The Boy Scouts of America are no more.
In a total surrender to the cult of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the woke kingpins who control that organization decided this week to take the “Boy” out of Boy Scouts and change its name to “Scouting America.”
Roger A. Krone, president and chief executive officer of Scouting America, said, “Though our name will be new, our mission remains unchanged: we are committed to teaching young people to be Prepared for life. This will be a simple but important evolution as we seek to ensure everyone feels welcome in Scouting.”
It’s the organization’s first rebranding in 114 years, and as you might expect, the reaction has been swift and unenthusiastic.
By dropping the gender portion of its name, its leaders say they want to be more inclusive.
More inclusive? The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019. More than 6,000 girls have now achieved the vaunted Eagle Scout rank.
How much more inclusive can you get? So why the name change?
Unsurprisingly, the Girl Scouts of America are not thrilled that the Boy Scouts of America will soon be known by the gender-free and bland appellation of “Scouting America.”
“We are, and will remain, the first choice for girls and parents who want to provide their girls opportunities to build new skills, explore STEM and the outdoors, participate in community projects, and grow into happy, successful, civically engaged adults,” Girl Scouts CEO Sylvia Acevedo, said.
The Girl Scouts accused the Scouting America organization of seeking to “upend a paradigm that has served both boys and girls so well through the years by moving forward with a plan that would result in fundamentally undercutting Girl Scouts of the USA.”
I think the GSA has a point.
The BSA rebranding effort comes after the organization last year emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and, in 2021, agreed to an $850 million settlement with tens of thousands of former members who said they were sexually abused while participating in scouting activities.
I can only say that this is NOT the Boy Scout organization I belonged to when I achieved the “Star Scout” rank, two levels below Eagle Scout.
The only thing “woke” about my BSA Troop 93 was how we felt after a night in pup tents on a camping trip in the Kansas wilderness. We equated wokeness with being awake in the morning and nothing else.
Girls in Troop 93? Are you kidding? And if anybody was gay, it wasn’t something anybody talked about. Why would we? A person’s sexual orientation back then was not an obsession the way it is today.
We were too busy earning some of the 139 merit badges in subjects such as first aid, camping, hiking, forestry, mammal study, geology, lifesaving, signs, signals, and codes, and even journalism so we could move up the ranks toward Eagle Scout.
I never got that far. Like many of my friends, as we grew older, we were focused more on high school athletics than scouting. Of course, today, when I look back on it, I wish I had remained in scouting and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.
But your priorities change when you are a teenager with a newly minted driver’s license and your own souped-up hot rod. Cruising through drive-in restaurants or drag racing seemed more important than earning a merit badge in wood carving or archery.
Yet, when I look back, I can see the value of scouting. Take a look at the Boy Scout Oath. It reads:
“On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
Now, take a look at the Boy Scout Law. It reads:
“A Scout is Trustworthy, loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.”
I don’t notice anything about DEI or embracing wokeness in the oath or law.
Instead, I see those ideals the Boy Scouts of America once strived to instill in all its 1.2 million youth members and 477,000 adult volunteers serving in local councils nationwide. These members comprise 122,582 local Scout troops that annually log more than 34 million hours of community service.
What parent would not want their son to be in an organization that emphasizes such behavior?
Ditto for parents of girls who join the Girl Scouts—an organization that may have to fight like hell to survive in America’s new bewildering transgender and gender-free milieu.
When the Boy Scouts movement was founded in Great Britain in 1908, the idea was to develop boys’ good citizenship, chivalrous behavior, and skills in various outdoor activities. By 1910 Boy Scout troops were founded in America, Sweden, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa. Today, scouting is just about everywhere on the planet and boasts some 57 million members—though few, if any, have opted to go woke like their American brethren.
Since 1910, Boy Scouts of America has had more than 130 million members and more than 2.75 million who have achieved the highest rank of Eagle Scout.
So why the name change? That’s what thousands of dismayed parents, scouts, and former scouts like me are asking. Why spoil a good thing in the name of a perfidious Marxist concept such as DEI?
The Boy Scouts of America was started as a private, members-only organization—and it still is—even with the woke name change and its bizarre capitulation to gender neutrality.
The other day, someone calling himself only “The Dad” sent me an email slamming the name change and the organization’s ludicrous adoption of DEI nonsense. What he (or perhaps she) wrote made a lot of sense. Take a look:
“If you want to start a club, shouldn’t you be allowed to decide who the members are? It’s your club. You started it. Why should I be forced to admit Broncos or Raider fans if I start a Kansas City Chiefs fan club? And why in the heck would they want to join anyway? Start your own club.
“If you start a club for bald people, why would you want people with long flowing locks to join?
“If you start a club to teach boys skills for life that you think are important, why should you be forced to allow people who hate your values to join and become leaders in your organization? It makes no sense.
“If you disagree with the Boy Scouts, start your own club! The Scouts have worked hard for many years to create their organization, and you have no right to move in and try to take it over. If you think your idea of what scouting should be is so much better, start your own organization and see how many people leave the Scouts to join your group.”
That advice deserves a Boy Scout salute.
–30–
(Ronald E. Yates is a U.S. Army veteran, an author, a former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent, and Professor and dean Emeritus of Journalism at the University of Illinois.)
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
Patriot.Online: @AFNN
You forgot to mention that the former Boy Scouts now has only about half the membership it had when it admitted girls. Go woke, go broke. Speaking of starting your own group, now that the name Boys Scouts of America is no longer in use, perhaps a thrifty, patriotic entrepreneur can take that name and start his own club?
Yes, I should have said the Boy Scouts of America hit its peak with 3 million members about a decade or so ago. In any case it’s sad to see this once laudable organization going full-out woke.
Well put sir. One of my proudest moments in high school was my Eagle Scout Court of Honor. My grandmother even drove in from Thibodaux LA, and she drives no where, to be in attendance. For years I was the “oldest” Eagle in the New Orleans Area Council (I pinned Oct 82, I turned 18 in Jan 83, and someone has taken my record since).
I would send them donations every year, until they started to allow girls in. I wrote the president of BSA with annual request for a donations and said, “No, I’m not donating and drop me from your rolls. You become the Boy Scouts again, talk to me.”
Seeing what’s happened and will happen, I would rather just shut it down. Let it die the Boy Scouts.
You are right, Mike. It’s a sad state of affairs when what was once a fine organization dedicated to turning boys into good men feels it needs to go woke to do so.