Nine years ago, the Boy Scouts of America announced that it would begin accepting transgender youth into the program. In 2018, it opened its doors to girls, and in 2024, it rebranded as Scouting America. Transgender scouts were welcomed to participate alongside peers matching their gender identity, and the organization built out initiatives to be inclusive to people of all identities and creeds. That all came to a crashing halt today, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the organization would be dropping all diversity initiatives, putting more emphasis on faith, and forcibly outing and segregating transgender scouts from their peers—forcing them to only be acknowledged by their assigned sex at birth and segregating them from peers of their gender.
“After 2012, however, the Boy Scouts lost their way and a once great organization became gravely wounded. Diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, crept in. The name was changed to Scouting America. Girls were accepted. The focus on God as the ruler of the universe was watered down to include openness to humanism and earth-centered pagan religions... They even welcomed the destructive myth of gender fluidity and transgenderism to infiltrate their membership,” Hegseth said in a video posted to Twitter.
He then announced major changes at the organization, including new anti-transgender policies. “Scouting America has agreed to comply immediately with the provisions of executive order 14173. This includes reviewing and replacing politicized, divisive, and discriminatory language throughout the organization, programs, and all publications. No more DEI. Zero,” Hegseth said. “The Citizen in Society merit badge that encouraged scouts to explore diversity, equity, inclusion, and identity... that badge has been discontinued. Third, Scouting America will modify its policy to make clear that membership will be based solely on biological sex at birth and not gender identity. That means that the application, any application, will have only two sex designations, male and female, and the application must match the applicant’s birth certificate. Scouting will also make clear that biological boys and girls will not be allowed to occupy or share intimate spaces together, toilets, showers, tents, anywhere like that.”
He closed by saying that he wished Scouting America would return to not allowing girls in the program. “Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts, as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men. Maybe someday.”
See the full video here:
The decision, if true, is devastating for transgender scouts. Trans boys who have been participating in boy troops—some for years—may be immediately removed and placed in girl troops, segregated from their friends and fellow scouts. Trans girls in girl troops may face the same fate, forced into troops matching their assigned sex at birth rather than their identity. Any transgender person who joins the scouts could be forcibly outed by the policy, as their assigned sex at birth will dictate their placement. The policy effectively reverses a precedent the organization set in 2017, when it began accepting transgender scouts after an eight-year-old trans boy in New Jersey was kicked out of his Cub Scout pack. That decision made the Boy Scouts one of the largest youth organizations in the country to welcome transgender members. The organization went even further in subsequent years, creating the Citizenship in Society merit badge and launching ArrowPride, its first official LGBTQ+ affinity space for scouts at national events. All of that has now reportedly been dismantled at the Pentagon's direction.
Forced outing is a harmful practice. The Trevor Project reports that LGBTQ+ youth in environments with forced outing and other anti-trans policies report significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts. By requiring that a transgender scout's assigned sex at birth determine their troop placement, Scouting America's new policy functionally outs every trans scout to their entire troop and their troop leaders. Many transgender youth are "stealth," living as their gender identity without anyone knowing. Many of these transgender teens may also be on hormone therapy, likewise giving them the appearance of their gender identity as well. Forcing them to out themselves and sticking them with a troop that doesn't match their gender identity is cruel.
Scouting America's own press release made no mention of the new policy. Instead, it leads with registration fee waivers for military families and the introduction of a new Military Service merit badge, burying what would be the most consequential changes to the organization's membership policies towards LGBTQ+ people in nearly a decade. The organization that once stood up for the eight-year-old trans boy whose expulsion sparked a national policy change couldn't even bring itself to say the word "transgender" in its own announcement.
Scouting America has yet to confirm with a press outlet exactly how transgender youth will be treated and how the policy will be enforced. EITM will continue to report as specific changes are released.
Update: In a statement to the Associated Press, Scouting America CEO Roger Krone claimed that the organization's policies toward transgender scouts have not changed, and that trans scouts were always treated as their assigned sex at birth on applications. He did not offer clarity on how that was reviewed or enforced. This is clear as mud. If nothing has changed, then what exactly did Scouting America agree to in the signed MOU referenced which it supposedly signed which agrees to segregation by assigned sex at birth?
Aren't the Scouts a private organization? Why does Kegsbreath get to determine its policies?
This is so heartbreaking. My scout troop was relatively progressive and tolerated queerness among the boys* back when official policies were more conservative. My time in the scouts was very valuable to becoming the person I am today. I hope and pray that council and local troop leadership has the wherewithal to spare their scouts of this humiliation.