Maybe I would have stayed in the Boy Scouts if they had decided to let girls in 70 years earlier.
But maybe not. As I recall, I gave up on the Scouts before my interest in the opposite sex peaked.
Don’t recall why I never advanced beyond tenderfoot. It may have been that the newly formed troop at my small country church fizzled out for lack of leadership or participation.
So I’m not exactly an expert on Scouting, although I’ve always admired the organization.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion on the Boy Scouts of America’s recent decision to “welcome girls into its iconic Cub Scout program and to deliver a Scouting program for older girls that will enable them to advance and earn the highest rank of Eagle Scout.”
I’m agin it, not that my view on the subject will have any bearing on it .
So is my wife Virgie who was once a Girl Scout leader. One of her concerns is camping accommodations. Better to keep young girls and boys separate in some of those settings, she says.
The Girl Scouts of the USA, which could lose members due to the Boy Scouts welcoming girls, is understandably opposed to the move. “The need for female leadership has never been clearer or more urgent than it is today—and only Girl Scouts has the expertise to give girls and young women the tools they need for success,” the Girl Scouts said in a statement.
This seems to me to be another step in trying to diminish gender lines, and I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.
But I’ll admit to being old and old-fashioned. So let me mention a few other old fogey ideas:
• I don’t agree with sports figures, or anyone else, who refuse to stand for the National Anthem and show proper respect for the United States flag. There are other ways to call attention to whatever injustices one may perceive.
Speaking of sports, I have an issue with some sports writers who put too much emphasis on featurizing their game stories instead of reporting the facts clearly and precisely.
A report on a high school game in the state’s largest newspaper recently didn’t give the score of the game until the ninth paragraph and after the story had been continued from one page to another.
The same weekend, though, I scanned the Enterprise-Journal and noted that the scores of the games were high up in all its high school coverage, usually in the first paragraph as they should be. My congratulations to E-J sports editor Jordan Arceneaux.
• I disagree with pulling good and instructive books, like “To Kill A Mockingbird” out of classrooms because someone, who probably never read the book or saw the movie, was offended by the “N” word which is frequently used by some who are offended by its use by others.
Greenwood Commonwealth editor Tim Kalich, commenting on the decision by the Biloxi School District, correctly noted that Author Harper Lee’s use of the racial epithet is not gratuitous but accurately reflects the way most white Southerners talked at the time in which the story is cast.
As Tim notes, the book is actually a rebuttal of racial prejudices and the injustices that such bigotry breeds.
• Finally, not being of Italian-American heritage, Columbus Day isn’t my favorite holiday. But I’m not for replacing it with “Indigenous Peoples Day” as they are in doing in some localities.
The criticism of Christopher Columbus, who sailed across the ocean and landed in the Americas in 1492, is that he was brutal in his treatment of the people who were already on this continent.
So were many of the pioneers and settlers who displaced the Native Americans in the West.
Without a doubt the indigenous people of the Americas got a raw deal, but those of us who live in America now are reaping the benefits of the civilization brought by those who followed Columbus.
