More to my previous post . . .

Personally I wish the whole issue would die down, BSA would get our of the religious and sexual lives of their youth and leaders, and live and let live. Just a personal view.

As I said earlier, BSA does not RUN the religious award program, but has chopped it to the various faiths, so we now have more awards than Carters has little green pills[Carters was a patent medicine company who advertised their "Little Liver Pills" until the FDA showed that the pills had no effect on the liver at all and the FTC made them retract their "liver-benefit" claims. They sold for a long while under the above name, to the benefit of Carters.]. BSA DOES decide whose religious awards it will RECOGNISE, so the mainline religion faiths like Catholicism, Judaeism, Lutherans, etc., have religious awards that are recognised by the BSA while the UUA's awards are currently not recognised, and the Wicans never even got their foot into the door.

The trouble with the situation as it now stands is that there is so much bandwidth about the problem, that various more inclusive sponsors are telling BSA either let us accept whomever we want or get your program out of our organization; and Jesse Helms has sponsored an Congressional amendment proposing that schools who refuse to give BSA access - i.e. use their facilities - can have their federal funding yanked! WAAAAAY overkill.

For the BRitish among us, Jesse Helms is sort of like a secular Ian Paisley, or more properly the enthusiastic pro-Irish female MP, whose name currently escapes me.

Oh, yes. The up front BSA fee is $ 7.00 plus $ 0.80 for insurance, but after you buy uniforms, camping equipment, pay for summer camp and other outings, the cost gets upwards of $ 250 per year.

Dave