Politics, Theology, and Ubuntu LoCo Teams

[lamalex]

[their] cookies are to die for.

The girl scouts are actually totally accepting, you can be an atheist, anarchist, lesbian girl scout. As long as you're not a boy, you're in.

[ccw]

Oh boy. Yes please don't get politics/religion/whatever involved in this. We're not here to decide who shall be granted the privilege of open source software.

I was a boy scout. Things like sexual orientation never came up. We just camped and hiked.

The proposal on the road map is suggesting some of us give a couple hours of our time to help a troop or an individual kid fulfill the following requirements:
http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Computers

We would be helping those local boys, of whom the vast majority do not care or are aware of what the white hair politicos at national council spew from the board room.

Do we know how all those fresh ubuntu systems from the installfest will be used? Should we require attendees to fill out a political compass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass along with the waiver?

I worked as a systems administrator for government contractor a few years ago. Do you want to wager what operating system the robots that enslave mankind will be running? I'm putting the house on linux.

[moly]

I was a Boy Scout as a boy. I gained an enormous amount from my Scouting days. I learned leadership skills, self-reliance, a love of knots and ropework, went on two 50+ mile backpacking trips a year, and learned watercraft skills I still use today. The merit badge program, in particular, gave me many opportunities to interact with diverse members of my community, and learn from many interesting people living in my town, none of whom I would have meant otherwise.

I was active in Unitarian Universalist youth groups at the time, and stayed with Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) long after I left the scouts.

Today, the Scouts have clung to their homophobia, even though many young men have their first homosexual experiences at Boy Scout events. This hypocrisy on their part has led them into conflict with the Unitarian Universalists. The Scout Law states that a Scout is reverent. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) offers a religious badge as a way for scouts to explore their own religion. In Unitarian Universalism, the rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, and those questioning their sexuality are honored and respected. When this tenet of the Unitarian Universalist belief system was included in their religion badge, the BSA no longer honored the Unitarian Universalist religion badge. I found this to be profoundly insulting, even though this occurred long after I had left the Boy Scouts. The BSA also do not recognize the Wiccan religious badge, and of course, atheism is officially rejected by the BSA (atheism is rejected by the Freemasons, the Elks Club, and other service organizations as well, not that it makes such rejection appropriate).

There is a lot of good that the BSA does. They are enormously generous to the kids in their program, and the adults who work with/for the BSA put in hours of unpaid work just to help and instruct boys, and help them become good men. I think they are off-base on many things, but not for lack of good intentions. It would be a shame to punish the boys themselves for the pig-headedness of their adult leaders.

It is worth perusing the Boy Scout's Computers Merit Badge: http://www.usscouts.org/usscouts/mb/mb036.html

There is a lot in the requirements where having an Ubuntero teaching the boys the material would do a world of good, sending another well-educated Linux user off into the world, rather than another Micro-drone. We could be doing a lot of good here.

[ccw]

The girl scouts are actually totally accepting, you can be an atheist, anarchist, lesbian girl scout. As long as you're not a boy, you're in.

http://www.bsa-discrimination.org/index.html

[ccw]

.. brilliant.

I wish I had thought my roadmap posting over more before I posted it. I had honestly forgotten how exclusive the boyscouts were. I was an atheist, anarchist boyscout with many openly gay friends. I got in fights at camp with evangelical christians, homophobes, and right-wingers including some staff of the camp yet I was never removed or ostracized, my troop accepted my beliefs (for the most part) and accepted me. I never felt ostracized and I feel like the boyscouts did a lot for me to form who I've become; a compassionate human being who can tie pretty good knots and do first aid. Without BSA I wouldn't appreciate the environment nearly as much. It's not fair to write them all off, but I understand that as an organization they're not one we want to be aligned with for their discriminatory policies. Sorry for putting that on the roadmap, it seems my troop was not your common boyscout troop, but being the only troop I belonged to, it's pretty much my impression of BSA.

No, you weren't alone. I quite frequently performed my Senior Patrol Leader duties while wearing a Dead Kennedys - Freedom from Religion t-shirt.

[balou59]

http://www.bsa-discrimination.org/index.html

thanks for pointing this link. It strikes me how far away the BSA has gone from the original Scouts Movement defined by Baden Powell. Also, the BSA seems to be quite unique in it's exclusionary policies if compared to the European Scouts Movement and even the WOSM: http://www.bsa-discrimination.org/html/wosm.html

I could imagine collaboration with WOSM and Girls Scouts without problems, but still would make quite some reservations about an organisation that certainely is not willing to collaborate with all LoCo Team members because of their gender, sexual preferences or religion.

If I read in the "Girls in BSA" section that not only they exclude women but also don't want to see clergymen or teachers to serve as BS leaders because of their "feminine" professions, I really doubt that a collaboration with such an organisation is usefull. What about Edubuntu?

Instead I would speak in favour of publicly declare Ubuntu LoCo Teams open to Boy Scouts despite the BSA leaders excluding policy: "Ubuntu LoCo Team X welcomes BSA members using Ubuntu but does not endorse BSA restrictive policy". In public perception this puts the LoCo Team in a nice light: it's quite different if the LoCo Team invites BSA to collaborate than the other way round!

BTW, I very well know what boy scouts are, I used to by a Girl Scout in Switzerland in my youth too but it was the Swiss Scouts Movement, not excluding anyone, in the true spirit of the movement!

[ccw]

thanks for pointing this link. It strikes me how far away the BSA has gone from the original Scouts Movement defined by Baden Powell. Also, the BSA seems to be quite unique in it's exclusionary policies if compared to the European Scouts Movement and even the WOSM: http://www.bsa-discrimination.org/html/wosm.html

The point of that link was to illustrate that the GSA is not as innocent as it's been represented in this thread. Would I use that link as a reason to deny a local scout (boy or girl) the opportunity to discover ubuntu and OSS? No.

[lamalex]

The point of that link was to illustrate that the GSA is not as innocent as it's been represented in this thread.

could you point me to the part that says that? This site seems to actually have an agenda about scouting in general, maybe the site owners parents never let them be a scout and now they're pissed? The GSA section is an article about how GSA doesn't care if you're a lesbian but they don't encourage any particular lifestyle .. don't see the discrimination there...

[dshufelt]

After reading this post I kind of got the feeling that there was some question on the official Ubuntu stand point... I would like to encourage everyone to read the following: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/philosophy

The philosophy behind Ubuntu is extremely important to building strong communities (in my humble opinion). Here is a link to a great (short) interview with Nelson Mandella where he elaborates on the meaning and philosophy behind Ubuntu: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...buntu+mandella

That having been said, this was a fantastic discussion thread!

[elizabeth]

I feel this is best handled by disclaiming on all materials any endorsement by Ubuntu, the LoCo, Canonical, or the individuals involved of the organization, it's goals, or methods.

+1

Ind, of course, individuals should be free to choose whether or not to participate in particular activities. Nearly every organization will have someone who disapproves of some of its goals.

I also think we need to avoid any semblance of censorship. If someone disagrees with something for any reason, I want people to feel they can. We probably will not all agree, but in my post I felt excluded and was bringing up a real concern that others might be interested in knowing about (indeed, I got many comments saying "thanks - I didn't realize/had forgotten the BSA was so exclusionary").

I think part of what makes the Ubuntu community great is that all are welcome to participate, regardless of ideology. That we should be able to come together to work towards the spread and improvement of Ubuntu, regardless of our other goals. To me, that is the essence of the "Be Respectful" clause in the Code of Conduct, and something that differentiates it from other free software communities.

I absolutely agree. The CoC is very important, and which is why I'm less worried about a "flame war" starting here in the Ubuntu Forums than elsewhere - I feel safer here expressing my views knowing that we are bound to a code that includes respecting each other