Girls as boy scouts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are no more Boy Scouts.

It's a dead organization.

It died the day they crapped on gay people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a Girl Scout Brownie through Senior. My DS is working on his Eagle Scout rank now. I loved being a GS, but Boy Scouts is the far superior program.

Did you earn your Gold Award? I did, and there were plenty of Eagle projects less rigorous than mine. I think the program is what you make of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a Girl Scout Brownie through Senior. My DS is working on his Eagle Scout rank now. I loved being a GS, but Boy Scouts is the far superior program.

Did you earn your Gold Award? I did, and there were plenty of Eagle projects less rigorous than mine. I think the program is what you make of it.

I earned my Silver and Gold Awards; I was a Girl Scout leader for 9 years; and I have a son currently working towards Eagle Scout.

The Girl Scout and Boy Scout (now called Scouts BSA) programs are completely different. Scouts BSA (Boy Scouts) has a program based on an advancement system. Boys don't have to advance, but if they want to, they complete certain requirements and earn badges to advance to the next level. Girl Scouts USA program is not based on advancement in the same way, and even what badges we have are rather vague in their requirements.
Also, most every badge is "customizable" and there aren't even rules on who can buy a badge or who can "award" a badge or determine that a badge has been earned. Girls can just earn badges on their own, decide when they are done, and go buy te badge. Not saying one way is better or worse than another. But they are completely different!

While the individual Gold Award projects might have been more complicated to plan and carry out than an individual Eagle project, the Eagle project is only *one part* of a long road towards earning Eagle Scout. I have been watching my son on this journey. It is HARD to get even to Life Scout Rank. There are SO MANY requirements along the way. 21 required merit badges, for instance, and some of these badges take months to earn (like Camping -- requires 20 nights of camping!) . There's just nothing similar in Girl Scouts, which is why SOME girls are interested in doing the Scouts BSA (Formerly Boy Scout) program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are no more Boy Scouts.

It's a dead organization.

WTH. My son’s troop in NoVA is thriving. Middle school and high school members.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our experience with Girl Scouts has stunk. The whole program has changed its focus from exploring to education. They do lane activities in a church basement and have to answer questions from their handout. Like reading comprehension questions. It’s so focused on protocol and procedures you can see it’s neofascist roots. I’m completely turned off. I do know some troops are different, but we’re done.

We are one year into it and already tired of it. Reams of material but you can never get any real help. Cookies sales last forever. Not enough outdoor emphasis but a lot of fake girl power BS with pink flowers printed on a hand out.

I’ve been a GS leader for three years now and have yet to get a single handout with pink flowers on it. All the official leader materials I get from the GSCNC website have green borders.

[Anonymous]

Scouting family here, husband is an Eagle Scout, I was GS and daughter is a GS. BSA is having financial issues which is why they opened it up to girls (they didn’t want to).

[cburkhardt]

Hello. I am the Scoutmaster of DC’s Scouts BSA Troop 248 for Girls. I conducted an exhaustive thread earlier this year and answered over 80 questions from people about the BSA now including all-girl troops. If you are interested in learning about the program you can look at that thread or go to our web site at www.ScoutsBsaDcGirls.org.

A few clarifications about things raised in this thread. Scouts BSA is not Co-Ed. The commenter who opposes girls being able to participate can rest assured that the all-Boy troops will continue on as before. The BSA decided it would be an all-welcoming organization and has ceased embracing or enforcing the religious dogma of any particular faith. So yes, gays and girls are welcome. People offput by this have other choices, and that is great. We just determined that it did not well-serve American youth to continue some of these past policies. Product sales in Scouts BSA are up to the individual Scout unit. In our troop in DC we do not do any product sales - preferring to have our girls spend 100% of their time doing program. We price our dues to cover all costs and have community sources to offset dues for under-resourced families. We are growing each week. We are now up to 26 girls organized into three “patrols” and have a volunteer committee of 18. All Souls Episcopal church is the organization that makes this possible and is where we meet twice a month on Saturday mornings. If you have an interested girl, stop by with her at our next meeting on April 13 from 10 to Noon. This is a splendid group of girls who have fully-embraced this wonderful program.

[Anonymous]

cburkhardt wrote:Hello. I am the Scoutmaster of DC’s Scouts BSA Troop 248 for Girls. I conducted an exhaustive thread earlier this year and answered over 80 questions from people about the BSA now including all-girl troops. If you are interested in learning about the program you can look at that thread or go to our web site at www.ScoutsBsaDcGirls.org.

A few clarifications about things raised in this thread. Scouts BSA is not Co-Ed. The commenter who opposes girls being able to participate can rest assured that the all-Boy troops will continue on as before. The BSA decided it would be an all-welcoming organization and has ceased embracing or enforcing the religious dogma of any particular faith. So yes, gays and girls are welcome. People offput by this have other choices, and that is great. We just determined that it did not well-serve American youth to continue some of these past policies. Product sales in Scouts BSA are up to the individual Scout unit. In our troop in DC we do not do any product sales - preferring to have our girls spend 100% of their time doing program. We price our dues to cover all costs and have community sources to offset dues for under-resourced families. We are growing each week. We are now up to 26 girls organized into three “patrols” and have a volunteer committee of 18. All Souls Episcopal church is the organization that makes this possible and is where we meet twice a month on Saturday mornings. If you have an interested girl, stop by with her at our next meeting on April 13 from 10 to Noon. This is a splendid group of girls who have fully-embraced this wonderful program.

So, are the gays and girls together?

[Anonymous]

My new band name: Gays and girls.

[Anonymous]

Let’s not pretend that BSA deciding to welcome gays and break from the Mormon church was something they did out of the goodness of their hearts. Hey did it because the church was trying to exert more and more control over BSA at the same time BSA was losing secular sponsors like crazy over their anti-gay policies. BSA realized that they only way for them to stay in control of their own organization and not be fully absorbed by the Mormon church was to change its anti-gay policies in the hopes of winning back secular sponsors. When that meant losing the Mormon (and Catholic) church as it’s main sponsor and losing all of the Mormon scouts as members, BSA opened up to girls to keep from collapsing. So yeah, they got to the right end result, but for all the wrong reasons.

And then people wonder why Girl Scouts didn’t want to partner them, when they treat girls like a commodity.

[Anonymous]

Girls in BSA are segregated second class citizens while in GSA they are the only reason for existing.

[cburkhardt]

The BSA adopted the Clinton-era “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy of the military. The policy, while upheld by the Supreme Court, was quite problematic. We were continuously sued by individuals and city/state human rights commissions. We had sponsors dropping because of the policy. The crazy thing is that other than a few high-visibility situations, people were neither excluded nor asked to leave because of the policy, which our members would not enforce. We are a youth service organization and had become a punching bag for non-members seeking to make political and religious points. That is now over, because we now welcome everyone. The commenter appears to be interested in more exclusionary organizations, and there are organizations out there that can cater to his preferences.

[Anonymous]

cburkhardt wrote:The BSA adopted the Clinton-era “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy of the military. The policy, while upheld by the Supreme Court, was quite problematic. We were continuously sued by individuals and city/state human rights commissions. We had sponsors dropping because of the policy. The crazy thing is that other than a few high-visibility situations, people were neither excluded nor asked to leave because of the policy, which our members would not enforce. We are a youth service organization and had become a punching bag for non-members seeking to make political and religious points. That is now over, because we now welcome everyone. The commenter appears to be interested in more exclusionary organizations, and there are organizations out there that can cater to his preferences.

Which commenter are you talking about?

[cburkhardt]

We now have over 50 Scouts BSA Troops for Girls in the DC metropolitan area. 1,800 nationally. In two months. The marketplace of girls has spoken loudly and clearly, and young women these days immediately recognize Scouts BSA as a first-ranking youth program of tremendous relevance to them. It is all about options for young people and not about competition with other organizations. I am a cheerleader for any organization that pulls together volunteers to serve young people, including those mentioned on this thread.

Organizations that well-serve their members evolve and the BSA is no exception. One commenter above notes that our change will be good for our membership and finances, which is correct. We have made the right decisions and are an a better path.

[cburkhardt]

I am going to cease further comment on this thread. The issues concerning BSA membership policy changes and the disappointments expressed by competing youth service organizations and others have been fully discussed on other threads over the past two years. Scouts BSA for Girls and Cub Scouts for Girls have clearly found an enthusiastic number of members. I am an informed and directly-involved volunteer in that effort and invite parents of potentially-interested children to visit a Cub Scout or Scouts BSA unit for your boy or girl. You can find one at www.BeAScout.org.