The Bastardization of the Boy Scouts

National Review Online

Friday, May 10, 2024

 

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.

 

This week, BSA announced that it was changing its name to Scouting America. The president of Scouting America, Roger A. Krone, insists that “our mission remains unchanged, we are committed to teaching young people to be prepared for life.”  Would that it were true. In reality, the renaming reflects changes that have already taken place — including the admission of more than 180,000 girls — and changes to come. CBS News reports that the rebrand is specifically aimed at recruiting more “diverse members” from the LGBT community.

 

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.

 

We predict with some confidence that, much like churches that have aligned with the regnant secular and progressive values, Scouting America will face a continued decline in membership. After all, they now advertise that they offer nothing different to young boys than can be had at the most progressive private and public schools. The values that Scouting America is dedicating its organization to impart are the same values of the human-resources departments of our major corporations, the same values of the major foundations, nongovernmental organizations, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley. Why make the extra commitment to scouting or being outdoors for that?

 

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.