Month: February 2013

Will The Scouts Lose The Millennials? Ctd

A reader writes:

Greetings from Washington state, home of legal pot! My son is a Life
scout, has completed his Eagle project, and is two merit badges away
from being an Eagle scout. The troop’s sponsoring entity is a liberal
protestant church in the suburbs of Seattle. Rumor has it that the
church has been considering the cancellation of our charter, due to
the fact that the BSA discriminates against gays. This potential new
policy may be a lifeline for our troop.

Another picks up where our previous post left off:

I am an Eagle Scout and an atheist. I was very clear (close to belligerent) about my atheism when I underwent my Eagle Scout Board of Review. Although some of the board members questioned why I should be awarded the rank, in the end I was able to convince them that my other qualifications and contributions outweighed my religious beliefs, and they awarded me the Eagle rank.

This was possible only because my local troop and council did not make this fact known to the National BSA in Texas. In the Northeast Region, Boy Scout troops tend to be significantly more liberal and secular than in other parts of the country. In the West and South, they tend to be more religious. My experience working at a Boy Scout camp in New Jersey for 10 years was it was very secular, and what little religion was included in the program was aggressively non-denominational.

There is a constant struggle between local councils, troops, and indeed the Northeast Region as a whole and the BSA headquarters in Texas. Many troops allow gay and atheist scouts and leaders on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell basis. The biggest problem is that the Boy Scouts nationally are so highly reliant on money from Mormon and Methodist charters, who constitute as much as 40% of all Boy Scout charter organizations. They are the biggest impediment toward either some kind of national reform (letting atheists and LGBTs in) or at least some kind of federalism and local control.

It makes me sad to see the Boy Scouts, an organization that I owe so much of my personal development to, unable to adapt to modernity. I am torn whenever I get a petition in my email box to pressure a company or large donor to stop sending money to the Boy Scouts. I am certain that their exclusion of LGBTs and atheists is absolutely morally unacceptable, but I also believe deep down that their program is the absolute best youth program in the nation. The world without the Boy Scouts would be a world with fewer passionate protectors of our environment, dedicated volunteers doing community service, and young men who were taught to solve problems and lead from the age of 11.

Your Chemical Romance

Ross Andersen interviews Oxford ethicist Brian D. Earp about the morality of a “love drug” that would “boost affection between partners, whisking them back to the exquisite set of pleasures that colored their first years together”:

Imagine a couple that is thinking about breaking up or getting a divorce, but they have young children who would likely be harmed by their parents’ separation. In this situation, there are vulnerable third parties involved, and we have argued that parents have a responsibility–all else being equal–to preserve
and enhance their relationships for the sake of their children, at least until the children have matured and can take care of themselves.

One way to do this, of course, would be to attend couple’s therapy and see if the relationship problems could be meaningfully resolved through “traditional” methods. But what if this strategy isn’t working? If love drugs ever become safely and cheaply available; if they could be shown to improve love, commitment, and marital well-being–and thereby lessen the chance (or the need) for divorce; if other interventions had been tried and failed; and if side-effects or other complications could be minimized, then we think that some couples might have an obligation to
give them a try.

The Meaningless Lingo Of Journalism

Michael Moynihan begs journalists to stop abusing words like “exclusive,” “breaking,” and “nonpartisan”:

I have an app on my iPhone called “Breaking News” that pings and bings at all hours, passing on monumentally pointless stories that require my immediate attention. Currently resting atop the pile of broken news, is the following story: “Officials unload elephants onto Interstate 70 following crash in Indiana after semi hauling the animals slid off road.” Ignore the clumsy headline and acknowledge that while this might be an important news story for both Indiana drivers and pachyderm enthusiasts, how it merits a “breaking” tag—which once hinted at an unfolding story of relative importance—could best explained by the company’s marketing team.

Koch Block

Here we go again. Was Ed Koch gay and did his closet inhibit him from faster action on HIV and AIDS? I only met him once, when Marty Peretz invited me along for a dinner party at Koch’s apartment. As I recall, there were no women at all, I was the only goy, almost no one else got a word in edgewise and the evening ended with Koch actually demanding we sit and watch his speeches on the TV. In other words, not quite as gay as the Vatican, but sheesh.

Perhaps it’s better to see how Koch approached the subject. He saw it in two ways: about sexual behavior alone and about privacy. In that way, he was, in fact, quite typical of many in a generation of gay men his age, who defined their orientation understandably but entirely in terms of sexual freedom and protection from government scrutiny and prosecution. But AIDS, of course, ripped that sub-cultural eco-system apart. Of course, no one – straight or gay – is entirely defined by their sexual orientation. But it’s a core part of your personality – and Koch was simply too old, too self-loathing, and too prickly to change. Here’s the money quote when he was asked about it:

What do I care? I’m 73 years old. I find it fascinating that people are interested in my sex life at age 73. It’s rather complimentary! But as I say in my book, my answer to questions on this subject is simply “Fuck off.” There have to be some private matters left.

Of course they do. And I sure don’t want to know about Ed Koch’s sex life, if he had one. But the plain fact of your orientation is not the same as the details of your sex life. And when you are such a public figure and single and your city is grappling with an epic health crisis among gay men, it does become other people’s fucking business – especially if he was inhibited from a more aggressive response because of not wanting to seem gay.

His opponents certainly knew his vulnerability, hence the infamous “Vote For Cuomo. Not The Homo” posters that cropped up over New York City in an election campaign. Hence the weird first election campaign dalliance with a beauty queen he never had a relationship with. And this is not how a straight guy would react in a public meeting on the AIDS crisis:

One of the few peeks into Koch’s psyche comes from a former adviser, who says Koch was very worried someone would interrupt an AIDS forum (hosted by the New York Post, for the record), and accuse him of being gay.

After the forum, Koch complains of a headache and suffers a stroke, making for just one of the many crises in his third term.

A straight guy would never have proposed the following classified ad either, when prompted by New York magazine:

“White Male, 70-something former C.E.O. and practicing attorney. Have belatedly concluded that everyone, straight or gay, needs a
partner in life. How’m I doing?”

History will judge that. And so will the souls of countless gay men, who perished as their mayor panicked.

A Drone Of Your Own

Chris Anderson expects that drones will become commonplace:

6a00d83451c45669e2017d40a91176970c-250wiThe usual assumption is that it will be police surveillance and general snooping. Interestingly, that’s just what people feared when the computer, which had also been introduced as a military technology, started to be used commercially in the 1960s. The worry then was that computers would be used primarily to spy on us, as an arm of Big Brother. Only decades later, once we all had one, did we figure out that they were better at work and entertainment, communicating with each other and generally being welcome additions to our lives. That’s because we could control them and tailor their use to our own needs, which we did amazingly well.

Can they keep track of miscreant beagles?

(Image of a drone toy sold on Amazon via Friedersdorf, who compiled customer reviews)

A Spoonful Of Sugar On The Pill

Here’s the gist of the new policy from the White House with respect to religious organizations and the ACA’s guarantee of contraception coverage:

6a00d83451c45669e2017ee820f80a970d-320wiWomen will get a small separate insurance policy that covers contraception that is not paid for by the religious employer and does not cost the woman anything. Costs will be covered by fees insurers pay to participate in the new federal health exchanges being set up under Obamacare.

The new policy also expands the definition of “religious employer,” potentially allowing more institutions to get out of the requirement. The new policy eliminates the requirement that they have religious values in their purpose, employ people of the same religion and primarily serve people with the same religious values.

The full proposal is here. Money quote:

With respect to self-insured group health plans, the eligible
organization would notify the third party administrator, which in turn
would automatically work with a health insurance issuer to provide
separate, individual health insurance policies at no cost for
participants.  The costs of both the health insurance issuer and third
party administrator would be offset by adjustments in
Federally-facilitated Exchange user fees that insurers pay.

So Catholic hospitals and schools can have even cleaner hands when it comes to insisting on a doctrine that 98 percent of its own parishioners reject. It seems fine to me – underlining the separateness of the contraception guarantee, while expanding the range of religious institutions covered. Maybe if they’d listened to Joe Biden the first time round, this flap would have never happened. But they also would not have reaped the huge political benefits among female voters of tangling with Catholic cardinals on questions of sexual freedom.

(Photo by Bryan Calabro/Wiki.)