Brad Davidson. the father of two Eagle Scouts and a silver award Girl Scout, wrote this Comment of the Day to defend the re-named Boy Scouts of America. now “Scouting America,” from a critical post here from May, 2024. Despite the criticism, I was very pleased to see his passionate, well-argued rebuttal. As I noted in the original essay, Jack Marshall Sr. regarded the organization as his savior, because the Boy Scouts gave him structure and a support network when he was a fatherless only-child growing up in Kentucky during the Depression. Dad would have been crushed if he had lived long enough to watch the Bot Scouts staggering under the terrible publicity it suffered in the wake of its child molestation scandal and the subsequent lawsuits that drove it into bankruptcy.
Since Brad mentions it more than once, I must pause briefly to to defend my use of the term “rot” to describe the Scouts ( I never used the terms “ethics rot,” “ethical tot” or “moral rot.”) I hold that any organization that has many episodes of adults in authority criminally molesting children under its auspices—and the Scouts had almost 93,000 claims across all 50 states and the District of Columbia when the organization went into Chapter 11—by definition has allowed its culture to fall apart in metaphorical chunks. The Boy Scouts induced families to entrust its sons to their care, and then did not adequately execute that care. Such widespread criminal activity cannot exist without an organization’s leadership engaging in contrived ignorance. The fact that other organizations were equally negligent is not a defense.
Here is Brad Davidson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “More Re-Branding Ethics: ‘“’What is This ‘Boy Scouts’ of Which You Speak?’” I combined his comment on EA with a subsequent email he sent me off-site, with his permission.
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You have made some claims about Scouting that are just that–claims, not based in reality. “Decades of ethical rot” is a claim, and I see no proof, other than you hate the name change.
I was a Cub Scout and then a Boy Scout (and then Scouts BSA) leader for 12 years, and have 2 sons who are Eagle Scouts. My daughter was in Girl Scouts, and I was a leader for that group as well but took a back seat to two women who really ran the group. My role was more of the “get ’em outdoors” role for the girls.
First, I am not sure what the “ethical rot” entails. Was it un-banning homosexual scoutmasters and scouts? Scouting is not the place for sexual education nor sexual encounters; we don’t care what you do outside of scouting, provided it is legal and has no influence on your scouting experience. This is the real world, scouting goes up to 18, and there are times when boys or adults get in legal trouble, and we had to make a judgement call–but again, if it involved sex, other than criminal sexual activity, none of it is our business. “Morally straight” gives us an opportunity to talk about personal relationships in general, but we are guys who take kids camping, not sexual educators.
Second, GSA and BSA are not related organizations. They actually compete, and from my point of view, don’t like each other. Scouting America (the new name) is part of an international scouting movement; it was not founded here in America, nor is it headquartered here. The global scout movement is overwhelmingly co-ed. We were one of the ONLY scouting organizations that had limits on female participation. We ended this in large part because, frankly, it’s hard for families to join and have the girls not involved. My daughter did a LOT of homework at scout meetings, and wished she could have gone camping instead of selling cookies.
Ethics Alarms 