Jesus. We'll never hear the end of it from the right wing wackos. They'll use this as justification for starting up the Nazi Youth
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Not like they weren’t going to do it anyway. They’ll always use LGBT+ people and women existing and wanting to be full members of society as justification for whatever they pull.
O no, they changed the name of an organization I was never a part of and know nothing about.
I will now complain to every white stranger I come across.
PoV of white bald guy, they always think I'm on their team unless I'm dressed "flowery". Then they just assume I'm gay and don't talk to me. If I'm wearing camo tho? Best friend.
Gay members? ✅
Gay leaders? ✅
Girls? ✅
Atheists? Um... er... well...
https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/10/03/belief-in-god-scouting/
As an atheist scout, I got around that by just lying to them. LOL. I guess I wasn't a good scout.
Your article is from 2014. 10 years ago all of your other checks were NO as well. I can't find anything recently about atheists with a quick search, just old stuff like that.
It's still a core part of their membership:
Scout Oath “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.”
More:
https://dutytogodbsa.org/portfolio/what-does-duty-to-god-mean/
Start a 4-H Club. They're run by state universities, so they're subject to all their policies involving inclusivity and each club is centered on a specific topic. Want a camping/outdoor life club? Easy. Doesn't have to be Ag related.
I got my God and Country before I became an atheist. I think my dad still has it lol
I’m an Eagle and an atheist. I don’t remember being required to confirm a belief. But even though I was part of an organization in a very small very religious town, nobody seemed to care.
Not very inclusive when atheist kids and gay troop leaders still told to GTFO.
The article addresses this - they’re admitting gay troop leaders and scouts, as well as girls. The article doesn’t mention anything on the atheist front, but as a member of team rainbow who went through scouting in the 70s and 80s, these are massive changes and I’d honestly be surprised if the org went to court over atheism.
IIRC they’ve previously fought in court for the right to exclude atheists.
No recent court cases because private organizations are allowed to discriminate.
They did the same for LGBT until recently.
Being a private organization does not grant you an unlimited right to discriminate, no matter how much the right likes to pretend it does. That’s why anti-discrimination laws exist. There’s loopholes orgs have tried to use, and protections vary by state, but just being a “private organization” doesn’t mean “do whatever prejudicial thing you want.”
Like I said, I don’t see this current iteration of the org fighting atheists in court.
All a kid has to do is say ' I believe in a higher power's and that's that. Doesn't even have to lie if he means 'newtons third laws' as the power
We should not be encouraging kids to lie in order to join an organization dedicated to building moral character.
The lesson is that moral character comes from within and not from authority figures.
My higher power is the fucking sun: Sol. He's the highest power any of y'all gonna see.
Which is also why I never made it past Star Scout: why advance past the best?
Maybe if you take it as written but it will always be enforced unequally. In my rural ass troop there was a very heavy christian implication from scout leaders, and my parents. They didn’t end up forcing me to say it, but it was a very uncomfortable day of adults I was supposed to be able to trust repeatedly pressuring me to publicly announce my belief and helplessness in the face of a fairy tale. Not the only day I was religiously pressured either.
To be honest I never expected the BSA would attempt to reform itself as much as it has. I was in a very homophobic troop, a scoutmaster of mine vented to my grandma that all the queer people ought to be put up against the wall and shot. I'm glad things are improving but I don't think I'll ever see the organization in a positive light.
Their numbers are declining, which means revenue is declining. So the more inclusive they become, the more money they can make. It’s been an ongoing issue even before COVID hit (which hurt a lot of troops and packs).
Also surprisingly/unsurprisingly a ton of reform suddenly took place the moment the Mormons jumped ship and gave up leadership.
I can’t speak to the Mormon exodus. That was before my time. But yes, they’ve gone through a lot of reforms from what I’ve heard from the long-timers; and from all of the training (e.g., YPT, two-deep leadership, etc) I had to do.
Anyone has the right to be a Pawnee Godess
So is there a point to the Girl Scouts now? What are they going to do? Start accepting boys? Or try to widen their activities to compete with the Boy Scouts so they don't lose membership?
Girl Scouts USA has always been a completely separate organization with no affiliation to Boy Scouts of America
Correct, but girls was their mark of differentiation. Without one, what will they do with this other organization going on their turf? Will they react? Adjust? That's what I'm saying.
In the UK, The Scout Association went fully co-ed in 2007 and Girl Guiding remains a girls-only organisation. Both are doing just fine.
Ya, but I was curious how they avoid redundancy. Luckily, for anyone else who is curious, someone put the summary of their distinctions in a comment below.
Good. I'm slightly less embarrassed to be an eagle Scout now, though I was already the worst Eagle Scout ever, y'know, apart from the evil ones.
Fox News meltdown in 3... 2...
TIL they exited bankruptcy last April. I thought they were basically dead.
I don't see anything here about preventing future sexual abuse, though, which makes me distrustful.
Why not just drop boy and have it called "scouts of America" or "youth scouts of America"? Scouting America sounds like a completely different thing altogether.
Have they found America yet? Send out another scout!
Repressive rightists absolutely gonna lose even more of their shit now lol fuck ‘em
is this a mandela effect or why do i specifically remember hearing that they had already done this like 4-8 years ago
edit: did my due research
In 2019, the Boy Scouts of America renamed its flagship program, Boy Scouts, to Scouts BSA to reflect its policy change allowing girls to join separate, gender-specific troops.[3]
On May 7, 2024, BSA announced that the organization will change its name to Scouting America. The change will go into effect on February 8, 2025.[5]
Its odd that apperently the first time they didi it they left BSA, in the name when the B stands for Boy.
If the whole point was to allow girls, why leave the word boy in the name?
I think two issues have caused them to take baby steps here.
First, there was a big lawsuit between the Girl Scout of America and the Boy Scouts of America. The Boy Scouts wanted to open up to girls, and the Girl Scouts felt like their turf was being threatened. That took years to resolve.
Second, scouting has deep personal ties for some folks. People can get irrationally emotional about changes to the program, as if there's some sacred tradition at stake.
Great, separating kids is soo 1950's.
In Europe we've had this for decades without any issue.
And apparently this scouting group does a lot more real scouting stuff, unlike the girl scouts which is basically child labour.
That's good, my niece is in Boy Scouts and enjoys it. The Girl Scout troops are all cookies all the time.
I'm an eagle scout from the days before they started accepting girls, I remember always hearing about how much cooler the BSA program was than girl scouts
Part of the problem is with how things are structured. BSA troops tend to stick around for a a while (the troop I was part of well over a decade ago is still going strong and just a couple years off from its 100 year anniversary,) so you end up with a lot of accumulated knowledge and resources over the years, people stick around after they age out of the program to stay on as leaders, they bring their own kids into the program years later, we had some 2nd or 3rd generation eagle scouts who had all earned it from the same troop their fathers and grandfathers did, we had a garage full of troop gear, a pretty decent troop library fell of merit badge books, old handbooks, various first aid and camping manuals, etc. some troops have their own cabins or campsites or other such properties, and the organization makes it very easy for new scouts to find an existing troop, pack, crew, ship, etc. to join.
Girl scouts often don't have that. Sometimes they do, and when they do they can actually do a pretty amazing program, I've heard of some girl scout troops who've done some pretty cool stuff that honestly puts my own troop to shame, but more often they kind of tend to get formed with a group of girls around the same age and their mothers, never really do much recruitment, and when the girls either age out or lose interest and drop out the troop just kind of folds. They have to put a lot into the cookie sales and fundraising because they're usually starting with no troop gear or other resources, there's not much generational knowledge about how to run a scouting program, so they tend to just kind of have to figure things out on the fly. And a key part of the boy scout program was "boys teaching boys" the older kids in the troop take on leadership roles and help run the program teaching the younger kids, if you're starting with a group all about the same age, you lose out on a lot of that dynamic.
Also as far as recruitment goes, at least back when I was in scouts, even if you waned to join an existing girl scout troop, it could actually be pretty hard to find them. BSA had their BeAScout website, you could find all the local groups, meeting schedules, and contact info pretty easily, girl scouts, at least at the time, didn't have anything like that. I remember there was one time my troop wanted to reach out to some of the local girl scout troops to see if they wanted to participate in some kind of event we were having, and they had a hell of a time finding any contact info for them.
Also, some of the girl scout leader training requirements seemed a little excessive, maybe the situation has changed, but I remember hearing that they had to have leaders with specific training for pretty much any little part of their planned activity, like there was a specific training to go on camping trips, a separate training if you wanted to have a campfire on the camping trip, etc. and a lot of them were paid courses and I don't think they were cheap. I don't have anything against training in general, I had to do a few when I was a boy scout leader, but some of what I heard from the girl scout side of things sounded pretty excessive to me.
I feel like this was one of the best experiences of my young life. I get to go away from parents, I can actually decide what we do as a group, and I can go out walking and stuff? Great.