Boy Scouts to rethink LGBT policy thanks to grassroots movement

*Iowa State Daily column by Ian Timberlake*

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is the single largest contributor to the Boy Scouts of America, stated that if the Boy Scouts allowed homosexual members then the church would withdraw all financial support from the organization. Accordingly, making a business decision after receiving such pressure from a religious organization, the BSA complied.

This was a paragraph in a column I wrote last July after the Boy Scouts made a public reaffirmation of its anti-homosexual policy after a two year long internal debate. Two years of internal debate must show that they were conflicted to begin with.

Bill DeVos, an Eagle Scout and a Scoutmaster in upstate New York, shows his Eagle awards and a letter that he mailed to the Boy Scouts on Tuesday in protest over the organization’s policy banning gay Scouts and leaders. (Courtesy of Bill DeVos via NBCNews)

Earlier this week the Boy Scout organization has eaten the words it once so firmly stood by last July, saying they plan on revisiting the decision to not allow homosexuals in the organization, and instead leave it up to individual troops to decide.

Already pressure was mounting for the organization to rewrite its policy, at the same time held at gunpoint by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints over potential funding leading to the Boy Scout’s July decision.

Outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and other religious funding, there are many corporations that support the Boy Scouts. In the last several months, after the Boy Scout’s reaffirmation of its anti-gay policy, these corporations have also put some heat on the Boy Scouts claiming it violates their nondiscrimination policy.

With the Boy Scouts already on a membership decline over the last several years (20 percent over the last decade), a loss of support from its many corporate sponsors would be crippling, regardless if its top two contributors are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and United Methodist church.

Last July I also wrote, “No law needs to change; the BSA is still completely protected by the Constitution, and that is the beauty of a free society. The change of becoming a less discriminating organization needs to happen internally; and this ruling, though pathetic, might just finally teeter the Boy Scouts towards a truly moralistic organization.”

In 2000, the Boy Scouts went all the way to the Supreme Court on the matter of discriminating against gays and the court ruled a split 5-4 in favor of the Boy Scouts of America. So long as the group is a not-for-profit, private organization, they can discriminate against whomever they choose.

Just this last May, Eagle Scout Zach Wahls of Iowa City, Iowa, turned in a petition containing over a quarter million signatures that called for the lifting of the gay ban. Since Wahls petition and the Boy Scouts’ failure to act upon it, many other online petitions began sprouting up, amounting to signatures in the millions.

Many major corporations have pulled their funding from the organization due to their continued, active discrimination. A few of these CEOs are taking an active effort in actually lifting the ban, including members on the actual BSA Board. The National Council Board includes CEOs of major international businesses. Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, supports lifting the ban, and he is next in line to take control of the board.

At the same time, the ultimate reason why the Boy Scouts organization is so readily thinking about reversing its July reaffirmation soon, is thanks to the grassroots movement it forged itself, essentially digging their own grave.

Troops, leaders, parents, boys, civil rights advocates and Eagle Scouts such as myself caused an uproar. Be it total troop defiance of the policy or Eagle Scouts immolating their own rank in front of the council, all over America (and the world), the Boy Scouts of America National Council was marked as one of the greatest bigoted organizations of our time.

Though not a final decision, both President Barack Obama and his former competitor Mitt Romney stated the association should be all inclusive, mounting even more weight on the board’s shoulders. The board is said to meet and discuss next week.

Just as I concluded my July column, I will conclude this column with the posting of the Boy Scouts of America’s National Council mailing address. As stressed before, please voice your opinion to them, personally. A discriminant society is a primitive and amoral society.

Boy Scouts of America, National Council

1325 West Walnut Hill Lane

Irving, Texas 75015-2079

Party affiliation shouldn’t dictate personal preferences

*Iowa State Daily column by Ian Timberlake*

Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have all spoken counter to partisan politics. Historically, most politicians, whether bidding for office or long-time seat holders speak at least somewhat of across-the-aisle appeal. Partisan politics divides the nation and stupefy the commons.

Politicians are people-pleasers; while that may not be their job title or a component of their list of responsibilities, we all know that the electorate is highly capable at pleasing potential voters. Paul Ryan recently said: “We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric.” Whether or not a politician actually enacts across-the-aisle policy making is one thing, but it doesn’t take a wallflower to figure out why he or she might try to appeal to an opposing party.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” It seems bipartisan rhetoric is leaping out the window.

The greatest mistake you can make in politics is holding a certain belief because it conforms with the ideology of the party with which you vote. Straight-ticket voters are only checking the “ignorant” box on the ballot — and in Iowa, we do have a box that allows you to vote entirely for one party. As a citizen and a voter, you should know your own personal ideology and choose a politician who parallels that closest to your own.

Democrats aren’t supposed to be pro-gun-control because their party stands that way, just as Republicans aren’t supposed to be pro-life because that is their party’s stance. The question is, do you hold these stances because that is the party you support? Or do you wholly believe in the issue regardless of party?

A lot of what I speak out for or against ends up getting me labeled a “hard liberal” or “fanatical right,” when in fact I just so happen to support women’s right to control their reproductive cycle as well as the belief more citizens should conceal carry.

My ideology is exactly that: my own. The droves of Obama “Forward” clubites and the teeming Romney pseudo elitists are no better or worse than the mullet man in the casino betting red because it’s “his” color.

Partisan politics will never go away; don’t think I’m saying otherwise. But more citizens need to actually look at what a candidate stands for as opposed to what the party stands for. Assess the candidates character and leadership potential and make a decision based on his or her moral capacity to do what is right for the nation as a whole.

Obama is not my ideal president, but he knows when a decision is right for the country, even when it is unpopular. Good politics is not necessarily popular politics. He bailed out the banks, a decision he didn’t want to have to make, saying: “If there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans, it’s that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.” But analysts from the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve agree it was necessary in preventing a major economic collapse thanks to circular bank loaning brought forth by the Bush administration.

As far as the health care law is concerned, even Fox News wrote the president’s plan will reduce the deficit in the following years: “Republicans have insisted that ‘Obamacare’ will actually raise deficits — by ‘trillions,’ according to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But that’s not so, the Congressional Budget Office said. … It did estimate that Republican legislation to repeal the overhaul — passed recently by the House — would itself increase the deficit by $109 billion from 2013 to 2022.” We are essentially the last first world nation to adopt universal health care.

Shocking.

Both of these instances are cases where unpopular decisions were made but were a benefit to the nation. Instances of politicians making people-pleasing decisions are rampant. This is why I said runaway partisanship stupefies the commons. It’s no different from the mother who gives candy to her child every time it cries.

I am voting for a re-election of Obama. Difficult decision-making and intelligence are my key reasons, and he has already shown those traits. He uses facts and numbers to make his political decisions, not partisan ideology, unlike the current Republican Party (note Mitch McConnell above).

Thomas Jefferson said: “I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.” In this, Jefferson made a valuable distinction between policy and ideology.

Politics is invested in your submission. Seek humanism and dispel politics that challenges natural-born rights. As the voting booths are built, avoid the “ignorant” box and break yourself from the arbitrary figments of the imagination, or “mind-forged-manacles” of straight-ticket voting.

 

Original: http://www.iowastatedaily.com/opinion/article_fe205ff8-fd39-11e1-b484-0019bb2963f4.html

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Higgs-Boson, Not In America

*Iowa State Daily column by me*

Nationalism nowadays is generally an inadequate mentality. It estranges one nation from an ever globalizing world. A world that will need to work together to accomplish great things. But I need to admit, it was a bittersweet moment when I heard that CERN‘s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva discovered a Higgs boson like particle with nearly 100 percent accuracy on America’s Independence Day.

If you aren’t familiar with the latest news (and I dearly hope you are) for nearly 50 years the proposed Higgs boson particle was the most sought after discovery in science. Some have argued it would be the greatest human discovery to date.

Ironic undertones, as not too long ago Congress canceled a project already underway in Texas called the Superconducting Super Collider, which was to build an accelerator three times as powerful as the European counterpart. Congress cut funding due to cost, which was budgeted to $12 billion, similar to that of the International Space Station. Although the NASA budget is not under the same allocation as the Super Collider, just to put it in perspective, the recent bank bailout was of a greater monetary cost than NASA has ever spent in the half century it has existed. To say that the science isn’t affordable, let alone worth it, is a tall tale.

The fall of the Soviet Union brought a cease funding mentality as far as the U.S. government was concerned, regardless of the dreams of scientists, nerds and children alike. Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses was no longer an issue of significance.

What concern does this have with the Higgs boson particle? Well, the Fermilab accelerator in Illinois (the world’s second largest operating accelerator) had been searching for the particle for decades. Fermilab had had hints of the Higgs particle for years but didn’t have quite the power of the new Hadron Collider. In 2010 Fermilab asked for $100 million just to keep it running, less than a third of a thousandth of a percent of the national budget. The request was denied, and America’s most capable accelerator was shut off.

Higgs event witnessed in the Large Hadron Collider

The Super Collider would’ve been 20 times the power of Fermilab’s accelerator and already more powerful than the recently built Hadron Collider, significantly increasing the likelihood of verifying Peter Higgs proposition of the Higgs particle — and therefore keeping our nation at the forefront of science. Not because the United States should be at the forefront but because it’s the intelligent and natural thing to do, and competition fuels the dreams of tomorrow.

Once verified, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle will be eternalized in history just as were the theories of Einstein, Bohr, Darwin, Newton and Galilei to name a few. What each of these great scientific discoveries has in common is that in each of their current times, no one knew quite exactly the implications of such discovery, not even the discoverer. But each was paramount in expanding the bubble of knowledge humans have.

Without Einstein, we would have no GPS and no knowledge of the relation of time and space. Without Bohr, we would have little understanding of atomic structure and quantum mechanics. Without Darwin, we would have no modern biology. Without Newton, we would have no calculus, at least not until much later. Galilei is the father of modern science, according to Einstein. And Peter Higgs very well could be the father of understanding the fabric of space itself.

And what do we have to say about it? Yahoo’s top article was about Justin Bieber on the Fourth of July, the day CERN discovered the particle. You would need to scroll through several pages of news to find anything related to the Higgs boson particle. The same reaction is represented all over America. Nobody seemed to give a damn — unless you were in the science community. Back when Einstein was set to prove his theory via a solar eclipse, the entire world was bridling with energy in anticipation for his results. Once the results came, headlines around the world celebrated science. The Times of London read “Revolution In Science.” The New York Times read “Einstein Theory Triumphs.” Beers were named after the nutty man himself. He was eventually labelled person of the century by Time.

Americans need to restore their drive for discovery. It is requisite for our society to remain a card player among current and up and coming first-world nations. The stone age is only a stone’s throw away in species terms; let’s not let it throw back. We all know about our Nobel Prize Laureate; let’s keep the reputation that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Every one of us needs to push and advocate scientific discovery. Open up your children or future children to it. Even if you don’t care about it, it’s guaranteed to affect your life in every way possible. When you reach the ripe old age of “kick the bucket,” you can say you were alive when the Higgs boson particle was discovered.

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