What's with all the hate on....

Started by davidsinn, March 23, 2011, 04:53:02 PM

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davidsinn

Why is there so much hate for Boy Scouts in CAP? Honest question. I see it from time to time both here and on CS. Yes, there are differences in the programs and we are more Ops oriented but they've been around for a century and are considered an American institution. Usually it comes from cadets and can be explained at youthful hubris but once in a while it's a SM that is saying it. I don't get it.

Full Disclosure: I'm an Eagle Scout from the class of 2002.
Former CAP Captain
David Sinn

Eclipse

I have never seen that.

I have a lot of respect for them - different programs with different missions and goals - the BSA is clearly more focused on the social / family aspects
of the organization, but nothing wrong with that.

I was a Boy Scout and my kids are Cub Scouts.

"That Others May Zoom"

Larry Mangum

I have seen it, but never found the reason for it. I suspect it is envy or the usual " we're better then you" mentality of kids.
Larry Mangum, Lt Col CAP
DCS, Operations
SWR-SWR-001

octavian

I have seen this too.  Mostly from people who don't know much about Scouts.  CAP and Scouting have different focuses.  I am an Eagle Scout (class of 1994) and know what a great program Scouting has.  So does CAP.

manfredvonrichthofen

I have seen it  as well. I even use BSA as a comparison when people bad mouth the cadet program.

I was never a Boy Scout (almost used abrev. for that and realized it would come out as BS ::)) no one in my family was either, if anyone  since WWII was in any sort of youth program, it was in CAP. But we know the value of the BSA, it's goals are just different than CAP's goals. No one needs to hate the BSA, no one needs to talk badly about the BSA, were there no CAP, they just might be doing the ground ops that CAP is doing. CAP is not for everyone, JROTC is not for everyone, and BSA is not for everyone, but one of the three or even ACC might be the one for any particular teen, let them all be, and focus on your mission in CAP. If you have a mission with the BSA as well, focus on both of your missions, and congrats to you, it is hard enough for me to juggle CAP and my daughter in Girl Scouts, I don't have enough time to give to everything I want to. Just be glad that they are there so that every teen has at least one opportunity to give to their community and to do something positive, and not be on drugs.

Larry Mangum

The funny thing, is that a CAP unit can be dual chartered with the BSA and I have been around units that were, yet they never did any BSA things.  I do know that dual chartered unit, do gain access to BSA facilities and camps.
Larry Mangum, Lt Col CAP
DCS, Operations
SWR-SWR-001

lordmonar

I have to agree with David.

A lot of times the BSA is used as a bad word on both forums.

Not my everyone but it is out there.

Full Disclosure.....Eagle Scout class of 1983!......20 year Scouter......and now not able to be a scout due to religious intolerance.  ;D

But I agree that we in CAP can learn a lot from how BSA does business and I have said so before.

PATRICK M. HARRIS, SMSgt, CAP

N Harmon

I do not admire the BSA very much given their recent membership practices, and I think they do their scouts a great disservice by fostering bigotry as a result.  But I do not hate them.  We should be careful about mistaking ill will for hatred.

Full Disclosure: I was an aviation explorer as well as a CAP cadet.
NATHAN A. HARMON, Capt, CAP
Monroe Composite Squadron

HGjunkie

I'm actually in an area where the BSA gets sort of a bad rap from older CAP cadets due to an incident that happened at an airshow a couple years back. Being both BSA and CAP, I get irritated when people say one program sucks or is useless. They both serve a point, have different methods, and different missions. I'm proud to be in both.

Disclosure: Current Star Scout.
••• retired
2d Lt USAF

a2capt

Our unit is dual chartered, and over all we've not used the scouting resources much but they do come up in planning. Mostly it's because of scheduling that we end up going with what we go with, but .. I will say from a local viewpoint, that when I think of scouting, I come away with the representation I have seen in public. (Airshows, malls, public service) has been on the scale of displeasing visually at least. The uniforms, lack there of, the condition (wrinkled, ill-fitting, just thrown on.) 

An A for effort, and an F for execution, more than once I've seen their booths at an event and there are kids running around behind, signs made with torn cardboard box and thick marker written on it.

I realize that this is not representative of the entire organization, but I will say that in all the CAP displays I have seen, nothing has come half as close to that.


tsrup

I tried scouting when I was younger, but found it unfulfilling, as all we did at meetings was play tag.  Little was done toward merit badges or any other skills.  I find that, however, no way indicative of the organization in general, as many of my friends became eagle scouts in other programs.  I just never could get back into it, even when we moved somewhere else.

Personally, unless BSA drastically redraws their membership practices, I will not be allowing my kids (way down the road) to join.  No dollar of mine will go toward an organization with that kind of bigotry. 

They are free to draw their membership requirements as they wish, and I am free not to contribute toward that.  I think they do their own members a disservice by encouraging that sort of behavior.
If that makes me a bad person because I dislike the BSA (the organization, not the kids that take part or the dedicated individuals that help them grow), then so be it.
Paramedic
hang-around.

davidsinn

Quote from: tsrup on March 23, 2011, 06:19:25 PM
I tried scouting when I was younger, but found it unfulfilling, as all we did at meetings was play tag.  Little was done toward merit badges or any other skills.  I find that, however, no way indicative of the organization in general, as many of my friends became eagle scouts in other programs.  I just never could get back into it, even when we moved somewhere else.

Personally, unless BSA drastically redraws their membership practices, I will not be allowing my kids (way down the road) to join.  No dollar of mine will go toward an organization with that kind of bigotry.  

They are free to draw their membership requirements as they wish, and I am free not to contribute toward that.  I think they do their own members a disservice by encouraging that sort of behavior.
If that makes me a bad person because I dislike the BSA (the organization, not the kids that take part or the dedicated individuals that help them grow), then so be it.

Your post is not the kind of thing I was talking about. You made your point respectfully and intelligently.

The kind of thing I'm talking about is in a thread on CS about " you know you're a cadet when..." One of the responders posted about "you think Boy Scouts are gay" I actually find that post amusing because of the youthful ignorance of it in light of the points you made but it's just an indicator of other things I've observed.
Former CAP Captain
David Sinn

a2capt

I will add, too that when I was of scouting age and of three units I was part of, a cub scout unit in Florida and a two boy scout units in the San Diego area.. the Florida one was cliquish now that I look back on it, and that lasted until a great majority of my fourth grade class got head lice from somewhere and she made people come in her house with shower caps on and not touch anything or sit on anything except piano benches. A bunch never went back after that. It was too weird even dealing with her in school where she volunteered.

After the next school year we moved to California and when I got into a close by troop, walking distance even and they met at a Mormon meetinghouse and I even knew some of the other kids. My brother OTOH, being a Catholic chaplain had some issue with that and urged that I switch to the troop that met near the Navy hospital on Camp Pendleton.

Ugh. That blew. The "your not one of us" attitude was there from the first minute. After about 5 months of that I had enough. I would take the bus and get off one stop before, and go use the obstacle course by the lake instead, and then about 2 hours later get back on another bus to go home until I just said "I don't want to go there anymore."

I wish I had found CAP back then. :( I know now, right where the closest unit met..  right where we do today.

tsrup

Quote from: davidsinn on March 23, 2011, 06:38:15 PM
Quote from: tsrup on March 23, 2011, 06:19:25 PM
I tried scouting when I was younger, but found it unfulfilling, as all we did at meetings was play tag.  Little was done toward merit badges or any other skills.  I find that, however, no way indicative of the organization in general, as many of my friends became eagle scouts in other programs.  I just never could get back into it, even when we moved somewhere else.

Personally, unless BSA drastically redraws their membership practices, I will not be allowing my kids (way down the road) to join.  No dollar of mine will go toward an organization with that kind of bigotry.   

They are free to draw their membership requirements as they wish, and I am free not to contribute toward that.  I think they do their own members a disservice by encouraging that sort of behavior.
If that makes me a bad person because I dislike the BSA (the organization, not the kids that take part or the dedicated individuals that help them grow), then so be it.

Your post is not the kind of thing I was talking about. You made your point respectfully and intelligently.

The kind of thing I'm talking about is in a thread on CS about " you know you're a cadet when..." One of the responders posted about "you think Boy Scouts are gay" I actually find that post amusing because of the youthful ignorance of it in light of the points you made but it's just an indicator of other things I've observed.

There is just no place for unguided (the "boy scouts are gay" statement is kind of funny in an ironic sort of way, shows more of the ignorance of the speaker) attacks at any organization for any reason in CAP.  Not when we are trying to promote professionalism and that we deal with members of the BSA in some capacity more often than we know. 

Not to say playful razzing every now and then is uncalled for because I mean, I love the Boy Scouts; we gotta search for someone.  >:D
Paramedic
hang-around.

EMT-83

Is it me or does every GTE have a missing Boy Scout scenario?

CivilAirPatrol1996

Quote from: N Harmon on March 23, 2011, 05:56:54 PM
I do not admire the BSA very much given their recent membership practices, and I think they do their scouts a great disservice by fostering bigotry as a result.  But I do not hate them.  We should be careful about mistaking ill will for hatred.

Full Disclosure: I was an aviation explorer as well as a CAP cadet.

Im just wondering what kind of bad membership practices that BSA uses? I have never heard of that and am just curious.

The CyBorg is destroyed

I was a Cub Scout from the ages of 8-10 and then a Boy Scout from 10-18.

I only missed my Eagle Scout because I didn't get all the requirements done before my 18th birthday.

A couple of the troops I belonged to were good...others, well, I was virtually the scoutmaster because the SM didn't bother to show up, and in one...let's just say that CPPT and CAP/BSA's background checks now are there for a reason.  But that was in the 1970's/early '80s.

With all that, though, I still had some good times.

I don't see any reason to slag the Scouts.
Exiled from GLR-MI-011

RVT

Quote from: lordmonar on March 23, 2011, 05:44:27 PMFull Disclosure.....Eagle Scout class of 1983!......20 year Scouter...

I win.  I made Eagle in 1974 and promptly left when the program underwent a major change.  That was the year they decided that since it was impossible to advance beyond second class scout without camping that they would revise the program so you could get all the way to life scout while being an inner city kid.

One million scouts quit, and they "mostly" changed the program back.  They did keep the "batman Belts".

There was a big influx to the CAP Cadet program that year.  I was one of them.

lordmonar

Quote from: CivilAirPatrol1996 on March 23, 2011, 07:27:53 PM
Quote from: N Harmon on March 23, 2011, 05:56:54 PM
I do not admire the BSA very much given their recent membership practices, and I think they do their scouts a great disservice by fostering bigotry as a result.  But I do not hate them.  We should be careful about mistaking ill will for hatred.

Full Disclosure: I was an aviation explorer as well as a CAP cadet.

Im just wondering what kind of bad membership practices that BSA uses? I have never heard of that and am just curious.

No gays...no atheists.
PATRICK M. HARRIS, SMSgt, CAP

Major Lord

I think that comparing BSA to CAP is an error. BSA is an organization that has the creation of America's future leaders as a goal, but that is where the comparison ends. BSA is profoundly concerned with morality, and CAP is not just indifferent on the position of "morals" they are institutionally hostile to the concept- to the point of actually banning the very word in regards to our chaplaincy. This does not make BSA superior to CAP intrinsically, but its easy to see why the mission of BSA and their involvement in community activities makes them massively different (and more popular) than the smaller and narrower CAP mission. Although I have seen posts in the past that seem hostile to BSA, they come from people with an obvious axe to grind, and we are an organization that is open to a wide variety of opinions. Personally, as a former First Class Scout ( My Scoutmaster was active duty Air Force and his deployment brought our troop to an abrupt end) and Scout Leader, I have never been more proud of the Boy Scout Organization than I am now. Integrity is doing the right thing even when you know in advance it is going to cost you, and BSA has rejected popular societal notions even when they had to row hard against the tide. I am also proud of being a CAP member; Not because CAP is an organization that has natural morality ( Heck, we just don't!) but because CAP members are willing to put their lives and fortunes at stake to do the mission which we know to be necessary. I know Nathan is miffed because of their personnel policies, but the same First Amendment that recognizes his natural right to complain about them and denounce them as "bigots" is the very same Amendment that codifies our rights to Free Association and Religion, and BSA would not begrudge Nathan his right to object.

Major Lord
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."