Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is preparing to end the U.S. military’s century-long partnership with Scouting America, arguing that the organization no longer promotes traditional meritocratic values and has shifted toward policies that are genderless and driven by DEI initiatives.
Girls were admitted in 2019 in the name of inclusivity. However, the Girl Scouts still exist as an independent organization. A reasonable counterargument is that since girls already have the Girl Scouts, why do they need to be in the Boy Scouts as well?
Ironically, the website of the Girl Scouts of America states, “Gender is not binary, and neither are Girl Scouts! We provide leadership opportunities for all youth who are not cisgender boys (assigned male at birth and identify as male).” This is typical of what liberals call diversity and inclusion. It means girls are admitted to boys’ organizations, while boys are excluded from girls’ organizations.
Girls who believe they are boys can still be Girl Scouts because liberals believe gender is a choice, but not for biological boys. And supporting Secretary Hegseth’s criticism of liberal agendas, the Girl Scouts use the term “assigned male at birth,” as if the doctor rolled dice to decide which gender to “assign” to a male baby.
So, while the Girl Scouts remain a girls-only organization but still claim to be diverse, the Boy Scouts have feminized to such a degree that they removed the word “boy” from their name, effective 2025.
This reflects a broader pattern in which male-only institutions, such as the YMCA, are targeted for dismantling while female-only spaces remain protected. Critics, including Hegseth, argue that the Boy Scouts have abandoned their original mission of forming manly, self-reliant, patriotic boys. They contend that the organization has become a DEI-driven, gender-neutral institution now called Scouting America.
The Boy Scouts’ stated purpose at its incorporation in 1910 was to teach boys patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and similar values. When the Boy Scouts changed their name to the gender-neutral “Scouts,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas mocked the move, noting the organization’s historic membership decline. “With membership at historic lows, Boy Scouts of America decides to rebrand to make clear that ‘boys’ are no longer welcome,” he wrote. “I’m sure that will help with recruiting.”
Scouting programs used to teach the principles found in the Scout Oath: “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” These duties to God, country, others, and oneself are increasingly unpopular concepts in the liberal mind.
“The Boy Scouts has been cratering itself for quite some time,” Hegseth said. “This is an institution the left didn’t control. They didn’t want to improve it. They wanted to destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing.”
The Boy Scouts of America now has a Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, and the organization requires all Eagle Scouts to earn a badge in diversity, equity, and inclusion. This stands in sharp contrast to Robert Baden-Powell’s vision and to early leaders like Theodore Roosevelt, who saw Scouting as a way to channel boys’ desire for heroism, chivalry, and self-sacrifice in all-male settings that fostered masculine camaraderie and responsibility.
I spoke with Joanna Cole, a woman very much opposed to the direction the Boy Scouts have taken. She spent fourteen and a half years in the U.S. Army serving as a drill instructor, and she now does overseas relief work that often requires her to spend long periods in the jungles of Southeast Asia. She believes women can be tough, and she certainly is, but she is also happily married and clearly loves her role as a devoted mother. That balance, she said, is exactly why “girls and boys are different.”
She argued that the Boy Scouts “should be for boys because it’s supposed to build strong young men to be future leaders, strong husbands, just strong leaders within our community and our government.” She added that the Girl Scouts also play an important role in shaping strong young women, but that biological differences matter. Mixing the two, she said, forces the Boy Scouts to “be weakened because the girls can’t handle the level the Boy Scouts are at.”
Cole also warned that the reverse is equally harmful. She explained that if boys are placed in Girl Scouts, they will inevitably absorb the behaviors and interests of an environment designed for girls. In her words, doing so risks “literally growing wussy boys” because young boys, especially without strong male peers, naturally adapt to the group around them.
“Yes, they’re doing cool stuff,” she said of Girl Scouts, “but at the end of the day, they’re still girls, and they still giggle and laugh, and they like hair and makeup and nails and cute clothes—and that’s not something that guys should be wanting to be involved in.” Mixing boys into that environment, she said, “softens our boys.”
In the same way that Bud Light, January, and Cracker Barrel destroyed themselves by attempting to cater to the left, the Boy Scouts have sealed their own demise with their liberal policies. In 1972, 6.5 million boys were in the Boy Scouts. By 2020, the number had dropped below 800,000. The organization began accepting gay boys in 2013, then allowed gay men to serve as troop leaders in 2015. The Mormon Church, a historic cornerstone of the modern Boy Scouts, pulled 400,000 boys out in 2018 and established its own program called Children and Youth. Supporters of the admission of girls claim this was done to bolster numbers, but there were only 176,000 girls while the organization had already lost millions of boys.
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