian foundation at its beginning. The oath a scout takes reduces that only to being true to the large concept of "God and Country", as an admission that there are Jewish scouts, and Bahai scouts, and LDS scouts and [any kind of religion] scouts — all united in the concept of being true to their deity, and to their country. It is really a noble thing they are asking young people to take an oath to. Can you imagine an oath like that being popular in thug culture, for instance? I can't. That last line of the oath, the promise to keep one's self "morally straight" may be a vague term in modern culture, but I can assure you that, 50 years ago, everybody knew what that meant....... and sexual conduct was only a part of it. "Morally straight" also means to be a truth-teller, to not be a thief, to be reliable, honest, and forthright......all positive values that we could use more of these days. Today's youth become tomorrow's politicians.

More importantly (and people are more than free to disagree with this or not) "morally straight" was considered to be an entire package, including the part about sexual conduct. And the sexual conduct component meant more than simply hewing to heterosexuality. It also meant treating women with gallantry; being protective toward women and remembering that each one of them could be somebody's sister/daughter/mother, and treating them with the courtesy and respect attendant to their gender. It also meant postponing sexual activity until adulthood - preferably married adulthood. It held that the institution of marriage was reserved to the union of a man and a woman.

So when the modern culture begins to pick apart and parse the meaning of "morally straight", they may be advancing certain liberties for the 3% of the population who are gay, but they are also picking apart and destroying the unified concept of virtue for the remaining 97%.

We rely on a Constitution which absolutely depends on a moral and virtuous people. When society begins to redefine morality and virtue, the natural fallout from that is the leftist idea of a "living, breathing Constitution which means different things for different people......because there are no more moral absolutes." It becomes nothing more than "some list of nazi rules written by a bunch of dead slave-owners".

That figure - 3% - comes from a fairly recent (July, 2014) CDC study which says that only 3% of the population fall into the LGBT category (LINKEY). As a {small "L"} libertarian, I don't care what people want to do with their ugly parts. As a Bible believing Christian, I'm more concerned about their spiritual conditions. I believe that if the other person is right with God, then his/her behaviors will begin to flow out of that, including their sexual morality. But as a citizen, I have some rights too. That 3% don't get to hold my rights hostage anymore than I get to hold theirs hostage. I think that is fair play. BSA allows gay scouts....just not gay scout leaders. But if the CDC is correct, then 3% of BSA leaders are already gay.......and I don't see any news reports about thousands of Americans being summarily drummed out of BSA because of their homosexuality. Actual instances of people being drummed out, or denied leadership positions are so rare that when they actually happen, the media pick it up as the latest cause célèbre........ and that's just not happening on a day to day basis.

In short, this is a non-existent problem. That means that this regulation isn't in response to a problem; rather, it is a preemptive move which is part of the leftist LGBT agenda which is stalinist in its nature. They are not protecting anybody; what they are doing is forcing affirmation onto everybody.

No less a prominent lesbian feminist than Camille Paglia (whom I think is one very smart cookie) paints the modern LGBT and feminist movements as "stalinist".......and she is essentially libertarian. In this December 2013 article, she says about the "Phil Robertson, Duck Dynasty" flap:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ciety.html

She recently spoke out in support of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, supporting his right to express homophobic views.

‘In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality – as I one hundred percent do.

'If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again, they have a right of religious freedom there.' she told Laura Ingraham’s radio show last week.

While as a Christian I cannot think that her lesbian desires are good for her, I also recognize that they are none of my business......just as she recognizes that the ideas of an allegedly homophobic preacher are none of her business. She disputes what the left does in terms of "thought policing". I do too. I find it reprehensible. In that light, I think it is absolutely absurd to think that a judge in a courtroom could not give a fair trial to a gay defendant, because that judge had once been part of or continues to support BSA.

The fascists who wrote this ruling are violating the rights of conscience of those judges. Under the exact same standard, I could argue that, as a libertarian independent, I can't get a fair trial from a judge or prosecutor who is a member of either the republican or democrat party, and that therefore, any judge who votes, or who supports voting, cannot be allowed to magistrate over any Texas courtroom.

That is absurd on its face, and so is this non-existent problem that the stalinists have with BSA.

[rtschl]

Tam is spot on, as usual.

The BSA caved. This is no longer an institution of integrity that I loved as a kid as it has decided to violate the Scout Oath. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed their constitutional right of association. This I would think would mean that the California order on judges should be invalid. It clearly is a 1st Amendment issue that has already been ruled on.

[The Annoyed Man]

I don't think the subject of sexuality should be imposed onto ANY children's organization - but perhaps that's just me.

I don't either.

The argument here isn't just about BSA. The issue is, simply: Can professional judges have personal ties to organizations with discriminatory (IE - against a protected class) memberships without impacting their ability to judge appropriately on issues affecting that class?

That is exactly the argument, and I don't think that this is a pressing issue in the case of BSA. However, I think you could make the argument that the LGBT activists are making about almost anything.

• A conservative republican judge who happens to be adjudicating a case of an arrest on a disturbance charge after participation in a One-Percenter protest.
• A leftist judge who happens to be adjudicating a gun-related matter where the 2nd Amendment rights of the accused may have been violated by police.
• A lesbian feminist judge who happens to be adjudicating a civil case involving parental rights versus a minor's access to an abortion without parental permission or notice.
• An atheist female judge who happens to be adjudicating a custody case of a Christian single father seeking to gain custody of his children away from his drug addicted party-girl ex-wife.

The fact is, we could go on and on and on, and without much skull sweat, we could come up with a list of hundreds possibilities in which the personal views of the judge are a potentially at conflict with the interests of the persons who appear before them. The BSA issue is no different than those, because at their core, ALL of these issues are politicized.

IF this issue really is important - the issue of a judge who supports BSA - then all the issues I listed above are EQUALLY important, and the state can therefore demand that all judges resign their political affiliations and stop voting. Otherwise, the state is picking winners and losers - violating the Constitution with one hand, and upholding it with the other......and that is not justice.

THIS issue isn't about how a private organization chooses to set its standards, it is about whether or not a state can require a state employee to abandon membership in or support of private organizations which the state argues would impede that employee's ability to provide an impartial judicial atmosphere. While I don't think that the state should be doing this, I DO think that the concept has some validity.......not just for LGBT, but for all kinds of people in all kinds of situations.

So what we are left with is this: We either trust that the courts are impartial, or we don't, because no amount of stalinist oversight will force impartiality. What makes the state think that a judge who no longer participates in scouting or supports it, still doesn't hold his scouting oath to be a sacred thing? What makes the state think that this judge still won't let his former associations color his thinking?

They cannot even remotely guarantee that. The only guarantee they can have is to create a three judge panel of women like Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan to approve all judicial appointments going forward......and that is a terrifying thought. So the only alternative we can have is to trust the current system, and not hector judges about their past associations.