I honestly don't understand what the ACLU's end game really is? Prevent any private organization from being able to dictate any membership? Or is this just a harrassment tactic to rid BSA of any public (school or civic) sponsor?

I think that part of the problem is that they're just jealous that they can't devise their own alternative...

Unless your children are mature enough to grasp the implications of a religious affiliation, I consider it wrong -- morally wrong -- to assign them a religion. Religion is emphatically not for children, except as an acculturating experience -- and even that can be carried much too far.

Well, yes, and we are raising our children without much specific religion, but with a respect for spirituality and the sacred. I am surprised to hear a Catholic make that assertion, though. I thought it was a fairly fundamental part of Catholicism to, say, baptize infants and put children into religious training at a fairly young age.

Since the BSA has an explicitly religious component, and since the BSA doesn't have either a Pagan or a Unitarian program, we were worried about that aspect. (There are, for example, homeschooling groups in Texas that wouldn't have anything to do with our kids because we are Pagan.) As it turns out, though, the extent to which that is or is not a problem is highly pack-dependent, at least in the cub scouts (which is where our kids are now), and in the case of their pack is certainly not a problem.