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    Ind. lawmaker says Girl Scouts promote abortion, homosexuality, is ridiculed by GOP colleagues

    By Tom Lobianco, The Associated Press | Associated Press – Wed, Feb 22, 2012

    INDIANAPOLIS - Undaunted by ridicule from the leader of his own party, an Indiana lawmaker is standing by his allegations that the Girl Scouts is a radical organization that promotes abortions and homosexuality.

    The scouts and Planned Parenthood have dismissed Rep. Bob Morris' comments as absurd, as did Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma. But Morris, a Republican, told The Associated Press his critics need to do more research into the 100-year-old scouting organization.

    "My family and I took a view and we're sticking by it," Morris said Tuesday, adding that his daughters were joining an alternative group for young girls run by conservative Christians. "My girls are no longer Girl Scouts. They're now going to join American Heritage Girls."

    Morris' comments were the butt of jokes inside the House on Tuesday, with Bosma spending much of the day handing out Thin Mints to lawmakers. He joked that Morris' comments led him to buy hundreds of cases of the famous Girl Scout cookies.

    "I purchased 278 cases of Girl Scout cookies in the last four hours," said a clearly sarcastic Bosma, who closed Tuesday's session by asking the former Girl Scouts in the chamber to stand up.

    Morris' comments about the Girl Scouts came in a letter he sent to House Republicans on Saturday that said he had conducted some research on the Internet and discovered that the scouts are a "tactical arm" of Planned Parenthood.

    The Girl Scouts flatly denied Morris' accusations, and Planned Parenthood of Indiana issued a separate statement calling Morris' charges "woefully inaccurate."

    "On the national level, inflammatory and generally inaccurate claims about a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood have been promoted primarily by anti-choice lawmakers seeking to place pressure on organizations to disassociate or distance themselves from Planned Parenthood," Betty Cockrum, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, said in a statement.

    Morris, in his letter to lawmakers, said some Christian conservatives who share his concerns have pulled their children out of Girl Scouts. He also pointed to a Colorado Girl Scout troop's acceptance of a transgender child last month as another reason to leave the group.

    ___

    Tom LoBianco can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/tomlobianco

     
    • Antler All Big
      Antler All Big  •  Bayside, California  •  3 mths ago
      Swiss Colony called - seems one of their fruitcakes is missing...
      • MikeY
        MikeY 3 mths ago
        Post of the day :-)
      • Scott
        Scott 3 mths ago
        Looks like we found it.
      • Firefly
        Firefly 3 mths ago
        Yes but how to catch it and get it back to Swiss Colony?
    • Erika
      Erika  •  Charlotte, North Carolina  •  3 mths ago
      Cookies, friendship bracelets and camping. Yeah, lesbian written all over it. As a troop leader I'm oversimplifying here of course, but some idiots are born, some are made.
      • A Yahoo! User 3 mths ago
        ...some are excreted...
      • wrdsmth
        wrdsmth 3 mths ago
        thank you for your volunteer work with youth, erika. rep morris definitely took a wrong turn on the way to his conclusion.
      • guest
        guest 3 mths ago
        As a fellow leader I agree 100%
    • Case
      Case  •  3 mths ago
      This guy reminds me of my crazy uncle who told me once that science was the tool of the devil... in an email... from his computer...
      • AM
        AM 3 mths ago
        Wow, your Uncle's Rick Santorum :)
      • linda
        linda 3 mths ago
        My crazy uncle drew a picture of a cigar and took it to a lawyer and told him he wanted a billion dollars, for his drawing of the new space shuttle. Seriously.
      • gary
        gary 3 mths ago
        And I thought the state senator from Florida was off his rocker for introducing a jobs bill that banned dwarf tossing in Florida to create jobs.
    • Sheila
      Sheila  •  Cary, North Carolina  •  3 mths ago
      I must've been in the wrong Girl Scout troop. Or I was too busy getting my animal sacrifice badge...
      • Carlos N
        Carlos N 3 mths ago
        good one...I like that.
      • bearfan
        bearfan 3 mths ago
        Yuck Yuck!
      • Whatever
        Whatever 3 mths ago
        You miss the point, it's like with cartoons, they have slowly turned cartoons into anything but entertainment for children. I grew up on bubunny , kids today have a steady diet of Demonism,/Vampirism and Witchcraft. masked as entertainment You are either part of this filth or to dumb to see it for how things really are
    • Douglas
      Douglas  •  San Jose, Costa Rica  •  3 mths ago
      This is such crap. The Scouts don't do anything wrong that I can see. They teach values that HELP society. Would your rather the girls become gang members? Get real!
      • candy apple
        candy apple 3 mths ago
        what am I missing? my mother worked and this was a wonderful place to go. Group leader taught sewing, cooking and how to get along with others. Being resourceful and sell cookies. I think the grand parents and parents bought most of the cookies. We got bages for good behavior. Personally I do not remember any sex education or lesbian activity. But I don't remember how to start a fire without matches either? I do remember a fun camping trip, the group leader pointed out the names of bugs and making smores? Why would you take that away from girls?
      • KC
        KC 3 mths ago
        Why not go after the Boy Scouts, too?
      • gary
        gary 3 mths ago
        Best thing coming from Indidna thes days is I65 south.
    • Casual Observer
      Casual Observer  •  3 mths ago
      The Mayans may have it right about 2012. All the loons are coming out of the woodwork. Are there ANY sane and rational Republicans left?
    • Michael
      Michael  •  3 mths ago
      If ya think Bob Morris is crazy... What about the republicans who elected him?
    • Lance
      Lance  •  Lake Mary, Florida  •  3 mths ago
      If the girls are homosexual, how do they get in the condition to need an abortion?
    • Just A Dumb Fireman
      Just A Dumb Fireman  •  Wallingford, Connecticut  •  3 mths ago
      Is there a Republican anywhere who's not mentally ill?
    • Roger Dodger
      Roger Dodger  •  3 mths ago
      What scares me is the freaking tool bred already.
    • Brain Doodles
      Brain Doodles  •  3 mths ago
      Are we seeing the contemporary version of McCarthyism? Thumbs up for yes, down for no.
    • The Dude
      The Dude  •  3 mths ago
      Looks like Santorum just found his VP.
    • guest
      guest  •  3 mths ago
      I am the leader of my daughter's Girl Scout Brownie troop. I have attended NUMEROUS leader training meetings, I have NEVER been told to promote homosexuality or abortion! My girls are currently working on their "My Faith" badge which IS a badge to learn about religious views, traditions, etc of fellow troop members. I have 8 girls in my troop. They consist of 3 Lutherans, 2 Catholics, 1 Evangelist, 1 Mormon and 1 Buddhist. We also meet at a local church!
      And to this idiot lawmaker review the Girl Scout promise that begins "On my honor I will try to SERVE GOD and my country ...... "
      If anything Girl Scouts is a RELIGIOUS organization!
    • anon
      anon  •  3 mths ago
      The amazing thing here isn't that Morris, based on internet hype and lies, is attacking the Girl Scouts. No, the amazing thing is that there appears to be a limit on how far his GOP colleagues will go in supporting another fearful hyper-religious conspiracy theory.

      Maybe he should have stuck with something more 'mainstream.' I know, the Girl Scouts are trying to impose Sharia law in the US. Wait, no, they just plan to marry illegal immigrants (of either sex!) Hold it, they are behind all those Occupy demonstrations, handing out cookies and anarchy.
    • PaulI
      PaulI  •  3 mths ago
      As if the GOP isn't embarrassed enough already...
    • NC
      NC  •  3 mths ago
      First it was take away the birth control pills, now their going after our Girl Scout cookies. This will not stand. Thin Mints rule.
    • IndependentMinded
      IndependentMinded  •  Clinton, North Carolina  •  3 mths ago
      I worked in a nursing home a few years ago, and I'll never forget this group of roughly 5 white guys (a little info. here...I'm a white guy myself) who sat around in the dining room all day. All they ever did was drink coffee (the ones that could have it, anyway) and tell jokes, usually of a ...let's call it "old school" nature (i.e., racist and sexists). Now, due to my position, I had to show the utmosts respect to these men and always was kind to them; I always kept a smile on my face when speaking to them and always said my "Mr.'s" and "sirs". The truth was, 90% of the time they were great to talk to, with interesting stories and the like...then there was the other 10% of the time. See, like so many white guys in the south (I wander if its only the south?) of a certain generation, they literally hated everyone who was not white and Protestant... and I don't mean 'they didn't like them', I mean they full bore freakin' hated them. What's more, these guys didn't fully respect you unless you were white, Protestant... and male. I'm serious, these guys started getting pissed off the day women started working and never 'mellowed out' thereafter. One of them, in fact, who stayed at the home with his wife would constantly berate her for everything she did. Suffice it to say, I may have kept my manners intact with these guys but I didn't like them a great deal, honestly. And neither did their families...
      That's the thing, these guys hatred and paranoia (which was opinion and was NOT medically based) drove every one of their families away. I got to know each and every one of them and I discovered that their families rarely came to visit them...not because they couldn't, but because they had lost their love towards them (I won't say they hated them, because they didn't). Heck, I remember once one of the guys daughter came in, proud to tell her dad she had 'finally found a job' (she was a single parent whose husband had died and she had been unemployed for a few months). His response? He told her she was going to go to hell because, to summarize, women need to stay home no matter what. I never saw her again after that....but I did see him later that day and I swear it looked like he'd been crying (which he wouldn't have admittd to in a million years).
      I realized after that incident that these guys were absolutely miserable, stuck in a mindset and mentality that made life unbearable and...well...just nasty.

      I'm sure you're asking why any of this is relevant. Simply put, when I look at the GOP today, with its years-long assault of baseless paranoia and general displeasure at some of the most basic human rights we Americans have held the last several decades (as well as their fervent, vocal desires to 'roll them back'), it reminds me of those 5 guys. I swear, the moment the GOP abandoned its economic promises of the 2010 elections in lieu of some vague "crusade" (to quote Rick Santorum) to establish social conservatism in America, they lost my (and I'd guess a whole lot of others) vote. One day, they'll realize how big a mistake this was... maybe when the entirety of the GOP consists of 5 white guys sitting in the dining room of a rundown nursing home, entertaining themselves with "old school" jokes...
    • bertha fay
      bertha fay  •  Austin, Texas  •  3 mths ago
      Former 1960s Girl Scout here - we almost did not have a troop because the Lutheran Church & School I attended did NOT want us praying with people of other faiths that included Catholics with a school right down the street, Methodists or any of the few Seven Day Adventists, Jews, or Baptists in our small town.

      We did end up with a Girl Scout Troop restricted strictly to girls of our particular flavor of Luthernism, heaven help us if an ELCA Lutheran girl tried to join.

      Encouraged birth control or abortion - NOT. Encouraged young women to learn skills and responsibility that could be equally applied as homemakers or executives - YES.

      This instance of church suppression is part of the reason I am Methodist, NOT Lutheran and live in Austin, NOT a small town in the Midwest. I believe in a loving GOD and that all of us are his children, NOT just the ones that proclaim it the loudest.

      This whole election is bringing back those memories of the hypocritical Christians of my youth and I sometimes don't even want to attend the liberal church where I am a member. I believe firmly in God, just not so much in some of his children.
    • BlindingLightshow
      BlindingLightshow  •  Stone Mountain, Georgia  •  3 mths ago
      How do Republicans get 40% to 50% of the vote with wackjobs like this?
    • Don
      Don  •  Knoxville, Tennessee  •  3 mths ago
      Why wouldn't religion want to prevent the possibility of someone having an abortion for lack of contraception?
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