Girls Cannot be Denied Access to The Boy Scouts of America

While all of your points are very valid, and I am glad that you made these points, as they did get me to think in ways I had not initially expected to. Alas, there are solutions for all of them: First, preparing a Boy Scout for the military was the intention for the BSA when it was first created, and since then has changed focus more to prepare boys in more current ideology and teaching them more reasonable "lifelong skills". Second, yes, I do feel it is beneficial for boys to have "boy time" and is proven to help build their mental identity (1). Third, the BSA National Council has already announced that there will be no change in the program to help accommodate for female participants. The BSA will keep the same principals, rank advancement, and curriculum and it will be applied to all. Fourth, as of 2015, the BSA removed the gay ban, which I would like to mention, was for those who were openly gay, including scout leaders (2) and as of 2017, the BSA declared that the BSA program would be open to the transgender community (3) and membership could not be denied from due to sexuality or gender, with the exception for biological females who claimed to be females. Fifth, the stereotypes that you described the BSA to be are not true. The concept that the BSA "reinforced" that there is a difference between "normal" and "abnormal" boys is false and a stereotype which only further adds to the illusion that it does. (however, I would like to apologize to you for those expirences. As someone who did not play sports or much for video games, I was welcomed into my first troop and not descriminated against for it. I would also like to add that I represent two BSA troops, along with participated in the 2017 National Jamboree (a collection of members from troops around the area) and at no times have been excluded). And lastly, I do have a question for you. If you were not fully satisfied with the BSA program curriculum, then why did you stay with it? The reason why I ask this is that even though I live in the rural Mid-West, there are still several programs I can think of off of the top of my head that are mix-gendered, and less focused on survival skills. I hope these answers provide some level of satisfaction for you. Now, I would like to provide my main point for my argument of why girls should not be allowed into the BSA. I feel this arguemt is of easy premise to understand, so it will be more brief that my first. It is the concept of sexual safety, between both youth to youth interaction and youth to adult interactions. 1 in 20 boys (male youth under the age of 18) and 1 in 5 girls (4) (female youth under the age of 18) exprience some form of sexual abuse (I figured on looking at molestations as there is a higher precentage, although I decided not to due to the fact that there were counterdictions in numbers between sites). Yes, scouting adults (leaders and volunteers) are to take a youth safety and protection course, however by logical assertion, I know that a statement saying that an adult will not engage in sexual activities with youth, willingly or unwillingly, will not stop someone who's goal is to do so. This is something I can personally attest to as one of my teachers, (he) molested me for three years in the school setting (and yes, I have taken legal action), something that as a straight male, would definetly put me in the 1 out of 20 for sexual abuse catagory. While it may seem unrelated, this is to show that even though an adult is to protect childern (as is a teacher's primary job, with teaching coming second), it will not stop child predetors. 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com... 3. https://voiceofscouting.org... 4. http://victimsofcrime.org...