Next February, the Boy Scouts of America will be making a monumental change to their program which has remained almost static for 108 years. Their last notable shift was ending a prohibition on gay scouts in 2013 and then gay leaders in 2015. The organization announced Wednesday morning they will be changing the name of their flagship Boy Scouts of America program to Scouts BSA.
Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh made clear that the deliberations on this were extensive, saying, “We wanted to land on something that evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward. We’re trying to find the right way to say we’re here for both young men and young women.” This follows news from fall 2017 that the Boy Scouts planned to recruit girls into their ranks and restructure troops to accommodate their newest members.
Understandably, this move is controversial and set off a sense of alarm in pockets of the country that have cherished Boy Scouts of America as one a few remaining holdouts in a culture war being waged by liberals on traditionalism. To these observers, we once lived in a more simple time when boy meant boy and girl meant girl. In a two-year span where elementary schools are doing away with gendered bathrooms and even Roseanne is promoting the courage it takes for a 9-year-old boy to wear a dress, it’d be easy to mistake this for yet another leftist attack.
Let’s remember though that the Girl Scouts aren’t pleased either. They accused the Boy Scouts of America of poaching their market to boost its own membership, which seems too obvious to even be categorized as an accusation.
The Jordan Petersons of the world are not wrong when they say there’s a crisis of masculinity in America today. We live in a time where the culture is unclear with boys about how they are expected to act and that also penalizes them for what is objectively natural behavior. You can believe this and also see a case for why Boy Scouts should undergo this transformation, both opening its ranks to girls and changing its name to Scouts BSA.
Chief Scout Surbaugh predicts that both boys and girls in Scouts BSA will end up referring to themselves simply as scouts, rather than adding “boy” or “girl” as a modifier. This rings true and given the fact that boys and girls will still be separated into their own packs and dens, there is no direct threat to members’ understanding of their own boyhood or girlhood — the exception being when news inevitably breaks of a trans child identifying with the gender of an opposite pack. This is at best a fraction of 1 percent of scouts and doesn’t deserve to dominate the conversation as details are sorted out for the future of Scouts BSA.
Additionally, boys are best served for life in the modern world by knowing how to cooperate, be led by, and interact casually with girls in settings outside of school. Like with most things in the public square, the debate on this is fierce and rooted in emotion and nostalgia — we should strip ourselves of that emotional attachment to Boy Scouts past and be practical about the future.
First, this is just business. Between 2013 and 2016, Boy Scouts membership fell by nearly 10 percent. You could attribute this to 10 percent of their customer base being so reviled at the prospect of gay scouts that they packed up their tents and left, or you could be less cynical and consider that club memberships in similar organizations are at an all-time low across the board. People today are simply too busy and, frankly, self-absorbed to sustain civil service organizations with a focus on community.
Since 2000, the decline of club membership has been widespread. Rotary is down 20 percent, Jaycees 64 percent, and the Masons took a 76 percent dive. This poses a threat to civil society broadly, as these types of organizations fill space that big government types are eager to occupy. On a base ideological level, voluntary association with private groups of whatever stripe put less value on the state for purpose and more into your community. The Boy Scouts of America need membership revenue to continue their century-long run of producing principled leaders and community service projects, so a stalwart defense of their 20th-century business model is not wise if you truly value the organization.
Second, and not entirely separate from the business angle, family comes first. The thinking within the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America is that family participation is vital to goal of retaining membership. It is difficult in today’s world for parents to divide and conquer the weeknight and weekend activities of their children, and that problem is markedly worse if you’re one of the many single parent households out there with both sons and daughters. It’s possible, but not practical, and when something isn’t easy for consumers paying dues, eventually they stop doing it.
The vision is entire families going camping together, bonding, and learning the Scout Code as a unit. Heaven forbid our daughters also absorb the importance of being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
I’m an Eagle Scout. Scouting was central to my youth, and it remains at the core of my identity today. I see a culture failing to offer boys constructive role models and outright denying at times that boyhood is distinct from the experiences of girls and vice versa — it frustrates me, but keeping “Boy” in Boy Scouts is not going to solve that particular problem.
I’m also a father of a young daughter eager to enlist in Cub Scouts and be put on the track to what will soon be called Scouts BSA. The Scouts curriculum better reflects her interests than alternative organizations, and for me, the parent, it promotes the values I cherish more.
Scouts BSA is an exciting and predictable development in the story of Boy Scouts given the announcement they made in 2017 to expand its membership. Everyone presenting themselves as supporters of the organization’s mission to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes” needn’t be alarmed by a simple rebranding.
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is the spokesperson for Young Voices and host of Beltway Banthas, a Star Wars & politics podcast in Washington, D.C. He is an Eagle Scout from Troop 101, Greensboro, N.C.
