Scouting and gender politics

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Earlier this week, the Boy Scouts of America organization announced it would allow girls who identify as boys to participate in its boys-only programs. In the past three years, the group has allowed both homosexual adults and young men to join as Scouts and leaders.

Up to Monday night, the Scouts required parents to show birth certificates to verify their child’s gender. Now, the Scouts will accept whatever gender parents list on the application forms.

The Boy Scouts official statement commented the birth certificate requirement is, “no longer sufficient as communities and state laws are interpreting gender identity differently, and these laws vary widely from state to state.”

John Stonestreet said this move by the Boy Scouts proves the sexual revolution is a slippery slope.

“This is a movement that cannot be satisfied,” Stonestreet said. “In the early days, it had to do with roles, and there were actually some important corrections that needed to be made. But now it’s essentially that sexual autonomy becomes autonomy from reality itself.”

The victims of the sexual revolution are often children. By encouraging kids to deny biological reality, parents are “allowing their confusion, their struggles, to become the source of reality. In any other situation, we would say, ‘Let’s help you.’ Instead we’re saying, ‘Let’s enable you,’” he said, clarifying that he was not talking about rare cases of people born with ambiguous genitalia.

In the past, Boy Scouts served to teach young men important lessons about their roles in society.

“Without the Boy Scouts, this is a big loss for society,” Stonestreet said, calling on the church to address the gap and meet the new need.

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Feb. 3 edition of The World and Everything in It.