Girl Scouts Of America Is Taking A HUGE Step Towards Equality

The Girl Scouts of America allows all girls to become scouts — including young transgender women. The policy, which has prompted a conservative backlash, seems to have been added recently to the Scouts' official handbook, but the organization insists it's nothing new. "Our mission to build ‘girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place’ extends to all girls," GSA's Andrea Bastiani Archibald wrote R29 in an email. "If a girl is recognized by her family, school and community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe." This development has ignited the conservative right into an outrage. Last Friday, talk-radio host Michael Savage said, “Girl Scouts welcome cross-dressing boys into their ranks,” along with other inflammatory remarks on his show The Savage Nation. Worse yet, the American Family Association (AFA) is organizing a petition against the new inclusive rule, demanding that the GSA abolish it immediately.  “This policy undermines the trust that parents place in the GSA’s leadership to make wise decisions and the obligation the GSA has to protect their daughters,” the petition reads, later calling young boys “pawns in the culture war and destroy this organization in the process of advancing their social agenda.”  Despite the resistance from the right, the Girl Scouts aren’t backing down. The day after the AFA petition went live, Dr. Archibald reasserted the GSA's stance to include all girls. “As we face a complex and rapidly changing 21st century, our nation needs all girls to reach their full potential, which has been our focus for more than 103 years,” she said. Keep in mind, when 7-year-old transgender child Bobby Montoya joined a Colorado Girl Scouts troop in 2012, a conservative group launched an effort to boycott cookie purchases in protest. And, just as they did three years ago, GSA continue holding strong. Hopefully, Boy Scouts Of America will be next in line. Although BSA allows gay members, it still bans gay adults and has no policy for trans kids. Take that, plus the cookies, and it looks like Girl Scouts 2, Boy Scouts 0.