How does an organization like the Boy Scouts of America restore trust after betraying its values? Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has given the Boy Scouts a chance, but it remains unclear whether the historic organization will take it.
Fickle human hearts often lead us to sully our integrity. The biblical history of Israel presents a recurring pattern: God’s chosen people reject him to worship idols, so he delivers them into the hands of their enemies. Only when they cry out to God does he rescue them, restoring their integrity as God’s people, before the cycle repeats.
The external motivation of God’s judgment leads them to repent, but is the repentance genuine?
Something similar is happening with Scouting America, the institution that has rejected its original name, the Boy Scouts.
After standing firm for traditional values in the 1990s by rejecting the pressure to admit openly homosexual boys—and winning at the Supreme Court—the Boy Scouts caved on homosexuality in 2013 and 2015, and then embraced transgender ideology in 2017.
In 2020, it announced solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and introduced a merit badge celebrating “diversity and inclusion,” now mandatory for the rank of Eagle Scout. As an Eagle Scout, I felt utterly betrayed.
The Boy Scout Betrayal
It’s hard to grasp the full extent of this betrayal. The Boy Scouts of America, founded in 1910 to teach young men survival skills, foster friendships, and train boys to become citizens and leaders, has helped form many of America’s heroes, including Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Rowe.
The Scout Oath runs, “On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
The Scout Law states, “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”
These values aren’t inherently conservative or liberal. They set a moral standard for honesty and integrity.
In recent years, however, the Left has warped basic words to advocate radical social positions, and its ideology corrupted the Boy Scouts.
Transgender ideology represents a fundamental betrayal of the pledge to be trustworthy and reverent. What is less trustworthy than promoting the lie that a boy can become a girl and vice versa? What is less reverent than saying God made a mistake when he created each person male and female, and a person’s supposed internal sense of gender justifies Frankensteinian “treatments” to force their male or female body to resemble that of the opposite sex?
As for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” it sounds noble, but it often cloaks the Marxist poison of critical race theory, which teaches that America is systemically racist such that only a radical transformation akin to a revolution can bring about justice. This ideology teaches that white people are inherently racist and oppressive, while black people are inherently oppressed.
Adopted in the middle of the Black Lives Matter riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the pro-DEI merit badge sent the message that the Boy Scouts was aligning with the divisive racial movement inspiring violence on the streets, rather than the men and women in uniform whom the movement demonized.
Hegseth’s Wake Up Call
Last year, Hegseth drew a line in the sand. The Boy Scouts, and now Scouting America, enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the U.S. military, and President Donald Trump had rightly declared that transgender ideology and DEI are antithetical to his administration’s priorities and the good of America.
If Scouting America wanted to maintain its benefits with the U.S. military, it needed to return to its core values.
That pressure paid off. Hegseth announced that Scouting America agreed to review and replace DEI language; to revoke the “Citizen in Society” merit badge that encouraged DEI and asked scouts to engage in activism; and to allow membership based only on biological sex, not gender identity.
External pressure should not have been necessary to deliver these concessions—they represent a return to the politically neutral position the Boy Scouts of America had historically prided itself on.
Scouting America released its own statement, noting that its moves reinforce its “commitment to scouting’s foundational ideas: leadership, character, duty to God, duty to country and service.” The group noted that it would not revert to its original name, because girl troops have played a role since the 1960s.
Scouting America needs to not just celebrate the new policies, but explain what went wrong, and hold the leadership accountable.
The organization’s president, Roger Krone, has served as chief scout executive since November 2023. Before that, he served as the CEO of Leidos from 2014 to 2023. During that time, Leidos received a perfect 100% score with the LGBTQ activist group the Human Rights Campaign. Krone needs to address this and explain why he won’t keep advocating transgender ideology at the Boy Scouts—or he needs to step down.
The rejection of DEI and transgender ideology represents a step in the right direction, but alienated conservatives need to see more. It will take time for Scouting America to reverse the serious damage it did to its own honor.
Like God’s judgment on Israel, Hegseth’s pressure campaign represents a call for the Boy Scouts to return to its original mission and restore its integrity. It may feel like punishment at first, but it will help restore the organization in the long run.