Boy Scouts Took The Inclusion Bait – OpEd
The Boy
Scouts of America (BSA) is exploring the possibility of declaring
bankruptcy. How could an organization which had roughly 5.5 million
members in the early 1970s, and now commands only 2.3 million, collapse
so rapidly?
Several factors are at work, but none are more important than the
left-wing assaults on the BSA, and the role of molesting Scout masters.
In the early 1990s, I was asked by the Center for the Study of Natural
Law at the Claremont Institute in California to write a monograph on the
problems facing the BSA. The second edition of On the Front Line of the
Culture War: Recent Attacks on the Boy Scouts of America was published
in 1993, the year I came to the Catholic League. More than any other
left-wing entity, it was the ACLU that first declared war on the BSA.
The ACLU started suing the BSA left and right, and this, in turn,
inspired other left-wing organizations to do likewise. The ACLU sued
over the Three “G’s”—Gays, Godless, and Girls—hoping to force the
organization to allow homosexuals, atheists, and girls to join. While
the BSA officials initially fought these efforts, they eventually
succumbed to the politics of inclusion, changing its traditional
standards to appease its critics.
History shows, however, that hard-core ideologues are not interested in
being appeased—they are interested in winning. In this case, victory
meant the demise of the BSA.
The only one of the Three “G’s” that the BSA held the line on were the
atheists. But even there, the organization that prided itself on
honoring the Judeo-Christian ethos adjusted its sails to appease its
critics. So they let anyone join who professed a belief in anything,
ranging from devotees of Zeus to Wiccans.
Allowing girls to join the BSA was long considered a non-starter: after
all, there is an organization called the Girl Scouts of America. But to
zealots this is not enough—their radical egalitarian agenda demanded
that the girls crash the BSA. Last year, the BSA gave in and allowed
girls to join.
Two things immediately happened: the BSA lost 425,000 members in the
month it made the announcement (October 2017), and last month the Girl
Scouts sued them as well. Inclusion anyone?
The biggest headache for the BSA came from homosexual activists. They
won the support of the media, higher education, left-wing legal groups,
even corporate America. In 2013, the BSA allowed homosexual boys to join
and in 2015 it ended its ban on gay adult leaders. In 2017, it yielded
again, ruling that biological boys who identify as girls can join. Not
much left after that.
In 1920, ten years after the BSA was founded, it started a “red flag”
system to identify adult males who were known to sexually abuse the boys
and young men. It would later be known as the “Ineligible Volunteer
Files,” commonly referred to as the “perversion files.”
Fast forward to October 2012. The Oregon Supreme Court ordered the
release of 1,200 confidential files detailing cases of sexual
molestation that occurred between 1965 and 1985. It was this that
started a wave of lawsuits, with victims, alleged and real, seeking
lucrative financial settlements. This proved to be devastating.
In 2012, the Los Angeles Times also got its hands on 1,600 confidential
files dating from 1970 to 1991. In most cases, the BSA found out about
the sexual abuse after it had been reported to the authorities.
It is hard to say exactly how many of the molesters were pedophiles
(those who hit on prepubescent boys or girls) and how many were
homosexuals (those who hit on postpubescent males). For reasons that are
entirely political, the media have shown no interest in getting to the
bottom of this.
Why the left-wing assault on the BSA? It is a bastion of traditionalism,
and that is one thing the Left hates, especially the core
Judeo-Christian values. It is also a voluntary organization, one of the
most important intermediate associations in the nation; these social
institutions separate the individual from the state.
Leftists are nothing but statists: They want the power to control the
people. Thus, anything that stands in their way—such as the family,
church, and voluntary associations (the BSA)—are an obstacle to the
power and reach of the state. Following the philosophy of Rousseau,
these institutions must be destroyed.
Would matters have turned out differently had the BSA officials not
adopted the politics of inclusion? Hard to say, but at least they could
have made their mark in the culture war. Instead, they caved, and now
they are paying the price.