Shalawam (@HenriO)

The Boy Scouts of America has a Chief Diversity Officer & Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. The organization requires all Eagle Scouts to earn a badge in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It admitted girls to its program for 11- to 17-year-old boys in 2019 and changed the name of that program from the Boy Scouts to Scouts BSA. The word “boy” has been routed from the organization’s promotional materials and replaced with “youth,” as in: “For more than 100 years, Scouting programs have instilled in youth the values found in the Scout Oath.” The DEI apparatus is the antithesis of the original Scouting ethic. Scouts are supposed to focus outward, not on themselves, and especially not on au courant diversity characteristics. They are supposed to be dedicated to universal ideals, not to identitarian commitments. They are supposed to be honest, which means not pretending that, without affinity groups and “allyship,” the Boy Scouts of America would be a cauldron of exclusion and contempt. They are supposed to be color-blind, not exquisitely attuned to racial identity. They are supposed to be patriotic, not predisposed to think that the Scouts and America itself struggle to make every person “feel respected and valued,” in the words of the Scouts’ DEI mission statement. They are supposed to be volunteer-driven, not encumbered by superfluous bureaucracy. It would have astonished Baden-Powell and his North American comrades to learn that Eagle Scouts were spending time with the minutiae of progressive identity politics, rather than learning about nature and self-discipline. By some accounts, getting rid of “boy” was less about attracting a larger female component than about drawing a larger LGBTQ component. The ubiquitous Sydney Ireland told PBS that this latest name change is “going to benefit everyone, including young men, young women, nonbinary people.” Scout CEO Roger Krone claimed to the Associated Press that the name change sends the message that “everyone . . . can bring their authentic self” and be welcomed. The language of “authenticity” is associated with novel issues of gender identity more than with being female. But in any case, the historical Scouts were not about affirming a navel-gazing self, “authentic” or otherwise; they were about equipping an otherwise puny self with a timeless, expansive code of selfless values. The Girl Scouts will never give up the word “girl” in the name of inclusivity; nor will it end its all-girl membership rules. Only men are called upon to cancel their presence and their traditions. With the final erasure of “boy” from Boy Scouts of America, the progressive war on American institutions notches another victory. We are all the casualties. https://www.city-journal.org/article/girling-the-boy-scouts