As Meghan noted earlier this week, it seems that the YMCA will be dropping the MCA from their name. Men? That became politically incorrect ages ago. Christian? Hardly a factor in their programming for decades. Association? No problem there, but YA doesn’t make any sense.
I’m fine with the change. After all, it reflects the reality of the venerable organization that, like so many creations of the Protestant Establishment, has become part of the Secular Establishment.
But I enjoyed the incoherent boilerplate put forward by Jim Dickson, a local YMCA, er, Y head in Tennessee. To reassure folks, he told the local TV station: “We’re going to change our logo and change the way we talk about what we do, but the core of what we do will never change.”
Huh? What we do will never change? Last I checked, the Y changed a great deal of what it did over the last fifty years. (One one thing getting rid of male-only events and facilities would count as a pretty big change.)
I think Mr Dickson meant to say, “What we do will never change, until we change what we do.”





July 15th, 2010 | 2:23 pm
YA, right!
July 15th, 2010 | 10:04 pm
I’m still scratching my head over this exchange:
“So, we asked: ‘Is this a way of becoming more politically correct?’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve been in The Y for 28 years and even for me it’s hard to communicate all we do,’ Dickson told Volunteer TV.”
So limiting their name to a single letter makes it easier to communicate all they do?
July 16th, 2010 | 1:32 am
YMCA
Get rid of M, for men…no sexism please.
Get rid of C, no religious bigotry, please.
So let’s hear it for the Y…as in young?
Can you say “Ageism”?
No old folks welcome.
July 18th, 2010 | 4:24 pm
“Hardly a factor in their programming for decades.”
That may be true on the national level, but it is not entirely the case with local branches. Our local YMCA (consisting of four local branches) has a definite, if somewhat generic, Christian emphasis.
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