Letting Girls Into the BSA Not the End of Scouting

I'm an Eagle Scout, for the moment anyway.  I joined the Boy scouts late compared to most boys who eventually attain that rank. Instead of starting as a Cub Scout, I first joined up as a Webelos.  Once I was in, my parents wouldn't let me quit. As my friends all dropped out of Scouting around the time we started high school, I was forced to stick with it.  I was even inducted into the Order of the Arrow. I finally became an Eagle Scout at the age of 16.  Then I was allowed to quit. I haven't done anything with Scouting since.

Frankly, I didn't care much for Scouting. I hate camping, for one thing, along with most other outdoor activities. Still, there was a lot to be said for the BSA of old.  It did teach me a lot about leadership, honor, and all of those old- fashioned concepts.  I can still remember the 12 points of the Scout Law without prompting and I credit my status as an eagle Scout with my getting hired as a police officer as young as I did.

But the BSA, under constant attack from the political left and the LGBT advocates, has withered and collapsed.  And now they're letting girls in.  It will only be a matter of time, before an organization that was founded in 1910 disbands.  It's going to happen.  The only question is when.

Frankly, the admission of girls is not what is going to kill the Boy Scouts.  Of all of the compromises that they've been making over the last few years, allowing girls in is the only one I (tentatively) support.  And keep in mind, I'm an Eagle Scout and a member of the Order of the Arrow.  I'm BSA royalty, dammit.

Girls are not going to be an issue.  The new guidelines make it clear that the packs and troops are still going to be segregated by gender.  They're not going to be taking a bunch of teenagers on coed camping trips... at least not yet.

And I can't blame girls, particularly girls with a traditionalist mindset from conservative families, for wanting to participate in the programs and traditions of the Boy scouts instead of the ultra- feminist, leftist dominated bunch of cookie peddlers that the Girl Scouts has become.  Boy Scouting teaches you more character and gives you more practical skills that are useful to both men and women than having your parents sell cookies to their co- workers on your behalf does.

As far as "standards" go, the Boy Scouts isn't the military, the police department, or the fire service.  The natural differences in strength and endurance between men and women are not going to be a matter of life or death the way that it can be in one of those aforementioned jobs.

And, as I believe was the case with my career, the attainment of Eagle Scout is beneficial to a person's future employment compared to... excuse me while I Google whatever the highest achievement in the Girls Scouts is. Ah, the "Gold Award," which even as Wikipedia describes as "the equivalent of the Eagle Scout honor," they forthrightly admit "it does not gain the same sort of recognition."

So, yes, I understand why the gals want to join and I'm actually pretty okay with it.  What I'm not okay with is the decision to allow openly gay Scoutmasters and the more recent decision to allow transgender Scouts that preceded this change. Those are the decisions that will ultimately kill the BSA.

 I'm against transgender scouts because I do not think it is compassionate to play into a person's mental illness and I think that it is child abuse to be playing into it at the ages that children are in Scouting. The transgender decision earlier this year almost lead me to mail all my Eagle Scout paraphernalia along with a letter to the BSA, but I ended up just giving it to my mom instead.

I'm not against gay Scouts, but my experience working sex crimes for almost a decade and a half has taught me that having gay men who are single in positions of authority over pubescent and post- pubescent males is, quite frankly, asking for trouble. Men, straight or gay, who want to be involved in youth programs when they don't have biological children of their own involved in the program they are wanting to participate in, are not to be trusted. Gay men, by definition, will not have biological children involved in whatever activity they proposed to lead. The power dynamic becomes the problem. No one would seriously consider it okay for a single, childless, straight man to run a Girl Scout troop. The same dynamic applies, or would, in a sane world where people were free to openly voice their concerns.