Boy Scouts will be boys ... or not
Move to admit girls driven by money and yes, politics
If you’ve always wanted a chance to send your 13-yearold daughter to sleep in the woods with teenage boys, all while being supervised by men they barely know — have the Boy Scouts got a deal for you!
Yesterday, on the official “Day of the Girl” (motto: “Promote youth rights and gender justice for girls all around the world”), the Boy Scouts of America announced they’re going coed.
“The values of Scouting — trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example — are important for both young men and women,” said Michael Surbaugh, chief scout executive for the BSA.
But according to the Girl Scouts, he should have included another value on that list:
Greed.
“Girl Scout officials have suggested the BSA’s move was driven partly by financial problems and a need to boost revenue,” the Associated Press reported yesterday. Girl Scouts of the USA thinks the BSA has been quietly recruiting girls and trashing Girl Scouts programs in order to increase enrollment — and the Boy Scouts’ bank roll.
“I formally request that your organization stay focused on serving the 90 percent of American boys not currently participating in Boy Scouts ... and not consider expanding to recruit girls,” Girl Scouts president Kathy Hanna wrote to the Boy Scouts over the summer.
But is it really all about the bucks? Christina Cauterucci, writing at the liberal Slate. com, notes that “with the public-relations deficit BSA has racked up with its ban on gay leaders (which they recently reversed after much criticism) and its chillingly warm reception for Donald Trump, the Boy Scouts could use a highly publicized, progressive win.”
In other words, it’s all about politics. And if so, it’s an inevitable part of the anti-science politics pushed by the left. For years liberal activists have waged war on evolutionary biology and the sex differences that drive it. “Boy” and “girl,” these activists claim, are mere “social constructs” — an invention. To them, choosing your sex is like choosing your hair color.
Surely you wouldn’t want the “Blonde Scouts” to keep out brunettes? Why should the Boy Scouts just be about boys?
“Because Boy Scouts is for boys” says Dave Bartlett of Upton. He has two Eagle Scout sons and was stunned when he heard the news. “They’re going to send girls out on camp trips, really?” Barlett asked. “Scouting goes up to 18 years old. Things are going to happen.”
Bartlett pointed out that adult chaperones are already prohibited from being alone with a Scout, even a family friend. Now add male chaperones and female scouts and the problem will just get worse.
Former Department of Justice attorney (and Eagle Scout) J. Christian Adams is even more blunt: “Any parent who sends a girl into the Eagle program is sending them to be abused.” (Physically, not sexually, he added quickly.)
Adams points out that achieving “The Order of the Arrow” and other levels of scouting are physically challenging. Part of the experience includes the sort of hazing that boys do to each other when they’re “just with the boys.”
Ah, but that’s the point — at least from the political left. It should never be “just boys.” David Bernstein, who writes for Boston Magazine, tweeted yesterday: “Historically, and currently, all-male orgs have perpetuated lack of access, opportunity, and advancement in society.”
Ah, yes — those bigoted Boy Scouts keeping down the Webelo-free womenfolk of the world!
The common-sense minority knows that the value of Boy Scouts to young men comes in part from its single-sex make-up, and that the same is true for Girl Scouts. Unfortunately feminists try to argue that discriminating against boys is OK because [insert gibberish here] and the “there’s no such thing as gender” loonies reject biological differences as oppression.
So who’s left to stand up and point out the obvious fact that, once it admits girls on a widespread basis, the Boys Scouts will no longer exist? And future generations of boys — and girls — will lose out because of it.