Even without LDS church, Scouts remains best program to prepare all youth for real world
The video shows a young woman leaving a Scout camp for the last time. She progresses through the stages of life: acceptance to college, giving the eulogy at her dad’s funeral, her first job, having a baby. Along the way, you watch as she changes a flat tire on a remote country road, goes camping with friends (starting the campfire herself), helps an amputee walk for the first time, volunteers with children. In the end, she sends her own son off to the same Scout camp she went to.
I’ve watched this video at least a couple dozen times, and I tear up. Every. Single. Time.
For me, this video, which is from Scouts in the United Kingdom, is the embodiment of what I embraced when Boy Scouts of America launched Scouts BSA, a more inclusive program, and allowed girls to participate.
I’ve been involved in Scouts for 10 years, when my older son Luke joined Cub Scouts in the second grade. For the next four-and-a-half years, my wife and I held a den meeting in our house every week, hosting a group of boys with a program that included an education portion, a skills portion, a game and, of course, a snack. It was truly one of the greatest and most gratifying experiences of my life to watch these boys grow up, learn and have fun, one week at a time.
The next stage in Boy Scouts included overnight campouts, merit badges, summer camps, and eventually rugged backcountry backpacking treks and 75-mile canoe trips. These boys became young men. My older son, Luke, has thrived in Scouts, becoming an Eagle Scout. My younger son, Robert, joined Scouts and reached First Class. Among my greatest memories is going on campouts with both of my sons.
When Boy Scouts of America announced that it would allow gay Scouts and gay Scout leaders, I welcomed it, because I want everyone to experience the joys and benefits of Scouts. When Boy Scouts of America announced it was launching Scouts BSA and welcoming girls to join, I celebrated — again, because I want everyone who wants to join Scouts to have the same experience my sons and I have had.
Then I saw that video, and that is it for me in a nutshell.
I’ve had the privilege of teaching knots and lashings to the dozen or so girls who make up Troop 100’s girls troop, and I’ve been on a few backpacking trips with many of them. What I see in them, and what they’re learning and accomplishing, are the same things I saw in my own sons and what they were able to accomplish with Scouts — leadership, self-reliance, kindness, responsibility and so much more.
That’s why I was sad to read the comments last week by a high-ranking leader with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who said the church severed its centurylong tie with the Boy Scouts of America because the organization made changes that pushed it away from the church.
“The reality there is we didn’t really leave them; they kind of left us,” said 91-year-old M. Russell Ballard, a member of a top governing panel of the church called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “The direction they were going was not consistent to what we feel our youth need to have ... to survive in the world that lies ahead for them.”
I’m sad because I think nothing could be further from the truth. Scouts, more than just about any program I know, prepares youth to survive in the world that lies ahead of them. That world that lies ahead of them includes women, people of different faiths, people of different sexual orientation.
I’m also sad because we in Scouts have been told that the changes made to the Scouts program had nothing to do with the church’s position to leave Scouts.
As the church prepares to formally remove itself from the Scouts BSA program in December, those who continue to believe in the mission will pick up the mantle, knowing that we are losing some great people who have volunteered countless hours to training sessions, camps, jamborees and other events.
Community troops, those not affiliated with the LDS church, still stand at the ready to accept all members, including our good friends in the LDS church.
A few years ago at a county fair, I ran into a family who were members of the LDS church. I asked the grandfather if he thought the church would leave Scouts. He said he didn’t think so, noting that he was an Eagle Scout, his son was an Eagle Scout, his grandsons were all Eagle Scouts, and he wanted to see his great-grandsons become Eagle Scouts.
That means something and it will continue to mean something, whether that Eagle Scout is gay, straight, boy or girl. An Eagle Scout is an Eagle Scout. A Scout is a Scout. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
And that still means something.
