Sameness versus Equality

David Carlin: Girls in the Boy Scouts? Another step towards one of the goals of “progressivism”: abolishing the differences between males and females.  

I see that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has decided to allow girls to become members. This, I submit, is a momentous development in the great American culture war, as was the BSA decision a year or two ago to allow openly gay men to be scoutmasters. I have no inside information regarding the BSA decision-making process, but I think it’s not hard to figure out for anybody who (like me) has been paying attention to the culture war for the past thirty years or so.  Here’s what I think happened.

(1) There has been a decline in BSA membership in recent years.

(2) This decline is partly the result of the introduction of openly gay scoutmasters, for this led many parents, especially Christian parents, to be skeptical of the moral soundness of the BSA.

(3) The BSA decided that this decline in numbers could be stopped and even reversed by allowing girls to become members.

(4) The executive leadership of the BSA was pressured to move in this direction by many of its big corporate sponsors, who earlier pressured the BSA to admit gay scoutmasters.

I don’t know what the top executives at the BSA get paid, but I’m willing to place a wager on two things: first, that they get paid pretty well; and second, that their pay is heavily dependent on contributions from big corporate sponsors.  Therefore they don’t like to displease their big corporate sponsors, and they are pretty good convincing themselves that what the big sponsors want is, when you really think about it, good for the BSA.  Most of us are pretty good at this kind of thing – convincing ourselves that what is for our personal advantage is also good for the world.

Click here to read the rest of Professor Carlin’s column . . .

David Carlin

David Carlin

David Carlin is professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

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