Culture: March 2020 Archives

A friend, responding to news of the Boy Scouts of America filing for bankruptcy, asks, "Now that all the nonsense has destroyed everything, can we go back to Boy Scouts for boys, and Girl Scouts for girls?"

To put it another way, what benefit has accrued to BSA for all of the compromises the national organization has made with the Sexual Revolution over the last decade?

It must have been disorienting for BSA to go from being the epitome of Americanism and perfectly aligned with American culture for decades to being outcast, sued in Federal court, excluded from city and school facilities, and cut off by corporate donors because the values they always upheld were suddenly regarded as patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic, and regressive.

BSA national leadership thought they could make some compromises to the demands of the zeitgeist and get back their donors and locations, but the zeitgeist hates male leadership, hates morality and loves disorder and corruption. The more BSA gives in to the demands of the Sexual Revolution, the more they depart from their purpose, and the more they alienate their most loyal supporters.

This article in the San Jose Mercury News suggests that greedy behavior by central executives bears some of the blame for BSA's national financial turmoil. Execs getting salaries in the high six figures would have more to fear from major corporate donations drying up than the councils and troops who depend upon volunteers and local donors to make things happen.

At the grassroots level, troops are doing the best they can to uphold the traditions of Scouting, in spite of decisions made at national HQ. My son is part of a strong troop with solid traditions, a focus on outdoor skills, and the benefit of a large corps of adult leaders who teach merit badges, track advancement, organize equipment, and provide continuity and a framework for the boys to learn how to lead one another. (I am speaking here only for myself, and not on behalf of the troop or anyone in it.)

Our troop has helped to launch a sister troop for girls, and the two troops cooperate occasionally, but meet separately and camp separately, in accordance with the guidance given when girls were admitted to what is now called Scouting BSA. When we were at an out-of-state summer camp this year, however, we noticed a number of troops where boys and girls mustered together as troops at flag ceremony, shared a troop number, and appeared to be, effectively, a single co-ed troop.

And along with girls in the troops you get Scoutmaster Karen and her ilk. At the troop leader meeting the day after the staff's skit program on opening night night, there were complaints from female scoutmasters over some very mild gross-out humor and cartoonish violence. One veteran adult leader observed, "What boy wants to go to summer camp with his mom?" If the program shifts to accommodate the likes and dislikes of 11-year-old girls, 11-year-old boys will lose interest.

The only way forward for the Boy Scouts is for the national organization to decide that they are going to be consciously counter-cultural, recommitted to its traditional purpose: boys learning from men to develop manly skills, shoulder manly responsibilities, and build moral character (in the traditional meanings of those terms). America needs men who will step forward as servant leaders.