re: #34 austin_blue

Well, shit:

cnn.com

Look likes it’s open season on little girls now by the usual “Dedicated Youth Professionals”.

The BSA (the soon-to-be Scouting America) has had female youth and co-ed units in some form or fashion for at least 25-30 years in the Exploring and Learning for Life programs. What was new a few years ago was allowing female youth to join the “mainline” Boy Scouting and Cub Scouting programs (albeit with co-ed Cub packs being an option, but with only single-gender Scouts BSA troops) and, from all of seen and heard and experienced (having events with female Scouts BSA troops competing with the boys from my troop, as well as our charter org’s Cub pack that feeds into ours having female members), things seem to be going well. I had a feeling that National would eventually rebrand as gender-neutral if the “grand experiment” went well and, as an Eagle Scout and Scouter who’s been in the BSA for 37 out of my 49 years, I have no problem with that at all; it’ll take some getting used to, but the official switchover is next February.

Like with the Catholic and other churches who have also had massive accounts of CSA, which the BSA has had to come to terms and deal with as well, I get that a lot of people can’t help but paint the entire thing with the broadest brush they can find and say “burn it all down, it’s all suspect, it’ll never change”. I can’t speaking for the Catholic Church, but Scouting’s youth protection policies have been majorly overhauled over the past several years and, as a volunteer Scouter, it is my job to not only protect the youth in my charge, but any youth in Scouting that I can, while doing my best to try to give them a good program.