Girls will be Boy Scouts

When I played little league baseball in the 1980s and 1990s there were girls who played with us. It was a boy’s Christian league. No one cared. They just wanted to play. We all just practiced once a week and played on Saturday afternoons.

With the Boy Scouts going co-ed, I must ask...what is the difference? Some girls want to do the boy’s activities. Some girls may not want to deal with the same girls who bully. If you asked a girl why they want to join the Boy Scouts you might be surprised by the answer.

One thing I remember growing up is that girls are much meaner to girls than boys are to boys. Sorry, but boys tease each other out of love, girls tease out of spite. I’m not sure if that’s a factor, but if a girl felt safer with boys, that might be a good thing in a culture where women have hashtags saying otherwise.

So maybe instead of asking why do these girls want to join the Boy Scouts, maybe the real question is why don’t they feel comfortable in the girls scouts?

I understand the desire to create places for boys to be boys and girls to be girls, but what type of sexually exclusive activities are happening from 11-17 years old that creates an issue?

It’s not like the Boy Scouts all shower together and then talk about how they like having sex.

It’s a club where kids tie knots, camp, and have innocent out door adventures. If a girl wants to join, at such a young age, what can the group no longer do now? If this was prohibiting boys from doing something, I’d probably be against it.

The only argument I hear is that this is the way it’s always been and liberals want to ruin America. Really? Using history and tradition doesn’t bode well if you believe in civil rights and equal pay acts.

By the way, liberals can pass all the laws they want, and not one girl has to follow through on them. This change isn’t forcing girls to join the co-ed Boy Scouts.

But somewhere there are girls who want in, and if there ends up being none and this is just liberals wanting to feel good about themselves, then I say what is the big deal? If no girls show up, then who cares? Then it’s just a co-ed organization that isn’t very co-ed.

Girls are allowed to play boy sports in high school, yet almost none do. Except for a few rare times. They instead play in the female version.

A lot of this stems from liberal PC culture. And I get it. Liberals do overreact to a lot, but so do conservatives. Especially when gender and religion come into play. Suddenly, after getting mad at liberals for crying foul about mascots and gender terms, conservatives cry about the war on Christmas and other causes.

Watching America change is tough for everyone. Having to learn new ways to address social issues is hard at first, no doubt. But in our complex world, we are learning our humanity is more complex. While we might not need 50 gender options on Facebook, we do need to understand that boys and girls are more able to express their own sexual thoughts and confusing questions that aren’t streamlined by simply male or female binaries.

I’m a fan of the idea that boys and girls are different. I taught high school, coaches wrestling, I and saw differences that were way beyond social construction. Boys got mad differently. Boys took criticism differently. Girls were more mature in many ways. They also lied more and cried their way out of things. Don’t call me sexist. You know there are universal truths with exceptions. There are clear differences for the majority. But the minority must still be respected. Some kids don’t fall into strict binary groups. To tell them to pick a side is simplistic and morally wrong. They’re not picking a sports team, they’re trying to live a life.

From a secular point of view, we must be understanding that not everyone falls into our perfect boxes so quickly. And from a religious point of view, Jesus clearly defined male and female roles but did not see the necessity of calling out those whose life was outside the norm.

I don’t know if a co-ed Boy Scouts will bring a unification of people or cause more harm based on how it plays out. I’m not a judge or jury. But I do know that kids feel more free to express their newfound sexual ambiguity, and that’s a conversation they can have with teachers and parents that would have been impossible even 20 years ago.

Being a comedian, I can’t help but end on a joke. So here’s my vain attempt:

If anything, maybe this will help the Boy Scouts with their biggest deficiency...that horrible popcorn. Can the boys start selling those delicious Thin Mints?