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Remember when Donald Trump, as President of the United States, regaled the Boy Scouts with a story about one of the various yacht sex parties that he attended?
And then said the head of the scouts called him up and said it was the best speech ever. Of course the guy denied it.
They should have enacted the 25th amendment then and there.
You make it sound like the speech was buck wild. He alluded to things he shouldn’t but nothing explicit. Here is the excerpt:
“Sold his company for a tremendous amount of money.
And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that, because you’re Boy Scouts so I’m not going to tell you what he did.
(CROWD CHANTING)
Should I tell you? Should I tell you?
(APPLAUSE)
You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life.
So look at you. Who would think this is the Boy Scouts, right? So he had a very, very interesting life, and the company that bought his company was a big conglomerate, and they didn’t know anything about building…”
[The Boy Scouts Sex Abuse Was Worse Than Anyone Knew](https://time.com/longform/boy-scouts-sex-abuse/)
A child abuse expert hired by the Boy Scouts to analyze the files testified that she found 12,254 boys had reported experiencing sexual abuse at the hands of at least 7,800 suspected assailants between 1944 and 2016. Academics who research child sex abuse tell TIME that number is likely a gross underestimation. Many boys were likely intimidated or shamed out of reporting their assailants, who often held influential positions in local churches, schools, or businesses.
At its 1972 peak, membership in the Boy Scouts numbered more than 6 million.
inb4 grift channels go on about how women in scouts are destroying the organization,
I ~~was~~ (edit: am) an Eagle scout, patrol leader, and an assistant senior patrol leader. The problem was always parents, they always had tons of demands and never any money for dues or time for their kids. "Eagle scout is good on college resumes! So shut up and make my kid an Eagle Scout!" They say, dropping their undisciplined booger eater at my feet. "And don't you dare make him do anything or I'll sue!"
In December 2021, the insurer for the BSA agreed to pay $800 million into a fund for survivors, and in September 2022 – as part of their **bankruptcy** settlement – the BSA agreed to pay over $2.4 billion into the fund, with payments beginning in September 2023.
donations, for example, every week Catholic church get from North America 600 million tax free dollars in cash. Keep in mind they are also the biggest land owner in the world.
Being an Eagle Scout is still nice to have on a college app. There is a TON of community service hours required to earn that rank and colleges recognize that, if nothing else
I don't know how much it affected their college applications, but I was a bit surprised how good it has been for my nephews (21 & 24) in getting internships and jobs. They both said it's always remarked upon favorably. For that matter their dad (my brother) still gets bonus points for it as a corporate exec at age 56.
A commenter above called the scouts a “company”
My point is that non profits like scouts, churches, and schools are where this type of abuse typically takes place.
Companies would just fire the offenders. Non profits can’t.
The organization was founded with the express purpose of molesting boys. The founder was a pedophile who wanted a reason to be alone with young boys in the woods.
No, the Scouts was founded because the organizer noticed that the next generation of soldiers didn't have the sorts of outdoor skills and practical skills that the previous generation had taken for granted. He felt that knowledge was being lost and so he wanted to take the skills he had learned from military service and make them into a game that would teach boys the skills to become men.
And this idea that Scouting is a game which teaches life skills and citizenship is echoed throughout the early years of the Boy Scout programs:
> A boy becomes a Scout for the sheer joy there is in it. To you and me Scouting is a game, also--but it is more than game of fun. To us, it is a game with a purpose--the purpose of helping boy to become men by training them for citizenship. Training for citizenship--that's the aim of Scouting.
They were supremely pissed when the BSA let girls in, so they will not be happy campers. They might use some of that cookie money to sue the Boy Scouts.. sorry, Scouting America, again.
Girl scout cookies are a billion dollar industry, and ~70% of that is pure profit.
The cost for them to make a box of cookies is $1-2 and they sell for $6 in most places.
So they're looking at $4-5 profit on every box. The troop usually sees about half of that and the remainder goes to the girl scout organization.
You're just wrong. It looks like they get between 80 cents and a buck fifty for every box.
https://www.reddit.com/r/girlscouts/comments/11w5j7f/can_someone_please_explain_cookie_money_profits/
> It looks like they get between 80 cents and a buck fifty for every box.
That thread is about how much the troop receives per box they sell, not how much profit the girl scouts in general make from each box.
As I said in my previous comment, they only get a portion of it. The remainder goes to the organization.
They have money for a rebrand? After the bankruptcy and sex abuse settlements? Sounds like they could afford to settle a few more of the over 80k sex abuse claims.
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I'm glad they are trying to make a fresh start. My son and I did Scouting for many years and it was a great experience. I'm really sorry for everyone that had a bad or terrible experience.
I get this is the low hanging fruit with anything related to scouts, but it’s actually a problem with any organization that has adults in positions of authority over children including scouts, churches, schools, and sports.
Scouting for what exactly? I think the whole thing should be scrapped given the problems. I am all for young people learning skills, but the era of letting adults take kids in the woods does not seem safe anymore (if it ever was).
You're supposed to profess a faith in a higher being of some sort, but most non-church sponsored packs/troops don't care nor enforce it.
If you join a religious-entity sponsored pack/troop, be ready to pray your ass off.
> If you join a religious-entity sponsored pack/troop, be ready to pray your ass off.
Didn't know that I had and got kicked out of Scouts for mentioning that I didn't believe in their sky daddy.
When I was a cub scout religion didn't really come into play at all from what I recall, in the 90s. Likely due to being in a more progressive state, well north of the bible belt.
Mid-to-late 1980s Cub Scout in a blood red midwestern state here…and it didn’t really come up at all for us either.
There was a section in the manual that sort of assumed the reader was a Christian, and I protested “but we’re not Christians, we’re Lutherans” to my dad. I thought the local Christian Church was a whole other thing.
And then I learned about denominations.
*And* why other kids seemed so aghast every time I told them “I’m not a Christian.”
Oops.
I believed in "the Universe" when I was a scout. I'm not gonna sit here and bullshit you that its a pro-atheist org or anything but at least from my experience, being in a troop in Germany(Trans-Atlantic Council) and not associated with a church/religion, it didn't really come up much and no one pried into what your specific beliefs were. Probably a bit different here in the states though, but I'm sure its varies between troops and areas. We did have a local Mormon Troop that we would camp with sometimes so I know things were different for them.
Funny thing is that in Europe most other counties' scouting organizations were also already co-ed, so the idea that Boy Scouts would eventually adopt that policy and brings it in line with the rest of the world makes 100% sense to me.
I was previously unaware of sexual abuse allegations so I won't comment on that.
I've always thought changing from boy scouts to scouts was a good idea, since girls don't really have an equivalent as girl scouts is basically selling cookies, from what I've been told.
For anyone complaining about how boys "need time to be boys, away from the girls" I would agree, but I think the answer is to to have separate troops. You can certainly allow girls to join scouts and have it so the boys and girls don't interact with each other.
Talk about right for the wrong reasons. Why should boys and girls be separated from enjoying the outdoors, learning skills, and camping? Scouting orgs in most other countries have been co-ed for decades or since their inception and US Boy Scouts in those places often go to jamborees with those groups so there are girls there anyways. Its weird that we make it weird in the US.
It's not that I think it's weird, I don't think troops being coed would detract from it or that girls would "ruin it" for the guys. What I do think is that a lot of guys in middle/high school become hyper focused about their image around girls, they guys may subtlety compete for the girls, etc.
Scouts is stereotypically the place where you could shit your pants on a white water rafting trip because you had to go and couldn't reach dry land in time without worrying if any of the girls saw you and will judge you for it
That's what we have in our area. Our Cub Scout packs are co-ed. In the upper level (formerly Boy Scouts), we have male troops and separate female troops. In fact, all of our male troops have 3-digit troop numbers, and the female ones have 4-digit numbers to help distinguish.
And I completely agree. My daughters are both pretty rough & tumble, and have very little interest in the kinds of activities our local Girl Scout troops usually do. But they tag along on a number of my son's troop activities, and love the kinds of things they do- the fishing, hiking, etc. They're both Cubs now, but I have little doubt that they'll want to join one of our local female scout troops when they hit the right age.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA). *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Remember when Donald Trump, as President of the United States, regaled the Boy Scouts with a story about one of the various yacht sex parties that he attended?
For the lazy: https://time.com/4872118/trump-boy-scout-jamboree-speech-transcript/
Family values!
Wait, he *what*?
It's time to stop being surprised when a depraved beast acts like a depraved beast
Haha yep go look it up. Totally wild
And then said the head of the scouts called him up and said it was the best speech ever. Of course the guy denied it. They should have enacted the 25th amendment then and there.
You make it sound like the speech was buck wild. He alluded to things he shouldn’t but nothing explicit. Here is the excerpt: “Sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that, because you’re Boy Scouts so I’m not going to tell you what he did. (CROWD CHANTING) Should I tell you? Should I tell you? (APPLAUSE) You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life. So look at you. Who would think this is the Boy Scouts, right? So he had a very, very interesting life, and the company that bought his company was a big conglomerate, and they didn’t know anything about building…”
[The Boy Scouts Sex Abuse Was Worse Than Anyone Knew](https://time.com/longform/boy-scouts-sex-abuse/) A child abuse expert hired by the Boy Scouts to analyze the files testified that she found 12,254 boys had reported experiencing sexual abuse at the hands of at least 7,800 suspected assailants between 1944 and 2016. Academics who research child sex abuse tell TIME that number is likely a gross underestimation. Many boys were likely intimidated or shamed out of reporting their assailants, who often held influential positions in local churches, schools, or businesses. At its 1972 peak, membership in the Boy Scouts numbered more than 6 million.
SA as the abbreviation instead of BSA will surely help the sexual assault allegations 😬
Oh man…
inb4 grift channels go on about how women in scouts are destroying the organization, I ~~was~~ (edit: am) an Eagle scout, patrol leader, and an assistant senior patrol leader. The problem was always parents, they always had tons of demands and never any money for dues or time for their kids. "Eagle scout is good on college resumes! So shut up and make my kid an Eagle Scout!" They say, dropping their undisciplined booger eater at my feet. "And don't you dare make him do anything or I'll sue!"
You are an Eagle Scout.
Courteous kind obedient thrifty cheerful brave clean and reverent when you want to be
And a Certified pyro the rest of the time lol
God the number of pyro's I ran into in BS.
Certified pyro, *yes*, but also remarkably resourceful and incredibly handy in a pinch.
*counting on fingers* wait a minute. You're missing a few aren't you.
There's a reason my totin chip was missing a few corners
"and very tall" was our addition
I thought the problem was the sexual assaults?
In December 2021, the insurer for the BSA agreed to pay $800 million into a fund for survivors, and in September 2022 – as part of their **bankruptcy** settlement – the BSA agreed to pay over $2.4 billion into the fund, with payments beginning in September 2023.
how the duck did they have $2.4 billion
donations, for example, every week Catholic church get from North America 600 million tax free dollars in cash. Keep in mind they are also the biggest land owner in the world.
Selling scout camps
It's mostly insurance and sale of properties
This is purely anecdotal, but I was once fleeced by a Boy Scout at a country fair for a bag of popcorn that costs $30.
Kids selling caramel corn.
Why are you highlighting bankruptcy?
thats how they wanted to sneak out from obligations.
Maybe a while ago. But I haven't heard anything recently
They settled in September of 2023, so that's why it's been quiet
You're right, but it's doubly funny because the Boy Scouts have allowed girls in at all ages since 2019.
Is Eagle Scout _actually_ still good on college applications? I kind of doubt it.
Surprisingly the two jobs I've ever really loved are the only ones that asked about it on my resume and one said it was a major factor in selection.
48 and still have National Eagle Scout Association Life Member on my resume. It comes up!
Being an Eagle Scout is still nice to have on a college app. There is a TON of community service hours required to earn that rank and colleges recognize that, if nothing else
I don't know how much it affected their college applications, but I was a bit surprised how good it has been for my nephews (21 & 24) in getting internships and jobs. They both said it's always remarked upon favorably. For that matter their dad (my brother) still gets bonus points for it as a corporate exec at age 56.
Definitely is. Military wise you also start at E-2 instead of E-1.
Why wouldn’t it be?
Absolutely! In fact, going coed saved it from being dismissed by a lot of colleges
It should be. It takes a lot of commitment and work to reach eagle rank.
You ARE an Eagle Scout (unless you turned yours back in). Once an Eagle, always am Eagle!
If you have to rebrand your company because you can't fix your problems... rebranding won't help.
Company?
You think they're doing this because they like it?
They’re not a company. It’s a non profit mostly volunteer driven aside from a few people in a national office.
Good. "Employees" shouldn't be sexually assaulting the youth of America.
The church gets away with it just fine
What kind of response is that? lol.
Churches rape kids all the time.
Sure, but it felt like random whataboutism because no one was talking about churches at all.
A commenter above called the scouts a “company” My point is that non profits like scouts, churches, and schools are where this type of abuse typically takes place. Companies would just fire the offenders. Non profits can’t.
*”We’re not just scouting for your young boys anymore, we’re scouting out all of America’s young children.”*
Yeah that makes it sound more like they are scouting for children to abuse.
Not the inclusivity we were looking for!
Chuck Norris bout to write another dumbass op-ed.
“Maybe if we take ‘boys’ out of our name people forget all the boys we’ve raped for a century.”
Well, now they're just "scouting America." For what? Um, we don't talk about that!
For young boys, of course.
The organization was founded with the express purpose of molesting boys. The founder was a pedophile who wanted a reason to be alone with young boys in the woods.
Got any source on this? I knew they had lots of shitty scoutmasters or whatever, but I've never heard about the founder being a pedo.
No, the Scouts was founded because the organizer noticed that the next generation of soldiers didn't have the sorts of outdoor skills and practical skills that the previous generation had taken for granted. He felt that knowledge was being lost and so he wanted to take the skills he had learned from military service and make them into a game that would teach boys the skills to become men. And this idea that Scouting is a game which teaches life skills and citizenship is echoed throughout the early years of the Boy Scout programs: > A boy becomes a Scout for the sheer joy there is in it. To you and me Scouting is a game, also--but it is more than game of fun. To us, it is a game with a purpose--the purpose of helping boy to become men by training them for citizenship. Training for citizenship--that's the aim of Scouting.
Yeah, I'm gonna need a source on that too.
After decades of abuse you mean?
It's a feature, not a bug.
Hard hitting political journalism.
Yeah, that *totally* doesn't sound menacing.
Did they get all the diddlers out?
glad to see Americans slowly joining the rest of the world...
Is this political?
Off topic.
Scouting America for young Boys
Girl Scouts are going to be bigly mad.
They're laughing all the way to the bank with all their cookie money.
They were supremely pissed when the BSA let girls in, so they will not be happy campers. They might use some of that cookie money to sue the Boy Scouts.. sorry, Scouting America, again.
Sue them for what?
Well you can sue people for pretty much anything, but causing brand confusion comes to mind.
But they're a non profit organization
That doesn't matter
Nah AFAIK they get shit money from the cookies. Boy scouts get good money back from popcorn tho
Girl scout cookies are a billion dollar industry, and ~70% of that is pure profit. The cost for them to make a box of cookies is $1-2 and they sell for $6 in most places. So they're looking at $4-5 profit on every box. The troop usually sees about half of that and the remainder goes to the girl scout organization.
You're just wrong. It looks like they get between 80 cents and a buck fifty for every box. https://www.reddit.com/r/girlscouts/comments/11w5j7f/can_someone_please_explain_cookie_money_profits/
> It looks like they get between 80 cents and a buck fifty for every box. That thread is about how much the troop receives per box they sell, not how much profit the girl scouts in general make from each box. As I said in my previous comment, they only get a portion of it. The remainder goes to the organization.
I expect to hear about this from a couple of people involved in scouts
From BS to SA.
They have money for a rebrand? After the bankruptcy and sex abuse settlements? Sounds like they could afford to settle a few more of the over 80k sex abuse claims.
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I'm glad they are trying to make a fresh start. My son and I did Scouting for many years and it was a great experience. I'm really sorry for everyone that had a bad or terrible experience.
Trying to sneak this by while the heat's on Drake?
Rebranded with a new name and the very same predators.
I get this is the low hanging fruit with anything related to scouts, but it’s actually a problem with any organization that has adults in positions of authority over children including scouts, churches, schools, and sports.
Scouting for what exactly? I think the whole thing should be scrapped given the problems. I am all for young people learning skills, but the era of letting adults take kids in the woods does not seem safe anymore (if it ever was).
are they still a sky daddy centric organization?
You're supposed to profess a faith in a higher being of some sort, but most non-church sponsored packs/troops don't care nor enforce it. If you join a religious-entity sponsored pack/troop, be ready to pray your ass off.
> If you join a religious-entity sponsored pack/troop, be ready to pray your ass off. Didn't know that I had and got kicked out of Scouts for mentioning that I didn't believe in their sky daddy.
When I was a cub scout religion didn't really come into play at all from what I recall, in the 90s. Likely due to being in a more progressive state, well north of the bible belt.
Mid-to-late 1980s Cub Scout in a blood red midwestern state here…and it didn’t really come up at all for us either. There was a section in the manual that sort of assumed the reader was a Christian, and I protested “but we’re not Christians, we’re Lutherans” to my dad. I thought the local Christian Church was a whole other thing. And then I learned about denominations. *And* why other kids seemed so aghast every time I told them “I’m not a Christian.” Oops.
Well the catholic kids always told my luthern mother when she was a child that she was going to hell.
Sort of. It depends on the specific unit. The Duty to God requirement is broad enough to be effectively meaningless.
I believed in "the Universe" when I was a scout. I'm not gonna sit here and bullshit you that its a pro-atheist org or anything but at least from my experience, being in a troop in Germany(Trans-Atlantic Council) and not associated with a church/religion, it didn't really come up much and no one pried into what your specific beliefs were. Probably a bit different here in the states though, but I'm sure its varies between troops and areas. We did have a local Mormon Troop that we would camp with sometimes so I know things were different for them. Funny thing is that in Europe most other counties' scouting organizations were also already co-ed, so the idea that Boy Scouts would eventually adopt that policy and brings it in line with the rest of the world makes 100% sense to me.
I was previously unaware of sexual abuse allegations so I won't comment on that. I've always thought changing from boy scouts to scouts was a good idea, since girls don't really have an equivalent as girl scouts is basically selling cookies, from what I've been told. For anyone complaining about how boys "need time to be boys, away from the girls" I would agree, but I think the answer is to to have separate troops. You can certainly allow girls to join scouts and have it so the boys and girls don't interact with each other.
Talk about right for the wrong reasons. Why should boys and girls be separated from enjoying the outdoors, learning skills, and camping? Scouting orgs in most other countries have been co-ed for decades or since their inception and US Boy Scouts in those places often go to jamborees with those groups so there are girls there anyways. Its weird that we make it weird in the US.
It's not that I think it's weird, I don't think troops being coed would detract from it or that girls would "ruin it" for the guys. What I do think is that a lot of guys in middle/high school become hyper focused about their image around girls, they guys may subtlety compete for the girls, etc. Scouts is stereotypically the place where you could shit your pants on a white water rafting trip because you had to go and couldn't reach dry land in time without worrying if any of the girls saw you and will judge you for it
That's what we have in our area. Our Cub Scout packs are co-ed. In the upper level (formerly Boy Scouts), we have male troops and separate female troops. In fact, all of our male troops have 3-digit troop numbers, and the female ones have 4-digit numbers to help distinguish. And I completely agree. My daughters are both pretty rough & tumble, and have very little interest in the kinds of activities our local Girl Scout troops usually do. But they tag along on a number of my son's troop activities, and love the kinds of things they do- the fishing, hiking, etc. They're both Cubs now, but I have little doubt that they'll want to join one of our local female scout troops when they hit the right age.
https://time.com/longform/boy-scouts-sex-abuse/
Why does Boy Scouts need to change because the Girl Scouts aren’t equivalent? Do you think Girl Scouts are incapable of improving on their own?
Scouting America for young boys....
Did they solve the pedo problem?