Mormons' Breakup With Boy Scouts Is a Disappointment
Two famously polite organizations couldn't make a compromise work as they evolved.
End of an era.
Photographer: George Frey/Getty Images
Don’t be fooled by the superficially amicable split between the Boy Scouts of America and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The breakup, in fact, reflects a long festering period of incompatibility and will have consequences for both institutions and for the possibility of respectful disagreements in our federal republic.
The immediate impetus for the divorce might seem to be the decision by the Boy Scouts to rename itself “Scouts BSA” in recognition of the fact that girls may now participate in its activities. This development, however, is just part of the evolution of scouting, the most American of institutions, to reflect contemporary values of inclusion along the lines of sex, gender and sexuality. As late as 2000 the Boy Scouts won from the U.S. Supreme Court the right to exclude openly gay scout leaders. But as the gay-rights movement advanced, the Scouts’ position softened. In 2015, just after the Supreme Court’s landmark gay-marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, the Scouts officially ended this ban. The opening to girls, announced last year, similarly expresses the gradual weakening of gender binarism.