Boy Scouts of America Drops “Boy” in Name Change

The Boy Scouts announced the name change last spring after a three-year bankruptcy ordeal stemming from the largest child sex abuse scandal involving a national organization in U.S. history. The scandal, which involved sexual abuse allegations from more than 82,000 boys against 7,800 individuals, resulted in a $2.46 billion settlement plan in 2023 and the lowest enrollment levels for the Boy Scouts since the 1950s.

However, for more than a decade, the Boy Scouts has shown no signs of slowing down its “inclusivity” strategy.

• In 2015, it allowed openly gay men to be troop leaders.
• In 2017, it allowed gender-confused girls to enroll in boys-only programs.
• In 2018, it allowed girls into the Cub Scouts.
• In 2019, it allowed girls into the Boy Scouts.

Today, the organization’s membership is just over one million, which has steadily declined from nearly three million members in 2008.

According to Scouting America, the organization has implemented several safety measures to protect its members, such as strict leadership selection and screening, mandatory protection training for all adult volunteers every two years, prohibition on direct “one-on-one” contact between adults and minors, and mandatory reporting of abuse.

Yet, many critics have expressed concerns that the decision to allow girls and gender-confused youth into its programs will only exacerbate safety issues. Critics worry about boys and girls – some of whom are confused about their gender – sharing sleeping arrangements, bathrooms, and other private spaces where the mixed-gender environment could heighten the potential for sexual contact or abuse.

Others suggest that by dropping “boy” in the name and making the organization co-ed diminishes the program’s ability to develop masculine leadership, skills, and character in boys when society desperately needs strong men.

Liberty Counsel Action President John Stemberger, a founding board member of Trail Life USA, a conservative scouting alternative, said the Boy Scouts have displayed a steady moral compromise over the years and to now completely ignore the differences between the two genders destroys the essence of the Boy Scouts.

“The results of caving to the false gender ideology over the last decade are manifest in the Boy Scouts’ recent scandal,” said Stemberger. “And now, ignoring that boys and girls are different has the organization once again putting boys and girls into potentially harmful situations. Commonsense says you simply cannot mix minors of the opposite sex together in many of the typical overnight scouting environments for it opens the door for inappropriate behavior.”

“The so-called ‘Scouting America’ has also neutered the DNA of who the Boy Scouts were as an organization,” continued Stemberger. “Boys learn how to become men from other men in male-centered environments. But when you erode those boundaries and ignore masculine and feminine distinctions, scouting is deprived of any core meaning and the needs of our youth, both boy and girl, go unmet.”