After threatening to sever ties with Scouting America and kick the youth group off military bases worldwide, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday gave a six-month reprieve to the organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America.
Hegseth made the announcement in a video posted to X, framing it as an ultimatum to Scouting to conform to the Trump administration’s anti-DEI agenda. He detailed his many criticisms of the group, saying Scouts had “lost their way” by changing the organization’s name and “watering down” what he called “the focus on God as the ruler of the universe.”
He accused the Scouts of promoting “an insidious, radical, woke ideology that is anti-America and anti-American.”
So, speaking as a former boy scout, I never thought it was a great idea to take a bunch of co-ed potentially horny teenagers out camping in the woods, but shut the fuck up, Pete. This is not your job. Yes, historically boy scouts and girl scouts have been quite different and girls should get to do the things that boy scouts do, but I was a pretty horny teenager back in my boy scout days.
My local council has a long-run ting exchange program with a Canadian council, where scouting is coed. Every 4 years we send a bunch of scouts up to camp and spend time with our Canadian counterparts, and then the next year they send a bunch down to do the same here.
I haven’t looked into how they work it since they started allowing girls to participate, but back when I was in we had an arrangement with the local girl scout council for them to participate and host female Canadian scouts and to travel to Canada with us(and of course female venturers also participated)
The program has been going on for almost 60 years, and I’ve never heard of there being an issue. Girls and boys camp in separate areas but participate in activities as a single unit.
And that’s much the same way Scouts America is operating now.
And on top of that
Venturing and sea scouts have also been coed for a long time.
There was always female camp staff at summer camp who were around our age.
I’m sure along the way some kids have taken the opportunity to do what horny teenagers have always done since time immemorial, but I think it’s probably fair to assume that if not at scouts they probably would have found another time and place to do that anyway, not being in scouts certainly hasn’t put a damper on that for a great many people over the years.
And of course, its 2026, gay scouts don’t have to stay in the closet anymore.