St. Louis Archdiocese 'saddened and disturbed' that Boy Scouts allowing transgender youth

[pstokely]

Source: STL Post Dispatch

The Archdiocese of St. Louis is “deeply saddened and disturbed” by the Boy Scouts of America’s announcement that the organization will allow transgender youth into its programs.

The archdiocese put out a statement Tuesday saying that such action is contrary to the organization’s dedication to honor, service and “duty to God” by allowing “girls struggling with gender dysphoria into their troops.”

Allowing transgender children to identify as boys is “failing to recognize the fundamental order of God’s creation,” the statement continues.

“The fact is that human beings are born with a sexual identity and not merely a ‘gender identity’ of one’s choosing,” reads the statement by the archdiocese. “This sexual identity affects the totality of the person in the unity of his or her body and soul, and it greatly affects one’s capacity to love and be loved.”

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/st-louis-archdiocese-saddened-and-disturbed-that-boy-scouts-allowing/article_01c3e543-581d-5308-ae58-1401f865ad4d.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[Skittles]

1. oh really

if anyone is CHOOSING ANYTHING, it is the Archdiocese of St. Louis CHOOSING ignorance and bigotry

[Mc Mike]

2. I wish they'd please shut up their ignorant hateful mouths.

They obviously know zero about god and love.

[JI7]

3. fuck them

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Jeez.

I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot about the whole transgender thing I don't get, which needs to be chalked up to my own ignorance and a sort of personal isolation, but if someone says he's a boy, he should be allowed to be a boy scout. Or if she's a girl, she should be allowed to be a girl scout. Genitalia at birth shouldn't be the only criteria.

My older son did cub scouts and boy scouts, and there were a lot of positive aspects of that organization. Back when we were involved the deep dark secret was that some leaders were actually agnostic or atheist in their private lives, and had to hide that from the organization.

Again, I'll state my lack of connection to transgender people, but I also want to emphasize that I get it that people need to identify with whatever gender they identify with.

[mdbl]

6. I backed my son out of cub scouts

when they started drinking mock wolf blood and other weird rituals. It was too manipulative, kinda like the catholic church.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. Oh, my.

We never experienced that.

[mdbl]

8. maybe it was just the local organization

but it got weird.

[IronLionZion]

18. It can be hard to understand

I know people who have decided to transition as young children. This makes it more effective as they begin hormone therapy and grow accustomed to their chosen gender before puberty, they become much more passable and bigots would never know. But I have to wonder how a child would know they want that? Or if its the parents doing it.

The ones who do it later in life as adults would have more knowledge but it's also an uphill battle for them with the hormones and cultural conditioning and learning to live as the new gender.

And as if they don't have enough problems, they face discrimination all the time.

There are trans people who will do community discussions where people can ask questions and talk about it as a way to get more people to understand. This happens at some college campuses.

[HoneyBadger]

5. Protest the Archdiocese for their hate speech

Time to replace them

[Sherman A1]

9. There are those who are

"Saddened and Disturbed" by the St. Louis Archdiocese, so I guess that makes it about even.

[safeinOhio]

10. God created Adam and Steve, then....

Eve was created from some DNA from Adam's rib and then transgendered into a female..It's right there in the Bible, if you know how to read it.

[Freethinker65]

28. ❤

[Oneironaut]

11. "Greatly affects one's capacity to love and be loved" - I don't think Jesus would have agreed.

[logosoco]

12. Funny they actually used a term like "failing to recognize"!!?!?!?nt

[shraby]

13. I would think he'd be more saddened by the number of perverts in the church hierarchy.

[zonkers]

14. Off topic... My mom just said the boy scouts and girl scouts should join and just become the scouts

[csziggy]

24. YES - teach the kids to work together and treat each other as equals

If they collaborated on projects from an early age, boys and girls would not grow up with misconceptions about each other. The elimination of"separate but equal" should apply to the sexes as well as to race.

And it would stop what I went through in Girl Scouts - leaders that didn't think girls should camp out, do technical projects or be assertive. In Brownies we camped out, did astronomy and learned to speak out. But when I moved up to Girl Scouts the leader was an ultra-traditional housewife who thought all of that kind of thing was bad for girls.

The most ambitious project she allowed us to do was to make mobiles out of tin can lids- but we were not allowed to punch the holes in the lids and were supposed ask our fathers to do that for us - I took mine home, got out a hammer and a nail and punched the holes myself, never asked my father to do it. Not only were the mobiles ugly, we learned nothing by making them.

I didn't last three months - I wanted to do more productive things with my life.

[zonkers]

25. I just showed your post to my mom! Thanks!

[csziggy]

29. THe best man I know helped his Mom with Girl Scout troops - my husband

When he was a teenager, his mother started a new Girl Scout troop for his sisters and my husband helped with some of the troop projects. He was the guy who helped carry the truckloads of Girl Scout cookies around during the cookie sales, for instance. (He and his younger brothers also got to make forts from the boxes before the cookies were sold.)

I've always thought this is one of the reasons he is a strong women's right advocate - he was raised by a strong woman but he also watched dozens of girls grow into young women and got to help encourage them to go for whatever goal they wanted.

While he was in Boy Scouts, he does not have as fond memories of that as he does of helping his sisters and Mom in Girl Scouts. He is not an aggressive or competitive person and I get the feeling that was what was expected and taught in his Boy Scouts troop. He would have done much better in a mixed sex troop where cooperation was expected.

Tell your Mom she's great!

[hunter]

31. The Boy Scouts often take on the most regressive patriarchal values of the local dominant religion.

In our community it's the right wing Catholics. In other communities it's the Mormons or Fundamentalist Christians.

I'll never forget or forgive the freakish alliance between the right wing Catholics and Mormons in California's Proposition 8 battle. These are two religious groups who despise one another in every way yet they united to hate LGBT people, and both were recruiting from the Boy Scouts to distribute their utterly evil and disgusting lawn signs and other propaganda.

The Girl Scouts seem much less susceptible to that, probably because these patriarchal religions don't consider girls important.

[YOHABLO]

15. Why can't people be who they want to be?

Archdiocese, get over it.

[Madam45for2923]

16. Change is hard.

[randome]

17. I'm greatly disturbed that you think about other people having sex so much. Pervert.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]"The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it."
Tony Randall, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)[/center][/font][hr]

[sarcasmo]

19. This is the kind of garbage that makes me say F the church.

[brooklynite]

20. ...but the good news is that you can still beat up on the Atheists.

[keithbvadu2]

21. After many decades of the Catholic Church protecting its pederast priests,

After many decades of the Catholic Church protecting its pederast priests,

it's not credible for them to preach on morality.

[MrModerate]

22. They're disturbed, all right. n/t

[Iggo]

23. Fuck the fundamental order of god's creation. I'm sick of hearing about it.

Fuck you, archdiocese of St. Louis.

And fuck everybody who thinks like you.

Everybody.

Fuck all of you.

[mreilly]

26. Tell them this Assistant Scoutmaster says "Go fuck yourselves!"

We made the announcement at my son's Boy Scout meeting last night that transgenders are welcome and as an Assistant Scoutmaster I am proud to be part of an organization which is tolerant and inclusive.

ALL are welcome. We believe in freedom, one of the bedrock principles this country was founded upon, and so if the decision drives hateful people away from Scouting (I know one person in our troop who is right-wing Trump fan and already I suspect she'll pull her son out of Scouts based on this, but too bad!) so much the better.

These people aren't out there running the Troop, taking the kids to activities, camping in 20 degree temperatures, hiking in the rain, chaperoning them on trips to big cities and ensuring all the kids have fun, are safe, and are cared for. We in Scouting are doing that. So they can shut their ignorant, hateful mouths and worry about their own damn lives.

[1965Comet]

27. How stupid are the folks at this Diocese?

What better way to evangelize to these "poor misguided girls" (in their way of thinking) than to have them join a religious organization (once again, in their way of thinking)?

It's like saying trans youth should not go to church, even though church is right where you want them to be if you are an idiotic, religious nutjob that wants to convince those youths that they are going wrong.

[Iggo]

30. They are several kinds of stupid.