The Boy Scouts of America have had a well-deserved bad reputation of being generally reactionary in their attitudes and in particular hostile towards the LGBT community. They have tried to redeem themselves by removing most of the restrictions and now have even announced that they will allow girls to enroll and as part of that move they have announced that they will change their name to Scouts BSA effective February 2019.
This has of course upset some groups who liked the Boy Scouts just the way they were and the Mormon church has announced that they will no longer work with the organization. It turns out that Mormons form about 20%, of the membership, much greater than their representation in the general public, and this is because every Mormon boy was automatically enrolled as a scout.
Over the last century, close to 20% of the 2.3 million Boy Scouts in the US have been Mormon boys, which made the church the Boy Scouts’ largest partner.
The church’s decision follows a marked shift towards inclusivity in recent years by the Boy Scouts.
In 2015, the Mormon Church said it was “deeply troubled” by the Boy Scout’s decision to revoke the ban on openly gay adult scout leaders.
The Boy Scouts had announced they would accept gay scouts two years prior.
…The Mormon Church is against same-sex marriage and there are no openly gay men or women in leadership positions within the church.
It will be interesting to see how long the Mormon church can hold out against the winds of change on issues of gender and sexuality.
As long as the money keeps flowing.
On the matter of the scouts, back in 1974 I was the assistant waterfront director at Camp Ben Delatour in northern Colorado. One of the major topics that summer was the threatened revocation of all Mormon scout troop charters because the Mormons had refused to allow a black scout to become the senior patrol leader of a troop they had sponsored, even though the troop members themselves had voted in favor of the promotion.
They backed down but the rift has always been there just below the surface.
I recall that I was denied membership in the Boy Scouts in the early ’50’s because my mother was a divorcée and that this would be a bad example to other scouts and their families. This was what my mother was told for the rejection and it was confirmed by me in gossipy conversations with my own contemporaries later.
The Boy Scouts of America can take a flying half-nelson on a galloping goose.
Eh, the mormons just shove their hands in their pockets and pretend there’s no gay anywhere. SLC is one of the biggest gay hotspots in Ustates. There was a massive, thriving gay community when we lived there, and I doubt that’s changed.
Jockaira:
You act as though this were an outrageous way to think in the ’50s. Everyone fucking thought that way in the ’50s. There was a massive stigma to being a single mother, and being divorced, too. It [divorce] was still considered to be extremely scandalous, and was considered so for another 20 years or so.
My mother was divorced, and a single parent to me, and I was able to join the girl scouts sometime in the late ’60s. Things do change, you know.
Scouts BSA? Naming the new organization after a British motorcycle? I would have thought they would at least use the Harley-Davidson name.
jrkrideau, when I see ‘BSA’ I think bovine serum albumin.
The BS of A Church…