.... wait, what? Next are you gonna tell me that the "cocksucking" badge I got from that one scoutmaster is fake?

Sure, when you were a kid, yeah. They got a badge now for safe cylinder extraction.

Your troop didnt teach you how to lash a table together using just your penis? Maybe that was just for Order of the Arrow...

Obviously you didn't take the fast track program.

Not even the knot tying badge? I was duped!

/s

Hey! Whoa! That's not true.....

.......everyone implicated in the Epstein files wanted this war.

Doesn't the SecDef have more important things to do right now?

More important than thinking about children’s genitals?

He’s in the GOP. So no.

On the one hand, yes, but on the other, he doesn’t exactly have the skillset to run any department let alone the DoD(W)

Chatgpt is doing the job now so he can focus on culture wars

Ah, the SecDef doesn't actually fight a war. He just supports starting one. And then like all richwhitemen in the USA have done, let a whole bunch of impressionable young people do the fighting and dying for him.

Ask how I know!

Eagle scout here as well. I second this. When I was in scouting it was still boy scouts and I was always a bit bothered by the exclusions. So happy to see that the organization is now inclusive and standing by their beliefs.

Now just to get religion out of scouting...

Almost made Eagle Scout here. Would absolutely encourage people to join*. There is almost no other organization where you can learn cooking, first aid, environmental science, and many other cool and useful skills that I can think of. At least not for teens. There are definitely a good amount of things I learned that I have kept with me, even if I have never had to use them, especially a very important meeting we had on gun safety.

*obviously vet the troop. You absolutely don't want to join a troop with homophobes if you or your child are not straight or are trans or whatever.

Idk man. I support trans kids but I don't want to show favoritism. Why is there a list of transkids? Honest question I don't understand. dont parents sell at work and in front of stores and stuff? Would this alienate them from their peers somehow?

Maybe they'll start a new organization, not only for Trump fans, but specifically for the Youth. Where have I heard that idea before?

vet the troop carefully, but yeah, it's a good organization.

I think your local offerings can be a big factor. I grew up in scouts, loved my experience for the most part.

But talking with other people about their experiences can be a mixed bag. Each troop has its own priorities, the national Scouting organization gives troops a lot of flexibility on how they want to run their operation.

My troop, for example, was huge on outdoor activities. We had monthly camping trips, sometimes more than one a month. We did participate in organized “scouting events” as well with other troops, but that was sort of secondary.

Other troops are big on “scouting achievements” like merit badges, “scouting societies” like Order of the Arrow, medals and honors kinda thing, I felt like that would be a bit of a drag. But to each their own.

I definitely learned some pretty good skills in it, so I would personally recommend, though biased.

Learned first aid, fire starting, safe wood chopping, some decent enough regional wilderness survival skills, and had a good amount of fun along the way. Also learned gun safety in a very important meeting we had that probably should have been either a once every year meeting.

"Hegseth declare that all banana splits served to troops be gendered as male"

Yeah, I would absolutely take issue with the head of a government institution saying something like that. That is a bonkers thing to say as a public official and should invoke some kind of mental health check.

I'm aware Hegseth is just posturing for brownie points with this Scouts thing, but this kind of behavior should not be normalized. I still remember when Howard Dean lost his bid to be a presidential candidate because he got too excited during a speech.

They didn't change much, but there were changes made and not insignificant ones, and theyre using some really weasely words to mask that.

They have done away with the Citizenship in Society merit badge, which was a relatively new badge, but was also a required badge to earn eagle. This was a badge that basically focused on the importance of DEI.

They've also agreed to add a "military service" merit badge. Not a whole lot of details yet about what exactly that will entail or if it will be a required badge or not.

It also sounds like they'll be making youths register accordingly to their biological gender as opposed to the one they actually identify as, and will need to use facilities like bathrooms and share tents and such with other scouts that corresponds to that.

It's not massive changes, but it's certainly enough that you should be pissed about them. And hegseth has indicated he wants to reevaluate in a few months and likely will be pushing for even more changes.

I'm an eagle scout, I'm fucking pissed about this, it goes against all of the good values I learned from scouts for them to give into this pressure, and I'm sure that when kegsbreath comes back around in 6 months or so they'll cave even more.

I'm sending my eagle medal back in protest.

Except there's the whole "military leader threatens a private organization" thing.