Hey guys - sorry the title of this post may have been bad.  Any answers to the questions above?

nickaster said:

… keep certain categories from appearing on the front page.  Can role scoper do this? how? 

From the Usage Guide:

Restricting Read Access by Post Category

1. Go to WP Admin -> Restrictions -> Category
2. Scroll down to your category of interest, perhaps using the scroll link at top
3. Select the "Private Post Reader" checkbox to restrict read access to private posts by anonymous users and WP Subscribers
4. Optionally, select the "Post Reader" checkbox to restrict read access to non-private posts by anonymous users and WP Subscribers (if the WP Subscriber role has not been modified to include read_private_posts)
5. Scroll to the top
6. Note that the adjacent dropdown indicates that the Update action will cause blog-wide assignment of the selected roles to be ignored for posts in the selected category.
7. Click the Update button

nickaster said:

Thanks a million!

As for the second question - the problem is I don't want the posts to be invisible - I just want them to not appear on the front page. I want them to still appear on their individual pages and on a special category page.   So I guess i"m out of luck and will keep using the other plugin.  No big deal.

I see. That's a bit outside Role Scoper's purpose, but you're not out of luck. If you want to simplify your configuration, just add this to the bottom of you wp-config.php:

function nicks_home_query( &$query ) {
  if ( is_home() )
    $query->query_vars['cat'] = '-10,-17'; // set to your non-visible catIDs
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'nicks_home_query' );

Just modify the above code with your desired hidden category IDs. And/or include catIDs without a leading negative to specify which categor(ies) posts MUST be in for home page visibility.