The Girl Scouts of the USA have sued the Boy Scouts of America for reaching out to girls. While the Girl Scouts have applauded inclusion within their own ranks warmly embracing both homosexuals and transgender members, the group has found the Boy Scouts latest steps towards inclusivity to be profoundly troubling.
No one else on the cultural left including the Girl Scouts sued nor even threaten to sue the Boy Scouts when the Boy Scouts began their march to diversity. The Boy Scouts welcomed openly gay members in 2013, embraced gay scout leaders in 2015, and invited transgender boys to join in 2017 with support of the cultural left. In 2018, the Boy Scouts accelerated their march up the mountain of diversity by declaring that their historic organization would change its name from Boy Scouts to Scouts BSA. The name change accompanies the Scout‘s plan to begin awarding the rank of Eagle Scout to both boys and girls starting in 2019. The organisation hopes, “to offer families the options they want.” Zach Wahls the co-founder of Scouts for Equality and an Eagle Scout in his own right hailed the announcement as “yet another step forward” for the Boy Scouts which signals that the “future is bright for Scouting in America.”
But Girl Scouts have strongly object to the Boy Scouts plan, believing the name change marginalizes women.
Why do the Girl Scouts have such a negative view of the Boy Scouts’ affirmation of girl empowerment?
The Girls Scouts find the Boy Scout’s announcement offensive because it denies the beauty of femininity. Girl Scouts exists upon the presumption that girls are different than boys. According to the Girl Scouts, “only Girl Scouts has the expertise to give girls and young women the tools they need for success.” Kate Taylor from Business Insider noted,
“However, positioning girls joining the Boy Scouts as the ultimate triumph for feminist scouting does a massive disservice to girls. There is an opportunity to applaud an organization that centers itself around girls and women, instead of assuming that a male-centric organization is implicitly preferable.”
These statements combat the notion that men and male driven cultures should dominate feminine ideas and life. But these mild expressions of feminism make are founded upon the presumptions that men and women are biologically different, and that women should be celebrated for diverging from masculine norms.
However, the historical and biological definition of gender that shaped the Girl Scouts has been abandoned by America’s cultural elite with the arrival of the homosexual movement and the transgender movement. Today, those who feel they are male are deemed by society to be male regardless of their birth-certificate; and those who identify as female are proclaimed to be female regardless of their chromosome makeup. If gender can be changed as quickly as one changes a t-shirt, gender becomes a meaningless distinction. He who was a boy today could be a girl tomorrow. Since gender is a social construct created apart nature, the terms ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ can be reduced to obsolete expressions from archaic cultures that no longer shape modern thought. Consequently, the need for cultural institutions that serve just boys or just girls disappears. Children and adults simply are. They don’t need Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; they just need Scouts.
The conflict between the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts is much bigger than scouting. It reveals the limits of the sexual revolution. The revolution cannot both deny biological gender and meaningfully affirm the beauty and strength of femininity (or masculinity for that matter). Either girls exist in nature and benefit from groups like Girl Scout, or girls don’t exist in nature and don’t need their own groups. How you answer the gender question will determine whether or not you applaud or deride the Boy Scouts for extending the olive branch to girls.
The Christian Response
Thankfully, Christians have no such dilemma. We can affirm science and happily proclaim that two gender exists. God created us male and female. Boys and girls come into the world as boy and girls. Jesus affirmed that marriage was between a man and a woman (Matt 19:3-6). The Bible does not abolish the two genders. It affirms the existence of biological men and women.
And gender is not a matter of power. According to the Scriptures both men and women are created in the image of God. Both equally picture the divine creator. Yet the genders are distinct. The male and female sexual anatomy have several irreconcilable and enjoyable differences. Men and women have different strengths and abilities. Yet, men and women thrive in unity. They thrive in marriage where the strengths of the man complement the woman and where the strengths of the woman complement the man. Marriage is beautiful because it unites men and women by celebrating their complementary differences.
Christians can and should celebrate the difference between men and women. We have plenty of room to have gender-based organizations within Christendom. Christians deny the idea that girls have to be boys or do boy things to thrive in society. But they arrive at this conclusion by affirming the existence of biological gender. If biological gender exists, then girls do not need to be Boy Scouts and boys do not need to be in Girl Scouts even if they feel more feminine than male. Christians have an answer to the Scouting dilemma. The secular elites do not.
Because we have answers to these difficult questions, we should lovingly share them. We should not retreat from the world fearing what people will think or fearing that talking to the gay couple at McDonald’s will make us icky. We have truth. We have the loving truth that Jesus Christ has died to save sinners which guides all of life.. And we should share the truth with our hurting world. Dr. Albert Mohler rightful notes,
America’s post-Christian culture is filled with people who believe that they have heard too much from the Christian church – too much judgment, too much moralism, too much intolerance. The New Testament, however, tell us that the world around us has seen and heard far too little authentic Christianity.
We truly have something amazing to offer a culture that struggles to determine if girls should be allowed to join Boy Scouts. Shouldn’t we be desire to loving converse with our confused world?
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