On May 23, 2013, the Boy Scouts began allowing openly gay males to be admitted. On July 25, 2015, the Boy Scouts began allowing openly gay leaders to be admitted. On Jan. 28, 2017, the Boy Scouts began allowing transgender boys to be admitted. On Oct. 11, 2017, the Boy Scouts of America announced that it will begin allowing girls to join in January of 2018. All of these recent amendments to the Boy Scouts of America have been progressive ones, but has the Boy Scouts taken it too far with the admittance of girls?

I consider myself a very accepting person, but I also believe that some things should be kept a certain way, i.e.: the Boy Scouts. I appreciate the gesture of admitting girls into the program, but it’s called Boy Scouts for a reason. I’m not against it necessarily, but I think that it should be a push for the Girl Scouts to step it up a little bit. In the Boy Scouts, boys are learning outdoor skills and preparing themselves for earning their Eagle Scout rank. The Girl Scouts are aimed at STEM, life skills and entrepreneurship. What’s the end-goal, though? Boy Scouts have the opportunity of earning a hefty scholarship if they earn their Eagle Scout rank, so what about the Girl Scouts? There’s the Gold Award, but are its benefits as big as an Eagle Scout’s?

Upon reading through the Girl Scouts’ website, you can read that during the famous “Cookies Program” the Girl Scouts are being taught a variety of “skills” such as decision-making, money management and business ethics. What fun for a young child (or should I say the child’s parent). The Girls also have an outdoor program, but it’s not nearly as interesting as the Boy Scouts’. Girl Scouts are encouraged to get outside and “explore colors, shapes, and light in the outdoors, and create art inspired by the natural world.” No wonder about a dozen girls have tried to be admitted into the Boy Scouts since the 1970’s.

Not all girls are interested in art, and that’s okay. If the Girl Scouts are so worried about the announcement by the Boy Scouts’ National President, Randall Stephenson, who said, “I’ve seen nothing that develops leadership skills and discipline like this organization. It is time to make these outstanding leadership development programs available to girls,” then do something about it and stop whining about how “they’re trying to take our girls!”

In reality, how many girls are actually going to join the Boy Scouts? Is it really that big of a deal? Is it worth making snide comments about and using the “Angry Reaction” on Facebook? The Boy Scouts have had a decline in its membership lately, so it can be inferred that the admittance of girls is to open up to new members. In Scandinavia, they have actually merged the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts into one collective unit. Could this be another possible reason for the recent announcement? Would this actually be a better solution to the controversy? If the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts worked together on this, then could that not evidently end up solving the problem? I mean, you know what they say: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”