The Boy Scouts of America was dead long before its rebrand
Of all the memorable experiences I had in the Boy Scouts of America, there is one that I still think about on a regular basis.
I was 13 years old and was serving as the senior patrol leader and boy leader of the entire troop. Our troop was at our annual weeklong summer camp, and it was near dinner time, when all of the troops would line up on the parade grounds for the evening colors ceremony.
While most members of my troop were at our campsite waiting for me to lead them in the march to the parade ground and have dinner, I was enjoying myself in a pickup game of three-on-three basketball with some boys from other troops. As I was missing in action, and since growing boys at summer camp eat like they are half-starved, my assistant senior patrol leader filled in for me and led the troop to the parade grounds.
Now, the basketball court was right next to the parade grounds, so my scoutmaster saw me playing basketball as the troop made its way to the site. He walked over to me and, without embarrassing me in front of the troop, reminded me that as the senior patrol leader, I had certain leadership responsibilities that meant I could not be off playing basketball while the troop was preparing to go to dinner. In taking the role of the leader of the troop, I had sacrificed the ability to do as I pleased, because the other boys were relying on me to lead them. This small lesson in leadership, born from the short attention span of a teenager, has stuck with me since and exemplified to me just how the Boy Scouts of America has helped create great leaders of strong moral character for a century.
On Tuesday, the Boy Scouts of America announced that it was rebranding to “Scouting America,” while severing itself from the 114-year tradition that made it the most highly respected youth leadership organization in the country for a century. In many ways, this renaming is the culmination of a decadelong project to remake the organization from a culturally conservative one into a cesspool of woke ideology.
In a video interview with the Associated Press, BSA president Roger Krone said the organization was rebranding because “in the next 100 years, we want any youth in America to feel very, very welcome to come into our programs.”
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I earned my Eagle Scout award in 2013, the year before the organization lifted a supposed ban on gay scouts. In 2015, the organization lifted a ban on gay leaders that had previously been the subject of a Supreme Court case. And, in 2018, the Boy Scouts of America dropped all pretenses of being an organization dedicated exclusively to forming young men as the leaders of tomorrow as it completely changed the makeup of the organization by allowing girls to participate for the first time.
Today, this organization is but a shadow of what it once was. Membership has plummeted, and widespread sexual abuse claims pushed the organization into bankruptcy. A rebrand won’t cover its failures to live by the values it professes as this once-great organization continues to die a slow and painful death by wokeness.
