Hooray for Girls Joining Boy Scouts of America -- A Guide to a Few Misguided Opponents' Errors and Sexism

As a former Boy Scout, I'm proud that the Boy Scouts of America now will admit girls to selected troops, allowing them to become Eagle Scouts. I'm proud that BSA earlier decided to admit transgendered people. I'm proud that BSA now also nadmits GLBT people as leaders and scouts.

We've come a long way, BSA.

Then I read a sadly misguided editorial in a local online blog and similar sentiments, actually attacking BSA for allowing girls in, but saying it endorsed all of the other discriminated groups being admitted.

The inflamed opponents blame courts.

Actually, the Supreme Court years ago -- with support from some Gay Libertarians -- actually endorsed BSA's right to exclude Gays, because it is a private organization. See Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 540 U.S. 640 (2000), a 5-4 decision upholding BSA's right to discriminate (if it wants to); what enrages opponents of change is that BSA no longer wants to discriminate.

Persuaded by what Lincoln would call "the better angels of their nature," the BSA board changed its mind, influenced to diversity by sponsors, including churches.

Three cheers!

So no, HCN, no "lawsuits" or courts "forced" BSA to allow girls and young women. No one's rights are violated by admitting girls.

That dog won't hunt.

Here's the CBS/AP story:

Boy Scouts: Girls can join Cub Scouts starting next year
Last Updated Oct 12, 2017 8:55 AM EDT

NEW YORK -- In its latest momentous policy shift, the Boy Scouts of America will admit girls into the Cub Scouts starting next year and establish a new program for older girls based on the Boy Scout curriculum that enables them to aspire to the coveted Eagle Scout rank.

Founded in 1910 and long considered a bastion of tradition, the Boy Scouts have undergone major changes in the past five years, agreeing to accept openly gay youth members and adult volunteers, as well as transgender boys.

The expansion of girls' participation, announced Wednesday after unanimous approval by the organization's board of directors, is arguably the biggest change yet, potentially opening the way for hundreds of thousands of girls to join.

CBS News' Jim Axelrod met 16-year-old Sydney Ireland -- who's been an unofficial member of her brother's troop since she was 4. She wanted to become an Eagle Scout just like her brother.

"Not every girl has to want to do the things that the Girl Scouts do," she told CBS News. "I don't -- I want to do the things that the Boy Scouts do."

Many scouting organizations in other countries already allow both genders and use gender-free names such as Scouts Canada. But for now, the Boy Scout label will remain.

"There are no plans to change our name at this time," spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos said in an email.

Under the new plan, Cub Scout dens -- the smallest unit -- will be single-gender, either all-boys or all-girls. The larger Cub Scout packs will have the option to remain single gender or welcome both genders. The program for older girls is expected to start in 2019 and will enable girls to earn the same Eagle Scout rank that has been attained by astronauts, admirals, senators and other luminaries.

Boy Scout leaders said the change was needed to provide more options for parents.

"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.

The announcement follows many months of outreach by the BSA, which distributed videos and held meetings to discuss possibility expanding girls' participation beyond existing programs, such as Venturing, Exploring and Sea Scouts.

Surveys conducted by the Boy Scouts showed strong support for the change among parents not currently connected to the scouts, including Hispanic and Asian families that the BSA has been trying to attract. Among families already in the scouting community, the biggest worry, according to Surbaugh, was that the positive aspects of single-sex comradeship might be jeopardized.

"We'll make sure those environments are protected," he said. "What we're presenting is a fairly unique hybrid model."

During the outreach, some parents expressed concern about possible problems related to overnight camping trips. Surbaugh said there would continue to be a ban on mixed-gender overnight outings for scouts ages 11 to 14. Cub Scout camping trips, he noted, were usually family affairs with less need for rigid polices.

The Girl Scouts of the USA have criticized the initiative, saying it strains the century-old bond between the two organizations. Girl Scout officials have suggested the BSA's move was driven partly by a need to boost revenue, and they contended there is fiscal stress in part because of past settlements paid by the BSA in sex-abuse cases.

In August, the president of the Girl Scouts, Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, accused the Boy Scouts of seeking to covertly recruit girls into their programs while disparaging the Girl Scouts' operations. On Monday, Latino civic leader Charles Garcia, just days after being named to the Girl Scouts' national board, wrote an opinion piece for the Huffington Post calling the BSA's overture to girls "a terrible idea."

"The Boy Scouts' house is on fire," Garcia wrote. "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."

Instead of recruiting girls, Garcia said the BSA should focus on attracting more black, Latino and Asian boys - particularly those from low-income households.

The BSA recently increased its annual membership fee for youth members and adult volunteers from $24 to $33, but Surbaugh said the decision to expand programming for girls was not driven by financial factors. He expressed enthusiasm at the possibility that the changes could draw hundreds of thousands more girls into BSA ranks over the coming years.

The Girl Scouts, founded in 1912, and the BSA are among several major youth organizations in the U.S. experiencing sharp drops in membership in recent years. Reasons include competition from sports leagues, a perception by some families that they are old-fashioned and busy family schedules.

As of March, the Girl Scouts reported more than 1.5 million youth members and 749,000 adult members, down from just over 2 million youth members and about 800,000 adult members in 2014. The Boy Scouts say current youth participation is about 2.35 million, down from 2.6 million in 2013 and more than 4 million in peak years of the past.

Earlier this year, the National Organization for Women urged the Boy Scouts to allow girls to join. NOW said it was inspired by the efforts of a 15-year-old New York City girl, Sydney Ireland, to emulate her older brother, who is an Eagle Scout.

Unlike the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts have maintained girls-only status for all their programs. The empowerment of girls is at the core of its mission.

"We know that girls learn best in an all-girl, girl-led environment," said Andrea Bastiani Archibald, a psychologist who provides expertise on development for the Girl Scouts' national programming.

The Boy Scouts' new policy on girls was hailed by Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout who played an active role in pressuring the BSA to end its ban on gays. However, he urged the Boy Scouts to take one more step and end its exclusion of atheists and non-believers who do not profess a "duty to God."

As John Adams said in defending the British soldiers charged with the Boston Massacre: "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Co-ed scouting is routine through much of the world. America now joins the list of nations where equality includes scouting as well as the military. It's about time that women were treated equally. Including Scouts.

Here's a local blogger's alternative universe, a nonsensical editorial, in haec verba:


From Historic City News:

Editorial: The latest assault on individualism
October 12, 2017 Editorials
Michael Gold, Editor
HISTORIC CITY NEWS

In just a couple of months, we will be welcoming in the year “2018”. I believe history will remember it as “the year Americans lost their individualism”.

There has been a movement afoot for a number of years that is clearly bent on robbing us of our individualism — the right to celebrate that which makes us different from one another. Let’s face it, we are not all the same.

Some of us excel in sports, some in business, others in research and education, or a profession; but some of us want everyone to be allowed to have and do the same as everyone else. They see a perfect politically correct, non-competitive utopia where nobody gets their feelings hurt. We award trophies to winners, but everyone gets a trophy just for their participation.

I have noticed it in behavior that will eventually destroy our cultural differences. In my family, for example, my paternal grandparents immigrated from Ireland. Although they met other European families when they arrived, they also met those who didn’t care for them; simply because they were Irish. My grandfather told me how hard it was for him to find a job when he tried to enter the workforce. Not because he lacked skills or was impaired in any way — other than the fact that he was Irish. He said it was not unusual to find signs posted in shop windows that read “Irish need not apply”. I suppose it is because everyone knows that the Irish are all drunks, won’t show up for work on time, or sober, are given to settling their differences with their fists instead of their brains, and will probably drive your company cars into a few ditches, before they quit.

My personal example reminds me that you don’t have to be a negro to be the victim of racial discrimination in America. Most Irishmen are fair-skinned and about as “lily white” as it gets. The truth is that stereotypes exist across people of all cultural backgrounds and other immutable conditions. Is there anyone who hasn’t heard or repeated a funny “blonde” joke?

When I was a boy growing up in St Augustine, I was allowed to participate in scouting. I registered as a Cub Scout as a second-grade boy; and, by the time I was twelve, I joined a local Boy Scout troop. At sixteen, I joined a local Explorer post. It should be no surprise that I am a fan of Boy Scouts of America.

The reason my parents encouraged me to become a Boy Scout was because I had an interest in archery and camping. And, I was and still am a boy. If I weren’t, I could have become a Girl Scout and sold cookies. But yesterday, the Boy Scouts of America announced that, starting next year, it will welcome girls into some Scouting programs. The move shakes up more than a century of tradition and just illustrates how seriously in jeopardy our individualism really is.

The Boy Scouts already serves more than 2 million young people, according to last year’s annual report. Of course, this decision is the result (sic) of parents of girls who wanted to be boy scouts suing the organization after being denied. In the past five-years, other lawsuits against BSA led to these announcements:

• announced in 2013 that it would admit openly gay youths
• announced in 2015 that it would admit openly gay leaders
• announced earlier this year it would admit transgender boys

Those decisions I understand; the decision to admit girls, on the other hand, is beyond me. And I am in good company. This “blonde” moment didn’t sit well with the Girl Scouts of the USA, either. Their leadership accused the Boy Scouts of running a “covert campaign to recruit girls”. Girl Scouts National Board President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan called the Boy Scouts’ plan “unsettling” and said it would only serve to undercut the Girl Scouts. She added that a co-ed model goes against “research supporting single gender programming”.

What is wrong with being a girl? Feminists want us to really live the message that women are powerful and strong and capable. But there must something wrong with being a girl. What else can be the reason for all the attempts to join, infiltrate, and take over men’s organizations?

There are surely benefits to co-educational opportunities. But there are also great benefits to single-gender education. Groups that want to associate with one gender ought to be allowed to do it and to have the support of the law in doing so. In this case, the law is probably on the side of single-gender Boy Scouts, had the Boy Scouts wanted to hold firm to their past position. By law, as a private organization, they are already exempted from having to adhere to non-discriminatory practices.

Nothing is holding the girls back from scouting activities, and the Boy Scouts is not the only place where they can get that experience. Instead of inserting chaos into a national organization for boys, these girls could just try being awesome girls, becoming empowered through activities of their own choosing in a group of kids who make a conscience choice to experience these activities together.

Why must these non-boys take the route of disrupting an organization where a lot of good is being done in all-boy settings? Why should the girls’ desire to learn archery or go camping override the boys’ interests of learning in a single-gender group?

Where is protection for the boys’ rights to freedom of association?