Sunday in Outer Blogness: Done with scouts edition!

This past week the CoJCoL-dS has started decoupling its young men’s program from the Boy Scouts of America (and Canada)! They’re keeping the Cub Scouts and the beginning part of the Boy Scouting program (for now…), but for older teen boys (14+ in the US and Canada) the Boy Scouts will no longer be the official youth program. (Too bad — boys will no longer be earning these awesome merit badges!)

There’s been some speculation that it might be related to the BSA becoming more friendly to gay people. The official statement from President Newsroom is that it’s about the program not meeting the needs of the older boys. That may well be true, but I think it’s also likely that some bean-counter in the Church Office Building decided that they could save money by giving the boys a cheapo program like the one they offer the girls.

Dumping some scouting programs would be a good idea if they were replacing them with something interesting and exciting (and inclusive!), but it looks like the replacement will be more reading out of correlated manuals and bearing your testimony:

Instead, Young Men activities will focus on spiritual, social, physical and intellectual goals outlined by the Church.

It’s so funny — I was talking about just this sort of thing last week: the CoJCoL-dS scrapping anything and everything that provides a bit of variety and substance and replacing it with more correlated pablum. I know a lot of guys hated being required to participate in scouts, but there are probably plenty of other kids whose favorite memories of growing up Mormon were built through the scouting program. But, hey, why invest resources in things that will build good memories for young Mormons that will help them want to stay in Mormonism as adults — when instead you can save a few bucks…? It’s not like the CoJCoL-dS has a huge attrition problem or something….

At least LDS teens still get the privilege of having closed-door interviews in which they’re grilled about their masturbation habits (among other problematic messages about sexuality). Plus you can still build happy memories by making a game of strategies to survive the crushing boredom of LDS meetings!

In related news, it was Mother’s Day! With all the angst it brings. Including that charming LDS custom of telling all women that they’re mothers, whether they’re literally mothers or not:

What I do have complicated feelings about is people telling me that I am a mother. First of all, the insistence that, above all, I’m a mother, or even a potential mother, dismisses my actual life, skills, and service.

My kids didn’t get me anything, but, OTOH, I didn’t call my mom either, so I guess it all comes out even. Heavenly Mother got the usual shout-out. And Hawkgrrrl wrote some cheerful commentary on our current situation:

Given the timing of the new series and the AHCA, it’s an interesting time to be a woman. And by interesting, I mean welcome to dystopia.

Health care (or the gutting of what’s left of it in the US) has been a big topic of discussion — especially the disconnect between Trumpcare and the teachings of that Jesus guy the Republicans give so much lip service to. Meg Stout wrote some interesting commentary about the fact that US women are significantly more likely to die in childbirth than women in other developed nations. Interesting because she basically blamed the whole thing on abortion, and even if she had provided some evidence to back that up, that claim doesn’t even begin to address the question at hand about why the whole thing is more than twice as deadly in the US than it is elsewhere. Personally, I think it’s just that the US no longer really qualifies as a “developed country”…

In LDS church and culture, a BYU study found that belief in porn addiction (not the porn use itself) causes relationship problems, Lynette wrote a piece on how women are not encouraged to express desire (she does like some things about Mormonism though), Alex discussed the parallels between racism and sexism, and there was a charming personal story about mishies in the New York Times.

In fun, Adult Onset Atheist is cycling in the trail of the Mormon pioneers and Knotty posted some awesome Mormon films from the 80’s!

Happy reading!