OPINION:
Both the Boy Scouts of America and the Girls Scouts of the USA have reported massive one-year drops in memberships.
And given the social and cultural shifts of these groups over the past few years, the exodus is hardly surprising.
“Girl Scouts welcomes transgender girls,” CNN wrote in a 2015 headline.
“Girl Scouts open to transgender members,” Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts wrote in May of this year.
“The Girl Scouts’ mission is to build ‘girls of courage, confidence, and character,’ whether they were born as females, or just identify as such,” Boston.com wrote, in May.
Translation: Boys who want to act like girls are welcome to, oh, let’s see now, use the same Girl Scouts’ bathrooms as the girls. Or go on overnight camping trips with the real girls. Talk about a parent’s nightmare.
Shoving cultural appropriations down society’s throat is easy-peasy on paper. But for many parents, using their children as the test cases to see if-when-how-why the paper theories go awry isn’t something they’re willing to chance. After all, some things can’t be unseen; some things can’t be undone.
“Boy Scouts change policy on gay leaders,” CNN wrote in a July 2015, headline.
What could go wrong?
“[C]hanges have been made to the Boy Scouts, starting with a new name,” Human Life International wrote in August 2019. “In 2019, the title was officially changed to Scouts BSA, and its values and guidelines have altered in the last 100 or so years. In 2010, girls were allowed to join the scouting organization. Then in 2014, the BSA … lifted any restrictions on sexual orientation and, in 2015, the BSA lifted its ban on allowing gay scoutmasters — despite the organization’s history of sexual abuse by the same.”
The lifting of the ban on gay leaders came by way of the courts.
Another win for the LGBTQ movement; another forced accommodation that isolated some in the Christian community who saw the scouts as a safe haven for their sons.
And the bigger issue was the right of free assembly.
Private organizations ought to have set the moral standards they expect their members and participants to meet — particularly when those standards are based on godly, religious, spiritual convictions.
“Membership for the BSA’s flagship Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA programs dropped from 1.97 million in 2019 to 1.12 million in 2020, a 43% plunge,” The Associated Press wrote.
“Court records show membership has fallen further since then, to about 762,000,” AP wrote.
“The Girl Scouts say their youth membership fell by nearly 30%, from about 1.4 billion in 2019-2020 to just over 1 million this year,” AP wrote.
No surprise.
Not surprising at all.
No doubt the coronavirus and its accompanying limits on social gatherings have contributed to the plunge in memberships.
But the bigger reason is that parents don’t want their kids used as political tools to make a political message. They don’t want their kids exploited for political purposes.
They sent their kids to the Scouts to learn how to survive in the outdoors, learn how to make and fly a kite, learn how to serve others not self, learn how to compete and win and lose with grace. They didn’t send them to the Scouts to learn the latest in LGBTQ lies. They already get that in America’s public schools.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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