What they ARE saying is
that it is unreasonable to use the criterion of whether or not a man has
children of his own as a factor in their scrutiny. Do you not understand the
distinction? 

Michael I do understand the distinction and I agree with the point you are trying to make, but as in this thread I think people like Todd start throwing words into people mouths and takes one statement and "Reader digests" it to mean something completely different then the original intent.

Jodi, you took me to task for not answering your question (which I hadn't yet seen at that point...but, hey...what'cha gonna do, right?), yet I'm still waiting on an answer, myself.

To refresh:

You say that it makes "NO SENSE!!!!!!!" for men to want some alone time with an unrelated child, and question the intent of any that do.

On the other hand, you're not wary of every man that comes into your child's life.

To which I ask, Why not?  What POSSIBLE reason could they have for wanting to spend time with him, if - as noted above - it makes "NO SENSE!!!!!!!" for men to want some alone time with an unrelated child.

Todd I have retyped my answer a couple of times because I know what ever I say will be twisted and you will add a narrative to what I was REALLY trying to say. Because you have done it to almost every one of my posts.

Here is where I stand:

I don't trust a man to want to spend alone time with my child.  If a man enjoys working with children, great we need Men in jobs like teaching. And if a gay couple wants to raise a child, great there are too many kids in foster care where some are getting molested by "staright" men. But if a man wants to spend one on one time, with a child, that is not his own. I would then YES be leery.  

Michael I do understand the distinction and I agree with the point you are trying to make, but as in this thread I think people like Todd start throwing words into people mouths and takes one statement and "Reader digests" it to mean something completely different then the original intent.

No. All that is being done is people are taking your position at your word and testing the limits of your admitted prejudice.  If you fear a man without children getting involved in scouts because you fear he is doing so for access to abuse its reasonable to assume you fear a man adopting a child for access to abuse. 

But lets throw some numbers at the issues we've discussed:

Here is a link: http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nr_fa ct_sheets_childabusedata

In 2005, 899,000 children in the US were reported abused, 62% of which was the result of neglect (which would be the parent guardian not a scout master). 

Here is who are identified as the Perpatrators:

Perpetrators of child abuse or neglect are most often the child’s own parents. According to NCANDS, in 2005, 79.4 percent of perpetrators were parents and 6.8 percent were other relatives. The largest remaining categories of perpetrators were the unmarried partner of a child’s parent (3.8 percent) and other perpetrators (4.1 percent). In 3.6 percent of child maltreatment cases the perpetrators were missing or unknown. In under 1 percent of child maltreatment cases the perpetrator was a foster parent, residential facility staff, the child’s daycare provider, a legal guardian, friends or neighbors, or other professionals (USDHHS, 2007).

Approximately 40 percent of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 18.3 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone; 17.3 percent were abused by both parents (USDHHS, 2007).

So based on these numbers 4.1% of the perpatrators were not in the household. 40% of the kids were hurt by their moms, who are decidely not men.

By the way, Jodi, a page or two ago you disagreed with my assertion that
there had been no personal attacks on Greg, which is fine, that's your
opinion and all. Just wondered how you felt about his personal attacks on
me?

I thought the statement :"Manipulative bitch" was uncalled for.

On this whole fight I honestly thought only women fought like this.

Wow, I had a lot of reading to do!  Gotta add to the conversation again!

QUOTE: If you knew the scout leader well and trusted him, it should not matter if he has kids of his own or not

That's a bit apart from the original point; we were talking about (and assuming) that the man in question is someone we don't know yet (hence the responses of: most molestations are by people you know).  The issue is that many don't agree that there is a difference between the male scout leader in the job because he enjoys kids and the male scout leader who signed up because of his kid.  For my part, as mentioned, I understand and empathize with the enjoyment of wanting to get involved with your child's activity.  Truth be told, I didn't have much use of spending time with kids before I had my own.  But many good, trustworthy men do.  However, it is something that I can't empathize with, so knowing my own concern of how to treat other's children, knowing those children have parents that fear what can happen by an adult, and that many times it does (such as the church molestations) when in an uncontrolled environment.  So I may prevent the activity for my child, or maybe I will allow her to get involved.  I don't know until I weigh all aspects of it.  But I am saying that I'll need to be assured by that man to an even slightly greater extent than the one who's in it for their own child, because I don't understand their motivation yet.  You can call that a failing on my part, or a prejudice; it is what it is.  As I define it, it is a prejudice, but as I define it we're all prejudiced in one way or another.

I don't claim to be morally superior than anyone- in fact, objectively I'm a lot less fair to anyone, or willing to give the benefit of the doubt now that I'm a father.  I don't feel I have that luxury as the kind of parent I want to be.  (By the way, for anyone genuinely worried about the psychological damage or paranoia this may have on the kids, I promise you that it's as discreet as possible!  Furthermore, I have no interest in offending someone with my doubts by refusing to let my child get involved in their activity).

I think what's happening here is that someone makes a statement about a particular suspicion or concern, and then tons of people try to objectively question and rationalize every nuance of it.  Trying to find the logic in the actions, or make analogies to other situations.  Sometimes it's just intuition that raises the red flag, even without the statistics to back it up.  I've said this before, but I'd love for those people (perhaps the ones without kids and are involved in extracurricular activities with kids) who get offended by the notion a few of us propose, would instead see that they may have to offer a little more assurance than the men who are involved because of their kids.  Make sure to convince the parents that you understand how precious their kids are to them.  Perhaps this is a prejudice as well, but I would feel that the scout master or camp counselor without kids wouldn't quite understand that to the same degree as the parental version in those same jobs.