“We’re making minimal changes to stay relevant, not because we want to, but because we have to.” -Boyscouts

It's a power play to disrupt the cookie market.

The cookie lobby is doing this intentionally to run up the price of their stocks and sell before the cookie bubble bursts...WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!

THIN MINTS ARE TURNING FROGS GAY!

As a former boy scout and atheist, I gotta say they are right to discriminate against open atheists.

The values they try to teach do include reverent, but also kind, friendly, and courteous. To decide to not believe in a deity is brave, another one of the values, but openly telling those who do have a belief that not only do you not share it, but you believe they are wrong is just fucking rude. Who wants to go camping with that asshole.

Perhaps there should be a don't ask don't tell policy for atheist scouts.

Being an atheist and a militant fuckstick bill Maher atheist are totally different.

The scouts have no place pursuing reasonable nonbelievers, but shitheads trying to dump on other people's beliefs should be booted.

The scouts teach a code of morality that includes reverence, at some point as the scouts get older they do have to pursue them in terms of talking about what being reverent means to them. Sadly by the book this does require a belief in a higher power and if the adults in charge push it, a kid he may not be able to flim flam his way around answering that he in fact does not believe in Santa Claus or the equivalent.

If nothing else the scout do teach brave as a virtue, and a 15 year kid facing down a bunch of parents pushing him into a corner and defying them even knowing he is going to get the boot has gotten something out the scouts.

I wonder if a kid could be reverent about the heat death of the universe or something along those lines. The blue spot Sagan speech or the curios nature of quantum physics. There's plenty in nature to be reverent about and towards.

I mean, is it really that hard to be an open atheist and not be an asshole about it?

I'll answer, speaking from experience: no.

Whereas I'm an open athiest (which is Australia is not unusual, non religious is probably the largest denomination) and definitely an asshole. The two are however totally unrelated.

The Boy Scouts are a group of skills-teaching and community-building with a religious framework that they are trying to break away from (depending on the level of the org. They're the ones holding themselves back in this respect.)

The Girl Scouts are a corporation built around selling cookies as much as they can while still taking advantage of tax loopholes by not officially existing to sell cookies.

mmm, cookies

Like I’m gonna argue with a bunch of girls with knives that know how to start fires.

I have a spawn of this age, currently working on his Arrow of Light. Part of their last pack meeting was to research how other countries handle female members (US is one of like three that don't?). Being 10 the boys don't really care, other than they like having time away from their sisters (three sets of boy/girl tewins in our den).

The Den leaders are more concerned with getting female Scout Leaders. For the Cubs a parent must be in each campout and meeting, but for the Boy Scouts not so much. The leaders think it is essential that they work to recruit female scoutmasters that are willing to put in the time for monthly campout and at least one week long outing a year, otherwise they feel it is just asking for trouble.

Kinda says more about the male den leaders than the female scouts, doesn't it?

No,more about them realizing that this kind of integration can't only be the scouts, but must Alo include the leaders to truly be successful.

Makes sense. I was seeing it from a "We'll need a girl to handle the girls." standpoint.

So does this mean that boys will be allowed into Guides?

Not if the girl scouts get their say.

The BSA has attempted a rebranding effort with in the last 5 years, particularly trying to recruit minority and low income youth. Part of that has been trying to decouple it's image from gsa. It hasn't worked as well as it could have.

And while I don't think they are giving up on that, I think this is more about making up for conservative losses their more liberal recent policys have made.

Huh. Scouts Australia is not at all a religious or gender discriminatory organisation so I just assumed that the international counterparts would be the same. It does have a weird reverence for the Queen though which would not go down well in America.

I was made to feel uncomfortable by a creepy old man who told me there was no place for atheists in scouts.

Fuck that shit

Well the Mormons took over bsa a while ago. Sort of like when they realized that black people were starting to have money and so realized they wanted their money too, they've realized females aren't as inconsequential as they used to be either.