NEW YORK — For 108 years, the Boy Scouts of America’s flagship program has been known simply as the Boy Scouts. With girls soon entering the ranks, the group says that iconic name will change.
The organization on Wednesday announced a new name for its Boy Scouts program: Scouts BSA. The change will take effect next February.
Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh said many possibilities were considered during lengthy and “incredibly fun” deliberations before the new name was chosen.
“We wanted to land on something that evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward,” he said. “We’re trying to find the right way to say we’re here for both young men and young women.”
The parent organization will remain the Boy Scouts of America, and the Cub Scouts — its program for 7- to 10-year-olds — will keep its title as well.
But the Boy Scouts — the program for 11- to 17-year-olds — will now be Scouts BSA.
The organization has already started admitting girls into the Cub Scouts, and Scouts BSA begins accepting girls next year.
Surbaugh predicted that both boys and girls in Scouts BSA would refer to themselves simply as scouts, rather than adding “boy” or “girl” as a modifier.
The program for the older boys and girls will largely be divided along gender lines, with single-sex units pursuing the same types of activities, earning the same array of merit badges and potentially having the same pathway to the coveted Eagle Scout award.
Surbaugh said that having separate units for boys and girls should alleviate concerns that girls joining the BSA for the first time might be at a disadvantage in seeking leadership opportunities.
So far, more than 3,000 girls have joined roughly 170 Cub Scout packs participating in the first phase of the new policy, and the pace will intensify this summer under a nationwide multimedia recruitment campaign titled “Scout Me In.”
The name change comes amid strained relations between the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America.
Girl Scout leaders said they were blindsided by the move, and they are gearing up an aggressive campaign to recruit and retain girls as members.
Among the initiatives is creation of numerous new badges that girls can earn, focusing on outdoor activities and on science, engineering, technology and math. The organization is expanding corporate partnerships in both those areas, and developing a Girl Scout Network Page on LinkedIn to support career advancement for former Girl Scouts.
“Girl Scouts is the premier leadership development organization for girls,” said Sylvia Acevedo, the Girl Scouts’ CEO. “We are, and will remain, the first choice for girls and parents who want to provide their girls opportunities to build new skills … and grow into happy, successful, civically engaged adults.”
The Girl Scouts and the BSA are among several major youth organizations in the US experiencing sharp drops in membership in recent years. Reasons include competition from sports leagues, a perception by some families that they are old-fashioned and busy family schedules.
The Boy Scouts say current youth participation is about 2.3 million, down from 2.6 million in 2013 and more than 4 million in peak years of the past.
The Girl Scouts say they have about 1.76 million girls and more than 780,000 adult members, down from just over 2 million youth members and about 800,000 adult members in 2014.
The overall impact of the BSA’s policy change on Girl Scouts membership won’t be known anytime soon. But one regional leader, Fiona Cummings of Girl Scouts of Northern Illinois, believes the BSA’s decision to admit girls is among the factors that have shrunk her council’s youth membership by more than 500 girls so far this year.
She said relations with the Boy Scouts in her region used to be collaborative and now are “very chilly.”
“How do you manage these strategic tensions?” she asked. “We both need to increase our membership numbers.”
Surbaugh said BSA’s national leadership respected the Girl Scouts’ program and hoped both organizations could gain strength.
“If the best fit for your girl is the Girl Scouts, that’s fantastic,” he said. “If it’s not them, it might be us.”
________________________________________________________
BOY SCOUTS TO REMOVE WORD ‘BOY’ FROM NAME
A new campaign entitled ‘Scout Me In’ aims to push for more inclusiveness in the organization’s ranks
The Boy Scouts of America announced Wednesday its plan to remove the word “Boy” from its iconic program.
According Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh, a new campaign entitled “Scout Me In” aims to push for more inclusiveness in the organization’s ranks.
“As we enter a new era for our organization, it is important that all youth can see themselves in Scouting in every way possible,” Saurbaugh said.
As reported by
USA Today, while the umbrella organization Boy Scouts of America or BSA will keep its name, the Boy Scouts program, aimed at 10 to 17 year olds, will be changed to Scouts BSA in the near future.
The Cub Scouts, a program for 7-10 year olds, however, will keep its name due to it already being “gender neutral.”
“Change has been coming quickly to the iconic if shrinking organization. In October, it announced it would provide programs for girls,” USA Today reports. “Several months before that, the group announced it would accept and register transgender youth into its organization.”
The organization, which claims to currently have 2.3 million members, also announced an end to its ban on gay leaders in 2015.
The Girl Scouts, which is said to have 1.8 million members, have been opposed to the move, arguing that allowing females into the Boy Scouts organization will reduce its ranks.
Andrea Bastiani Archibald, the Girl Scouts’ Chief Girl and Family Engagement Officer, says her organization is better suited for young females.
“Our experiences are created for and with girls,” Archibald said. “I think that’s important when we consider what appeals to them and what benefits them most.”
_______________________________________________________
Boy Scouts Wave White Flag of Surrender
to Political Correctness
BY JAMES MURPHY
Like any other war, the Culture War has its share of victories and defeats. On May 2, the bad guys celebrated a victory as the Boy Scouts of America
announced the removal of the word “boy” from their name. For the older children (ages 11-17) the organization will now be known as Scouts BSA. The name change was announced as part of their new “Scout Me In” campaign, which looks to lure girls to scouting alongside boys.
So far, the Girl Scouts are retaining their name, and will not be admitting boys. No merging of the two groups has been announced or publicly suggested. The name change comes less than a year after the Boy Scouts decided to
invite girls to join in their programs.
The Boy Scouts had been under siege for decades over their once-principled stance against having open homosexuals and atheists as members. It’s important to note that the scouts never had a litmus test — they never asked if a boy or a leader was an atheist or a homosexual — but openly gay or atheist males were not allowed.
A 2012 press release stated the position this way: “While the BSA does not proactively inquire about the sexual orientation of employees, volunteers, or members, we do not grant membership to individuals who are open or avowed homosexuals or who engage in behavior that would become a distraction to the mission of the BSA. Scouting believes same-sex attraction should be introduced and discussed outside of its program with parents, caregivers, or spiritual advisers, at the appropriate time and in the right setting.”
This policy was galling to leftist activists, and an organized campaign was started against the Boy Scouts. Bit by bit and for several decades, leftists have been scraping away at the organization and its emphasis on moral character and godliness.
In 1981, former Eagle Scout Tim Curran sued the Boy Scouts for discrimination after he was denied a leadership position because he was openly gay. The case wound its way through the court system unit 1998, when the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the scouts because they were not considered a “business establishment” and, therefore, did not fall under the provisions of
California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
In 1990, James Dale was removed from his position as a scout leader in New Jersey when he publicly came out as a homosexual. Dale sued the scouts and the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court where, in 2000, the court held that the scouts were well within their rights to exclude homosexual members and leaders.
But even though the Boy Scouts won these decisions, the die had been cast. Several groups and businesses, most notably dozens of
United Way chapters, began to withhold funding for the group because of its “discriminatory” practices. The Boy Scouts held fast to their principles for many years but, slowly, they began giving in to the social justice warriors.
It happened incrementally as most subversive things do. In 2013, the scouts lifted their ban on gay boys joining the organization, but kept the ban on gays in leadership intact. But by July of 2015, that ban was also lifted, with the organization’s leadership citing the possibility of serious legal challenges to the policy. In October of 2017, girls were invited to join the organization. And now, the name change.
Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh said that the Boy Scouts considered many names before deciding on Scouts BSA. “We wanted to land on something that evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive going forward,” Surbaugh said. “We’re trying to find the right way to say we’re here for both young men and young women.”
The name change is just another small step in the gender-neutral agenda that is being foisted upon all of us by the politically correct Left. The Boy Scouts is a victim. Children being raised in gender-neutral families are victims. Even the integrity of biology itself risks becoming a victim as so-called scientists look for ways to validate these insane concepts of “gender.”
The Boy Scout Oath says, “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.” With all that talk about God and morality, you can expect the oath to be changed soon, too.
______________________________________________________________
Mormon Church to Part Ways With Boy Scouts
EXCERPTS: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) — the Mormons — announced May 8 that it will sever its ties with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) following a 105-year close relationship with the organization.
While there was no indication from the statement of ideological or moral differences between the two organizations, one suspects this might have been a factor. In recent years, the Boy Scouts have made major decisions at odds with Mormon religious convictions — as well as the very moral foundations of the Boy Scouts. Keep in mind that this statement comes on the heels of the BSA’s announcement that it will change its name to simply Scouts BSA and transition into allowing girls to participate in all scouting activities — including the BSA’s highly esteemed Eagle Scout program."
