*A group of girls in Santa Rosa, California have found the Girl Scouts of America to be lacking in providing the types of experiences they’d like to have. Instead of working to change the group’s curriculum, they’ve opted to petition the Boy Scouts to let them in.
“I want to be a Boy Scout,” said Allie Westover, 13. She made the statement to a panel of male representatives as she dropped off her scout application, as did her sister, Skyler, and three friends, Ella Jacobs, Daphne Mortenson and Taylor Alcozer.
They’ve named themselves the Unicorns and want to formally join the Boy Scouts of America, a organization that has positioned themselves as a male-only club since 1910. None of the girls want to be boys — they just want to learn and play like them.
“Because we’re girls we can’t participate with boys?” said Ella, 10. “When we get into the real world, we’re going to have to work with other people who are, like, not just girls.”
Ella makes a compelling case. But she and her friends face an uphill battle. For one thing Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination by sex, exempts the Boy Scouts and allows them to exclude girl members.
Many have preceded the Unicorns in petitioning the Boy Scouts to admit girls, going back to the 1970s. All prior efforts have failed. “The conflict about admitting girls goes back even further than the conflict over admitting gays,” said Richard Ellis, a professor of politics at Willamette University and the author of the book “Judging the Boy Scouts of America.”
I’m on the fence on this one.
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