The Patriot Post® · In Brief: The Bastardization of the Boy Scouts
The Boy Scouts of America will soon be renamed to Scouting America. It’s the not-so-inclusive left-wing way of demoralizing members and dissuading new ones. The editors of National Review agree.
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) was founded 114 years ago by men who were concerned about the disappearance of traditional boyhood and the cultivation of masculine virtues as America rapidly urbanized. The organization received a hearty endorsement from the adventurer and popular former president Teddy Roosevelt and became a pillar of American culture for much of the 20th century. Although America is currently undergoing another acknowledged crisis for boys and men, the Boy Scouts of America won’t be there to meet their needs.
Scout president Roger A. Krone insists that “our mission remains unchanged, we are committed to teaching young people to be prepared for life.” That’s simply not true, the editors say. “In reality, the renaming reflects changes that have already taken place … and changes to come.”
For many, the name change is only further confirmation that the Boy Scouts have abandoned their traditional role of instilling traditional masculine virtues in boys, becoming yet one more arm of a progressive culture-war blob. In the past eleven years, the Boy Scouts have been utterly transformed. They ended a ban on gay adult leaders in 2013, welcomed girls who identify as boys to enroll in their boys-only program in 2017, and settled massive sex-abuse lawsuits. While Krone rambles that Scouting America is now dedicated to helping young people be their “authentic selves,” leaks online show that even the nominal separation of boys and girls in older troops is likely to be ended in favor of co-ed arrangements.
The editors predict that this change will result in the same fate of mainline churches “that have aligned with the regnant secular and progressive values” — “Scouting America will face a continued decline in membership.” Why join when you can get the same left-wing propaganda everywhere else?
They conclude:
The transmogrification of the Boy Scouts is just the culmination of a long-running war on all-male spaces. Oddly, it happens just as the transgender movement’s war on female-only spaces is kicking into high gear. And we can say of both that any progressive victories in these campaigns are necessarily Pyrrhic ones. They are built upon the untruth that the sexes are interchangeable and have the same developmental and social needs as one another. These supposed victories for equality come at the cost of not only great American traditions, but potentially millions of boys, living and yet unborn, who have had their institutional inheritance robbed and destroyed before they could receive it.