[paulcissa]

BSA is in its end-stage. Everything the left touches turns to $#!t.

[Macoozie]

“BSA is in its end-stage. Everything the left touches turns to $#!t.”

Agreed
on both points.

I remember the fun, teamwork and comradery of scouting.
Just another thing lost for young folks.

see J Haidt’s talk when he asks “at what age did you leave the house on your own, without adult supervision?”
Oldsters often reply - six or seven, soon after Kindergarten
Gen Z? 14 or even 16-

The world is a very different place.

[Wallace T.]

Thirteen years ago, the Boy Scouts faced a crossroads, to either stay true to the founding values of the organization or to try to adapt to changing mores, specifically on the issue of admitting openly homosexual scouts and later scout leaders into the ranks. In the early 2000s, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) had won cases allowing them to restrict membership to heterosexual boys. Nevertheless, the BSA leadership decided to voluntarily admit homosexuals.

They chose poorly. Conservative churches, such as Southern and independent Baptists, Churches of Christ, and Bible churches, withdrew support from the Boy Scouts and expelled existing troops. Keep in mind that some denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Southern Baptists, had their own preexisting groups for boys and girls. My son was a member of a Boy Scout troop that transferred from the BSA to Trail Life, an evangelical Christian boys group. Evangelical Christians tend to have families and adhere to traditional values, and the Boy Scouts lost that constituency.

Faced with declining membership, the Boy Scouts decided to admit girls, changing the organization's name to Scouts, BSA, to the chagrin of the Girl Scouts, a separate organization. That move was the final straw for the Mormons, and the LDS denomination withdrew all support for the BSA, resulting in the loss of over 400,000 Scouts.

Evidence of sexual abuse as exposed in civil lawsuits from victims of the abuse imposed a huge liability on the BSA, and the national organization filed bankruptcy in February 2020. The BSA exited bankruptcy in 2021, but established a $2.4 billion fund for 82,500 people who claimed sexual abuse.

Membership is about 1 million, down from a peak of 4 million in the 1970s. The BSA is a casualty of the culture wars. The decline of family life, declining interest in outdoor activities, and the feminization of American society all played parts in the decline. The leadership gambled that they could attract liberal families, the soccer mom types with their cuckolded husbands, even if they alienated traditional Christians, They failed miserably. The decline of the Boy Scouts was a slow motion parallel to the debacle of Bud Light and Anheuser Busch.