The Boy Scouts of America Turns 100

On February 8, 2010 the Boy Scouts of America will turn 100. Over 112 million boys have enlisted into the Boy Scouts since its beginning. The Boy Scouts of America have had its share of controversy over the past few years but the organization still seems to be maintaining its ground. Not as strong as it once was, the Boy Scouts still stand by their same philosophy that they are building young men of character to serve God and country.

Amidst allegations of over inflated membership rolls to boost contributions, sexual abuse between Scout leaders and Boy Scout of America officials and perhaps the biggest scandal happened when the BSA won a court settlement stating that they could exclude gays from their membership have aided in the decline of the Boy Scouts. After the 2000 settlement excluding gays, many of the Scouts sponsors pulled their pledges of contributions. Atheists have also been excluded from the Boy Scouts as it totally goes against their oath to God.

Due to the exclusions of gays and atheists, many local governments and charities have pulled support for fear of being drawn into violations of anti-discrimination codes. This has definitely hurt the visibility of the once popular Boy Scouts. I remember as a young girl, I was a Brownie, my brothers were Boy Scouts and so was almost every other boy in the block. Once you turned 7 there was a right to passage into Cub Scouts. My mother was even the den mother when my brothers were Scouts. It was just the thing you did back in the 50s and it was an honor to be a scout. Back then though we did not have so many extracurricular after school activities like the children do today. So this was thought of as being something special to do after school.

Will the Boy Scouts of America survive another 100 years?

It is highly unlikely that the Boy Scouts of America will survive. The main sponsors of the organization are the Mormon, United Methodists and Roman Catholic churches. Although they have considerable amounts of money, it isn't enough of the right visibility the BSA needs. Plus with all the extracurricular after school activities now available to young people, most of the children and parents chose to stay with school programs. With both parents working, finding enough parents to volunteer time for scouting has also hampered opening new chapters.

Source: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/default.aspx