The title of this post is actually a swipe at my own love affair with my unashamedly liberal opinions and my willingness to voice those opinions on this so-called apolitical blog. Sometimes I go a little overboard and realize that what I'm writing is better suited for my political blog and that's what happened a few moments ago. If you want to read my rant (and I'll warn all my pro-tube Schiavo friends that the post is best avoided), I shouldn't need to tell you how to find what I said mere minutes ago.
And, um, the urge to rant still exists. It's amusing to me that the American Taliban is busy pissing away its political capital on SpongeBob, creationist fairy tale stickers, and a vegetable in Florida. Instead of doing any real damage to our civil rights, it appears these twits are more concerned with showing how many clowns they can pour out of a tiny little car. In the meantime, the wheels are about to come off the car due to screwy lugnuts.
With no undue satisfaction, I read today that yet another nut pops off and flies into the ditch:
Boy Scouts of America’s National Director of Programs Douglas Smith will appear in a Dallas courtroom tomorrow to face charges of posessing child pornography, according to reports by NBC News.
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In 2004, C-Span general counsel and Eagle Scout Bruce D. Collins wrote about the Boy Scouts, explaining what he felt were a number of contradictions in BSA policies. Mr. Collins’, whose column appears regularly in Legal Times, was unaware that his column, a copywritten work, was taken an reposted on the legal affairs website of the Boy Scouts.
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The Boy Scout’s reply, drafted by the same official appearing in court on the child pornography charges, said, “Some intolerant elements in our society want to force scouting to abandon its values and to become fundamentally different. They want scouting to forego its constitutional rights, affirmed in 2000 by the Supreme Court in BSA v. Dale, and adopt fundamentally different values from the ones that helped shape the character of Mr. Collins and 106 million other young men over the past 94 years.”
My own scouting career started as a Cub scout until I graduated as a Weblo scout (back then, "We blow" had absolutely no twisted connotation, smartasses) and then onto boy scouts. Being an ambitious young man, I had my eyes on becoming an Eagle scout and entered into the "Order of the Arrow of Light". It was during the arduous weekend getting my Arrow of Light sash that I determined that I could do without the more militaristic elements of scouting and that I could camp out on my own without 20 or 30 morons spoiling my communion with nature.
Still, I would have recommended scouting to anyone had BSA not decided to become another hate-group. "Family values" means nothing to those mullahs (or means something extremely sick, per the citation above). If the Taliban continues to keep its grip on the scouts, Zeke won't become one of them. We'll do just fine camping as a family (as we do several dozen times every summer), a tolerant, compassionate, enlightened family. 99% of scouting is great but the 1% that preaches hate ruins the rest. The fact that such hate can be furthered by child-molesters makes it all the more troubling. They can keep their "family values" in the dark recesses of their rectums, my family will do just fine on our own, in the woods and far away from their scary bonfires and desire to become the Hitler Jugend for James Dobson.
As I've said in my political blog, it's a small minority of hate-filled morons who are giving all the good Christians a bad name. I've been trying to come up with a term for the Taliban asshats - the Bad Christians - who screw it up for the rest of the decent, loving, accepting Christians who are more concerned with being Christ-like than creating some kind of rabid, hate-filled Army of God.
I like "Fishists" (like "fascists" - get it?). Any thoughts?
-- 33 (end rant) --
3 comments:
Our experiences within cub scouts have been disastrous thus far.
I can't imagine we will stick with it much longer.
It seems from my experience that it's a pretty hypocritical group all around.
I was in cub scouts, dropped out of webelos. I didn't even consider putting my son in cub scouts, for a number of reasons, but mainly because it seems to have become -- well, actually, now that I think about it it always was -- a group that was too focused on nationalism, too fixated on particular definitions of masculinity; and now with this whole anti-gay stuff, and given how many same-sex couples' kids my own kids are friends with, I couldn't see doing that. My kid is doing just great without cub scouts.
Heathen, I'd love to hear your horror stories about cub scouts!
I'm already starting to feel bad for a potential boy in our family. My daughter is a girl scout and I am her leader. I love the experiences and values Girl Scouting teaches. One of our nationwide mottos, "Girl Scouting is for every girl," is a far cry from the Boy Scouts doctrine of hate and exclusivity. No child of mine will ever participate in that organization. I wish it were more like its female counterpart.
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