DAILY WIRE: I’m An Eagle Scout — And For The First Time In Years, I’m Hopeful Thanks To Hegseth
One day before the Trump administration ceased negotiations with the Iranian regime in Tehran, Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth offered an ultimatum to another entity, Scouting America, in hopes of avoiding a conflict. Hegseth announced that the Pentagon was prepared to use its leverage to force what was formerly the Boy Scouts of America to remove DEI from its programming, ensure biological sex as the basis for participation in its boy and girl tracks, and institute some pro-military reforms including a new merit badge and waving fees for service members’ children. Scouting America opted for peace.
I’m an Eagle Scout and currently serve as an assistant scoutmaster and chaplain for a troop in Virginia, and I see every week where Scouts BSA has gone astray since I was a teenager. But I’m also the proud dad of a teenage girl working on her own Eagle.
Amid all that contradiction, I couldn’t be happier about Hegseth’s strong-arm tactics.
In addition to my history with Scouts, I’m a Christian and a conservative. I get a lot of flak for being involved in Scouts BSA at all, to say nothing of having a daughter in the program. Let’s start there and then address the DEI insanity that Hegseth just helped wipe out.
“Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” This is what Scouting has always been about. I was raised on those virtues as a Scout. When I became a “girl dad” — father to what we used to call a “tomboy” — she wanted to be in Boy Scouts from the first moment she found my BSA uniform in the bedroom closet.
Of course, that wasn’t an option until 2017 when the Boy Scouts announced their intent to rebrand as Scouts BSA and allow for girl-only troops. Joining back up was a no-brainer for me, and enrolling my daughter was exciting.
I preferred that she adopt the ethics of BSA rather than those of the Girl Scouts. It’s nothing against the Girl Scouts, but raising a tomboy in the 2010s demanded extra caution from any parent. The tidal wave of gender ideology that drowned America during the Biden years was just beginning to swell in 2018 when we were checking out Scout troops to join. We found one that had a large, well-established program just for girls — with boys in their own part of the building doing separate activities.