<I know what their agenda is...

O, tell us, All-Seeing and All-Knowing One, Who can tellest even such a lowly one as I what it is she thinkest before the thought is formed in her unworthy brain...



I'm not sure, but it sounds like you think I was directing my comment at you. I most emphathetically was not. I was directing at the activists mentioned in the article, whose actions are obvious, even if their thoughts are not. Other than your kid leaving Scouts years ago, as far as I know you are not actively involved in this issue at all.

When I was a kid I got rocks thrown at me for being short, but that's neither here nor there. Kids are basically shitty by nature, and there's no getting around that. Religious people have had a rock or two thrown at them through history, too.

...Has it ever occurred to you that these are people who have been driven to distraction by a society that throws God at them all the time? That these are people with a legitimate religious outlook who are fed up to their eyeballs? I can't go anywhere without God being thrown in my face four or five times a day.

Driven to distraction? Fed up to their eyeballs? By what? The Pledge of Allegiance? The corner church? A manger scene passed on the road? The word "God" on the money? Somebody saying "God Bless You" when they sneeze? Are they being dragged into churches and sprayed with holy water?

How does this happen? Are these Pennsylvania weirdos you are always telling me about standing on your lawn waving crosses? I understand you are probably a special case. Judging only by your previous posts, (not that I know what you're thinking or anything), you apparently have to deal with screwball fundamentalists as part of your work, and given that, I can certainly understand where you might be on your last nerve on the subject of religion. I don't have to deal with that, admittedly. But other than that, how is God "thrown in your face" in day-to-day life? God does not get "thrown at me" in MY day-to-day life. If there are religious references around me, I apparently don't notice them.

You know, when conservatives complain about Gay Pride parades marching down Main Street, and complain about values they don't like being "thrown in their face," they are treated with utter contempt, accused of intolerance, and counseled to be "open-minded." Me, I don't care. I don't live in San Francisco and I don't take my kids to the parades, so it's not an issue. But there are a lot of people bothered by these open displays of values they don't agree with. While people are screaming about Scouts mentioning religion on school ground, people come into classrooms and put condoms on bananas, while telling the kids how oral sex is a much SAFER alternative to regular sex. When people object to these values being hammered down their kids' throats, they are told to shut their Neanderthal mouths and keep their redneck opinions to themselves. Where does the line of value tolerance get drawn?

There are any number of organizations around here which are diametrically opposed to everything I believe. I'm not trying to get my kid into them to make a point. I'm also not running around to businesses and charities trying to get their privately-donated funding cut. Those going after the Scouts are doing these things.

The main point I was trying to put forward in my post is that a lot of people attacking the Scouts on this have a political and philosophical axe to grind, and whether their kids are in Scouts are not is not even relevant to them. If it wasn't the Scouts, it would be something else. I was pointing out the affiliations of the plaintiffs to show that they are not just "people off the street" with hurt feelings. They are activists with an objective. That's fine, but let's not pretend that they are anything else.