No Girls Allowed.... not anymore

[Aloha_Shooter]

This move was predictable. National was already looking to go this direction to make up for declining membership and now has to make up for an acceleration of that decline after their last 2 membership policy changes. They can't and won't admit the last 2 changes were wrong or that other changes they've made to the program (creation of Tiger Cubs and then Lion Cubs) have been counterproductive.

What is more disturbing to me is how these fundamental changes are being announced and implemented. I will have to ask my remaining contacts in the council if they were asked to provide feedback on a proposal (as was done when National first voiced their intent to allow homosexuals in, got blistered by feedback from council representatives, and watered it down to just allowing homosexual youth to join) or whether this was just an edict laid down by National as Robert Gates did when they announced the admission of homosexual adults. In terms of timing, this resembles the latter more -- Gates announced the latter move in June while units and councils were focused on preparing for and going to camp and Jamboree.

Bureaucrats and lawyers have been doing their level best to destroy the program for the past 2-3 decades. In that same time period, the liberals have successfully taken over the organization and stolen it and its assets away from its heritage.

[Aloha_Shooter]

The NRA should start a boys only and a girls only set of organizations.
The bed-wetters hate them enough already, it would not add any new enemies, and would fill the void the scouts have now created.

I disagree. The NRA should focus on its one issue: guns. Shooting is and should be a coed activity. Yes, it's dominated by males today as it has been historically but I would welcome an increase in the ranks of female shooters.

To my knowledge, Trail Life USA is still a boys-only organization. It's centered around the things its founders felt BSA got right while getting rid of the fluff that they think BSA got wrong.

[Singlestack]

An Eagle Scout Explains the Fatal Folly of Taking the ‘Boy’ out of Boy Scouts

https://townhall.com/columnists/scot...&newsletterad=


The first time I walked into a Boy Scout meeting as a boy of eleven is as ingrained in my mind as if it were yesterday. My Dad and I descended the moldy steps into the basement of an old Methodist church, opened the door, and walked in to the smell of freshly cut wood chips and the chopping sound of an axe hitting its mark. A group of ten or so boys around my age and older were gathered around a bearded, uniformed Scoutmaster who was showing them how to properly use a hatchet. We had arrived late, just to check out the goings-on. I wasn’t into sports, or much of anything really - except books - but a couple of my friends were Scouts and had invited me to their meeting.

“Want to give it a shot?” the Scoutmaster was looking at me and holding the axe out, handle first. Before walking over and taking it I tentatively looked at my dad, who pursed his lips and nodded approvingly. “Safety first,” the bearded man cautioned before he proceeded to show me how to cut the wood without cutting off any fingers in the process. As I performed that simple exercise, I remember thinking how cool it was to be trusted to wield what could be a pretty dangerous tool, and the responsibility made me feel bigger than my eleven years. But most of all I remember how doing what I perceived as “man-stuff,” surrounded by men and other boys, made me feel at least a little bit more like a man.

Those moments began what was to be a seven year adventure and the most significant non-school element of my pre-teen and teen-aged life. They were years filled with lots of “boy-stuff” under the watchful supervision of caring men and the camaraderie of other boys. Canoeing alone on a lake. Building campfires. Barely passing the ridiculously hard swim test at summer camp so I wouldn’t be the only kid not allowed on the water. S’mores. Dump cake. Hobo packets. Campfire stories. Games, teasing, and general rowdiness. Sleeping alone in the middle of the woods as a part of the Order of the Arrow Ordeal. Peeling myself out of a semi-warm sleeping bag on a freezing February morning in 1986 to watch Haley’s Comet pay a rare visit to Earth’s orbit. Picking up and sorting food for the hungry as a part of our annual food drive. Lugging a wooden sled across town to compete with other troops in Scouting skills contests, all of which involved plenty of cool “boy-stuff” like tying knots and building things.

There was a lot of “doing” in Scouting, but the ultimate goal was always the same. The Boy Scouts of America started in 1910 as a way to promote good citizenship and Christian morality, two years after Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the movement in England. “We aim for the practice of Christianity in their everyday life and dealings, and not merely the profession of its theology on Sundays,” Baden-Powell wrote in Scouting For Boys.

The iconography was, in many instances, literally Norman 'Rockwellian,' from the chivalry of a crisply uniformed boy saluting the American flag or helping an old lady across the street to the Native American symbolism incorporated into the Order of the Arrow rituals. From the ceremonies to the symbols to the reading materials and skills learned - all were meant to teach, to prepare, but most of all to endear a heartfelt respect for our Creator, our family, our country, our environment, and the world around us.

In Scouting, progressing from rank to rank felt like it meant something, and I knew that becoming an Eagle Scout would be something I would cherish the rest of my life. Neil Armstrong was an Eagle Scout. So was former President Ford and our then-Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander.

“Former Scouts have walked on the Moon, become President, and won the Heisman Trophy,” said President Reagan at a luncheon commemorating the group’s 75th anniversary in 1985. “Today they serve as Cabinet Secretaries, as my Press Secretary, and in the Congress. In fact, about two-thirds of the Members of the Congress have been in the Boy Scouts.”

I was proud to be a Scout, prouder still to earn my Eagle rank just before my 18th birthday.

But of course, as we all know, once social justice warriors gets their slimy tentacles into something their thirst is never quenched until that something is entirely destroyed, and such has it been with Boy Scouting ever since its clueless national leaders began leading the organization down that perilous cliff. From openly gay scout leaders to transgender members to just last Wednesday, when the organization officially announced a name change to Scouts BSA because, well, Boy Scouting isn’t just for boys anymore.

“We’re trying to find the right way to say we’re here for both young men and young women,” said hapless Boy Scouts Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh. Because everyone is the same, don’t you know. Because little boys and little girls are, as far as today’s liberals are concerned, identical to each other in every possible way except a few ‘easily changeable’ body parts.

Of course, anyone with half a brain knows that boys and girls are different, but reason and common sense has never stopped a rabid social justice warrior from wanting to impose their twisted view of reality on the rest of us.

Ironically, their attack on Boy Scouting has also hurt the other group founded by Baden-Powell and his sister, Agnes - Girl Scouts. Though the decision to allow girls was applauded by various progressive and feminist groups, Girl Scout representatives themselves are less than amused. "The Boy Scouts' house is on fire," Girl Scouts told ABC News in a statement last October when the decision to allow girls was first announced. "Instead of addressing systemic issues of continuing sexual assault, financial mismanagement and deficient programming, BSA's senior management wants to add an accelerant to the house fire by recruiting girls."

Imagine, girls wanting a place to come of age and be themselves without the immaturity and awkwardness of gross boys. Imagine, girls wanting to do "girl-stuff."

Granted, some of this “boy and girl stuff” overlaps. Obviously, girls can canoe, camp out, and do pretty much anything a boy can, if she wants. But whether it’s a sports team or Boy or Girl Scouting, groups formed based on gender can provide a healthy, nurturing place for kids to come of age, not suppressing their God-given instincts and preferences but rather celebrating them and learning how to express themselves and function socially within the training wheels of those of their own gender.

Because try as liberals might to erase it, gender is and will always be “a thing.”

“The benefit of the single-gender environment has been well-documented by educators, scholars, other girl- and youth-serving organizations,” writes the Girl Scout blog, and they couldn’t be more on point. Check out this list of advantages of single-sex schools, a privilege only available to the rich. Sports teams provide similar life experiences, of course, but that wouldn’t have been an option for 80’s me.

Sadly, ‘2018 everybody’ will no longer have the option, at least as far as Boy Scouting is concerned.

I am grateful for Scouting and what it meant to me growing up. But I am also angry at what liberals have turned the group into, as well as the fact that, a decade from now, it very likely won’t exist. Because tragically, the Boy Scouts’ stubborn march to ‘inclusivity’ at any cost has managed to gut the organization of what made it special in the first place, which inevitably reminded me of this key quote from the movie The Incredibles -

“If everyone is special, no one is.”

[clodhopper]

Some have raised the idea that the BSA and the GSA should combine. What was not well publicized was that the BSA approached the GSA with the idea of merging to better incorporate girls into the program. The GSA's response was basically, "Get stuffed!". The GSA leadership is mostly staffed with women's lib and similar political activists who carry high disdain for the BSA. I know, based on the curriculum of the GSA, how could that be? They don't seem to care about the curriculum as much as maintaining power and the opportunity to push political messages. The GSA org is screwed and I cannot see it lasting long term, not with any success.

While I have sympathy for the "Tom-boy" ladies out there who were more interested in the BSA program, I stand strongly behind the concept of a single sex program to allow boys to grow and learn without the social distraction. There are too many distractions today already, give them a chance to turn some of that stuff off and experience a time where they can think about something they might not otherwise.

I have many times been approached regarding the lack of opportunity for young ladies to participate in outdoor activities. My response was to get involved with the GSA and work to re-align the program. Oh, that is too hard/complicated. OK, start your own program for girls, use the BSA book, recruit female leaders, fundraise, etc, or use one of the other alternate BSA programs out there to model after. Still too hard, despite that is just what the boy leaders are doing. Too many people just want the B-aby S-itters of A-merica to watch their kids for them and provide an excuse for not providing better parenting because "well I enrolled them in BSA, I don't know why they are useless". That would be parents of both boys and girls.

[Justin]

This move was predictable. National was already looking to go this direction to make up for declining membership and now has to make up for an acceleration of that decline after their last 2 membership policy changes. They can't and won't admit the last 2 changes were wrong or that other changes they've made to the program (creation of Tiger Cubs and then Lion Cubs) have been counterproductive.

Out of curiosity, why do you consider the creation of the Tiger and Lion programs to be detrimental?

[ChadAmberg]

I think the issue is that there is no clear answer.

Does there need to be single gender spaces? Yeah, the science pretty clearly demonstrates that. Some people have a hard enough time being OK with anyone else, and adding in the inherent stress between the sexes, severe introverts are going to have a hard time in particular.

On the other is the political bits. I know so many conservative leaning moms who want their daughters to be involved in a group like the scouts, and have a seething hatred towards the GSA. Some I know have their daughters in it anyway, and can see how strong the "cookies and third wave feminist indoctrination" is. If you want to save the future, there has to be a way to give these young girls alternatives.

[CS1983]

There ARE alternatives but that’s not good enough for those whose goal is to destroy rather than build.

[StagLefty]

^ LIKE

[Aloha_Shooter]

Out of curiosity, why do you consider the creation of the Tiger and Lion programs to be detrimental?

My theory is that the parents suffer from burnout because of the intensive involvement during Cubs. When they made Webelos a 2 year program, that added to the length of time parents were forced to helicopter. Add 2 more years for Tiger and Lion Cubs and by the time the boys are ready to transition to Boy Scouts, many parents are ready to divert them to sports or something else that isn't quite as involved for the parents. Many of the transitioning Cubs' parents that I've encountered in recent years didn't understand that while we wanted SOME involvement ("BSA doesn't stand for Baby Sitters Anonymous!"), they didn't need to be present for every meeting, every activity.

No science behind that theory, just my observations over 2.5 decades of adult Scouting.

[CoGirl303]

oh dear.....now the're handing out condoms to all of the scouts.

I can see this not ending well at all.

https://davidharrisjr.com/culture/bo...oments-notice/


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