More on the Boy Scouts and ASME

To the Editor: I would like to offer an opposing viewpoint to a letter in your June issue. It was written by Emil L. Martinec and it was about the Boy Scouts.

The Boy Scouts organization is a private organization and is allowed to set policies as it sees fit. I personally applaud the Boy Scouts on their recent victory in the Supreme Court, and I applaud ASME for supporting the Boy Scouts' Engineering Merit Badge. ASME should support engineering in every way it can.

Chad R. Anderson
St. Clairsville, Ohio

To the Editor: Emil Martinec engages in mere name-calling when, in the June issue, he lumps the Boy Scouts of America's exclusion of homosexuals under the category of "discrimination." Exclusion for a valid purpose is accepted in any civilized society, with examples including the disqualifying of nearsighted persons from being airline pilots and not allowing convicted felons to purchase firearms.

Those promoting such rules do not disbelieve in corrective lenses or suppose that rehabilitation of criminals is impossible, being motivated instead by a not only defensible but obligatory intent to protect the public from what could and eventually would go wrong if failing to avoid potentially dangerous situations.

The debate on this subject will continue, of course, but there should be some matters on which all can agree. One example that comes to mind is the obligation of a professional organization to stick to its chartered purpose and not divert its powers and resources into furthering the personal political goals of the organization's present and former executives. Regardless of how one feels about Scouting, there should consequently be one group that unarguably has lost all claim to respectability: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Don Lock
Bethlehem, Pa.

To the Editor: Regarding Emil L. Martinec's letter on funding for Boy Scouts in ASME NEWS, I can agree with one thing only — that ASME should consider equivalent funding for the Girl Scouts as well.

The rest of Emil's letter appears to be a political statement. ASME should stay above politics — especially those of Emil and the like. The Boy Scouts have very definite moral standards based on their religious beliefs, and nobody, including ASME, has any business discriminating against them because of it.

If girls want to scout, they can. That's exactly why there is a Girl Scouts organization. If there are people of a different "sexual orientation" who don't hold the values of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, they are perfectly free in the United States to form their own scouts organization if they want. And if Emil wants ASME to fund this hypothetical scouts organization, too, he should propose that to the ASME Board.

To not fund the Boy Scouts because of their moral standards would be openly discriminatory.

Regardless of Emil's status of Life Fellow and Past Vice President of ASME, there are numerous ASME members who would wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiments expressed in his letter.

David E. Guyon
North Huntingdon, Pa.

To the Editor: In response to Emil Martinec's letter in the June ASME NEWS, ASME should definitely continue supporting the Boy Scouts regardless of their seemingly discriminatory policies.

The Boy Scouts contribute tremendously to the ranks of engineering worldwide, including Martinec, many of my engineering role models, and myself. The Boy Scouts are clearly dealing with a complex moral dilemma that has divided not only the Boy Scouts but also the communities in which they have provided so much service for the last 85 years. Despite an engineer's desire to fix everything with a few calculations, I believe it makes more sense to continue to support the Boy Scouts while they deal with these issues. Martinec suggests that it is perhaps more important to deprive the boys who are currently in the Scouting program of a modernized engineering curriculum because their leaders do not share identical moral values with ASME and Martinec. This course will not serve the interests of ASME or the Boy Scouts.

Considering that ASME supports the profession primarily responsible for the design and manufacture of missiles, bombs and other weapons that have been used and continue to be used to kill millions of people and destroy entire countries, it would certainly be strange for ASME to stop supporting the Boy Scouts on "moral" grounds.

Continue to support the Boy Scouts, and let them decide their own moral issues.

Carl E. Atkinson, III
York, Pa.

Editor's Note: The writer is an Eagle Scout and Assistant Scoutmaster.

To the Editor: I am surprised at the apparent lack of scrutiny in the selection of letters for publishing. The June 2001 issue of ASME NEWS had two particularly disturbing letters that contained at least one factual error and a couple of very questionable arguments used in turn to advance political statements.

In the letter from Robert Ehrenbeck, he states that 60,000 barrels of Alaskan oil are currently exported to Asia every day. In fact, this practice was discontinued in March 2000 by the oil companies.

At the same time, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and several other West Coast Democratic lawmakers called on President Clinton to temporarily ban the export of Alaskan oil as one step in many that could be taken to address the recent sharp rise in gas prices at the time.

Ehrenbeck's comments that "there is no energy crisis" does not seem rational or factual in light of his next statement: "The problems in California are due to not enough power plants being built." Since power plants produce energy, it would seem that there is indeed a lack of energy (read: "crisis") in California. He also states that the California problems "are not due to demand outstripping supply," but that is precisely the cause of the brownouts and blackouts there or anywhere else, for that matter.

Lastly, the letter from Emil Martinec on the Boy Scouts of America Merit Badge states that "schools, churches, and government entities and others are excluding them from their premises." This may be true, but as far as the government entities are concerned, the "open forum" law allows all groups to use public schools and public buildings regardless of their message, and it applies to the Boy Scouts of America. These types of exclusions are being ruled illegal and are not a course that should be held up for ASME to follow. The Boy Scouts of America is still one of the best ways to inform a large number of youth about careers in engineering, and ASME should take advantage of that.

I will be watching the ASME NEWS Letters section carefully to see if this trend to print unfounded statements continues, and will withdraw my ASME membership if factual errors are not caught and dealt with prior to printing these publications or, at the very least, corrected in the next issue. I am not against opinions being expressed, but they must be checked to ensure that they are based on factual data. The gravest concern is that if these letters are printed with such errors, what is the quality of the articles?

Steve Tait
Valdez, Alaska

To the Editor: I was sad to read Emil Martinec's letter in the June 2001 issue of ASME NEWS. He missed three vital points.

ASME has working agreements with both the Girl Scouts of the USA and the Boy Scouts, to support a variety of activities.

Much of the work to revise the Boy Scout Engineering Merit Badge requirements and pamphlet was done by a small group of volunteers. It was time for this badge to be updated, and our ASME team was careful to move away from the earlier emphasis on Civil Engineering to a broader view of the [engineering] profession as it is practiced today.

The Boy Scouts are not "openly opposed to differences in sexual orientation." The Boy Scouts fought for and won the right to establish their own membership rules. That's all. I now see that my local [Boy Scouts] council, which was the one that started all the fuss by rejecting Mr. Dale as a Scoutmaster, has now published a Policy Statement on Tolerance of Human Differences.

This document states clearly that it is "sexual behavior [that] becomes publicly inappropriate" for which they would exclude any person: inappropriate behavior by anyone — heterosexual or homosexual.

I guess my suggestion to Emil is to find out the facts before ranting, which sounds like good engineering practice.

John W. Wesner, P.E.
Pittsburgh

P.E. licensing exam

To the Editor: I am the ASME representative to the NCEES Mechanical Engineering Exam Committee, MEC. As such, I have been one of several professional engineers working to develop the new examination format, which will be offered for the first time in October 2001.

The July issue has an error in the article on page 4, "ASME develops new tools to help P.E.candidates ace licensing examination." The error lies in the sentence: "The new day-long exam format now requires all test takers to answer 40 multiple-choice questions in the morning that deal with codes and standards."

This is incorrect because there are, at most, only two questions out of 40 that deal with codes and standards. All the other questions in the morning "breadth" section of the examination cover other topics germane to the practice of mechanical engineering.

Details about examination specifications may be obtained at www.ncees.org.

Ernest B. Gardow, P.E.
Simsbury, Conn.

Online service costs

To the Editor: In the May issue, in an article on the Digital Store, an ASME staffer said that the only difference [between the print and electronic format], "is that the electronic format will cost a few dollars more 'because it costs ASME more to produce and provide customer service. But there is enough added value to support the price differential.' "

ASME's situation regarding cost seems unusual. Most online stores claim costs savings versus "bricks-and-mortar." Is it possible online service costs more due to ASME's lack of expertise in the online realm?

Bill Weitze, P.E.
San Jose, Calif.

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