The emasculation of the Boy Scouts is complete, at least according to former governor of Arkansas and noted terrible tweeter Mike Huckabee.
On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts announced they will drop the word “boy” from their name, becoming Scouts BSA, as they prepare to welcome girls to the organization starting next year. The organization has also been facing low membership numbers and bad press, two other factors that may have affected the decision to change the name.
But the move isn’t going over well with Huckabee and other conservatives.
“The emasculation of the Boy Scouts is complete,” Huckabee tweeted Thursday morning. “Old Scout oath ‘Be Prepared.’ New oath ‘Be Pretty.'”
The emasculation of the Boy Scouts is complete. Old Scout oath “Be Prepared.” New oath “Be Pretty” https://t.co/YOSl2tl5vx
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) May 3, 2018
Huckabee also shared a video of an earlier appearance on Fox News in which he derided the name change.
“I think the Boy Scouts are effectively dead,” Huckabee said. “Look, I don’t think a lot of people care whether girls have the opportunity to do some of the same thing boys do, but there’s always been a reason that these activities were conducted separately by the genders.”
"I think the Boy Scouts are effectively dead." —@GovMikeHuckabee on the @boyscouts dropping the word "Boy" from their name https://t.co/8NwZ8u2pQX #TheStory pic.twitter.com/vmZdmxRM3N
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 3, 2018
Boys and girls being separated for scouting activities, according to Huckabee, is important for developing an identity and giving young people “something to grow into.”
“I know this will come as a real shock to a lot of modern people, but there really is a difference between boys and girls and the way they think and grow up,” he said.
To her credit, the Fox News host pushed back, saying that she doesn’t have any problem with the name change and that the change is may actually be most harmful to the Girl Scouts, who feel that the change may harm their organization.
The host also noted that in Scouts BSA, boys and girls will eventually be separated by gender again as they get older, something Huckabee also pushed back against.
“When you say they’re going to back to gender separation when they’re older, that seems to me the most logical time when there wouldn’t be gender separation,” he said.
The host pointed out that perhaps camping together is the reason the scouts want to separate boys and girls at high school age, at which point Huckabee chuckled before going back to his “the Boy Scouts are dead” point.
“I don’t think it’s going to cause the membership to go up,” he said. “I don’t think this is going to cause a lot of parents to say, ‘Gee, that’s just what I was hoping for.'”
Conservative blogger Matt Walsh lodged similar complaints on Fox & Friends Thursday morning.
.@MattWalshBlog: The Boy Scouts were an iconic organization that have destroyed themselves bending to the whims of the PC mob. This is a truth that upsets people these days, but boys are different than girls. pic.twitter.com/9g5fhc8S1k
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) May 3, 2018
“This is a curriculum for boys, and boys are different than girls,” he said. “This is a truth that upsets people these days, because any obvious truth does. Boys are different than girls.”
If people are concerned about the moral formation of boys and “making boys into men,” Walsh said, “then you need to separate them from girls.”
The name change, although a very small change, is, according to Walsh, a very big deal and it should be very upsetting to see an “iconic” organization destroying itself by “bending to the whims of the PC leftist mob.”