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The Ethical Dilemma of Scouting

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Robin Pfeifer distinctly remembers the date: Feb. 1, 2019. It was the day the Boy Scouts of America officially became Scouts BSA, and opened its ranks to both boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 17. Pfeifer joined that same day. They had been eager to be a part of the rebranded BSA since the organization announced it would allow girls’ troops back in 2017. In full support of the decision, their mother, Sonja Kueppers, founded a girls’ troop for Pfeifer to join: Troop 1123. Now they just needed an organization to charter them.

A chartering organization agrees to support a troop, sometimes financially, but not always. Importantly, the organization’s “objectives, mission, and methodologies” need to comply with BSA and follow scouting rules.

Kueppers initially asked Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, but the church declined. They already had a Girl Scout troop, church leaders said. Next on the list was Silver Spring’s Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, which agreed to charter Troop 1123 for a short time, but after a few months, Pfeifer says, the boys’ troop began organizing activities without the girls. 

“We wanted it to be more together, especially because we have a lot of nonbinary scouts,” Pfeifer says. “We didn’t want it to be a whole separate thing where we have a girls’ troop and a boys’ troop and then the nonbinary people are like, ‘oh, we have to pick.’” So the search continued.

Later that year, the troop approached the Washington Ethical Society, an organization the Pfeifers and other troop members were already part of, and it was a near perfect match—two entities seeking to carve out an alternative and more inclusive space in traditionally exclusive arenas.

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