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When most people think of Girl Scouts, they picture campouts and merit badges, or girl power and lifelong friendships. They always think of the slightly overpriced yet maddeningly delicious cookies.
But what they may not immediately realize is that, like most American institutions, the Girl Scouts were infected by the radical Left’s agenda decades ago. That rot has spread through the entire organization top to bottom, making it impossible to escape.
It’s frustrating to any conservative who has fond memories of joining Girl Scouts as a child and wants to share that same experience with her children and grandchildren. But the true nature of Girl Scouts becomes shockingly apparent during the month of June, which is when the scouts take an opportunity to spread lessons on LGBT pride and DEI principles.
This Pride month, it’s worth asking if you actually know what your daughter’s Girl Scout troop is doing.
Patti Garibay knows the truth about the organization better than most following years of volunteering and leading young girls. Garibay, a mom of three daughters, didn’t set out to start a competing scouting organization. She was happy to be a Girl Scout leader, where she led three troops, served as an area delegate, and helped organize new troops across northern Cincinnati. She bled green, as she puts it.
“I absolutely loved it,” she told The Daily Wire during a recent interview. “I loved the female empowerment, the leadership, the life skills, all the things that were so beautiful about Girl Scouts, patriotism, things like this.”
But that all changed in 1993 when she discovered that the organization was removing its reference to God in the Girl Scout promise. As a Christian, Garibay was upset by this, but as a volunteer, she was also alarmed. Where had the decision come from, she wondered, and why was no one informed?
“I was an area delegate,” she said. “That’s supposed to be a person that was chosen by their peers to represent and to really know what was going on in the Girl Scouts regarding governance. But yet I knew nothing about it.”
Garibay attempted to make changes by telling the public the truth about what was happening in the organization. But by 1995, she’d given up and launched American Heritage Girls.
Today, Girl Scouts USA publishes an official LGBTQ+ Pride Month fun patch program — available for Daisy scouts (kindergartners and first graders) on up. Fun patches are optional and are at the discretion of troop leaders to present.
Girls can earn a rainbow patch by completing activities including making rainbow flags “to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month,” watching documentaries on LGBTQ history “such as the Stonewall Uprising,” memorizing poetry by LGBTQ poets, reading children’s books such as “I Am Jazz” and “Love Makes a Family,” visiting the National Women’s History Museum website to study LGBTQ historical figures, and participating in the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (Glisten)’s No Name-Calling Week. The patch guide calls it an effort “to disrupt anti-LGBTQ+ harassment and bias-based bullying.”
Another suggestion is for the girls to don their uniforms and “attend an LGBTQ+ Pride celebration in June with your family or troop.”
“As a Girl Scout, even when I was a leader, I was not allowed to march in uniform for a pro-life parade,” Garibay told me. “But now they’re saying march in uniforms for your LGBTQ+ Pride Month parade.”
The patch program is national and comes straight from Girl Scouts USA. But individual councils have developed their own supplemental materials that go even further.
The Girl Scouts of the Northwestern Great Lakes, for example, maintains an official LGBTQIA+ training page for troop leaders that informs volunteers, “Asking for and using correct pronouns is a way to treat everyone with respect.”
The page also answers the question of who can participate in troops, camp, and other activities. Normal boys cannot. But the list of who is welcome includes “gender identity girl & sex assigned at birth male,” which means a male who identifies as a girl is welcome to participate in Girl Scout activities, including overnight camp.
On overnight arrangements, the council guidance is explicit: “Girl Scouts who are LGBTQ+ can share a room and all facilities with other Girl Scouts. Unless a Girl Scout states otherwise, no separate sleeping arrangements are necessary. There is no need to ‘out’ or discuss a Girl Scout’s gender identity with other youth or adults.”
As the rest of the world wakes up to the dangers of allowing men into women’s spaces, it appears Girl Scouts is still clinging firmly to the radical stances of years past. A biological male who identifies as female can share a cabin, changing area, and showers with your daughter.
It’s worth reiterating that this isn’t one woke council on the West Coast. The rules come directly from the national organization in charge of the entire operation.
The same national organization that once asked girls to promise their duty to God and country now publishes guides instructing troop leaders to familiarize themselves with Glisten terminology and celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31) and National Coming Out Day (October 11) alongside Pride Month.
The council recommends volunteers complete the Safe Zone Project, a DEI-laden, heavily pro-LGBT curriculum that includes materials called “The Genderbread Person” and “Privilege for Sale.”
And while the organization still technically permits the word “God” in the Girl Scout Promise, a substitute “in accordance with a person’s own spiritual beliefs” is explicitly allowed. As Garibay observed: “If you kick God out, you’re also going to kick out His laws and His truths and His worldview. And sure enough, that’s exactly what had happened.”
Just like in Boy Scouts, which recently rebranded to Scouting America, membership has been on the decline for decades. According to CBS News, Girl Scout membership stood at around 2.8 million in 2003. By 2021, it had fallen to just over a million, which is a 60% drop. Some of those numbers increased following the pandemic, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be.
Many parents who want their girls to experience what Girl Scouts used to be — a place to develop faith, character, life skills, and true female empowerment — are joining American Heritage Girls instead.
The organization, which operates in all 50 states and has attracted over 1 million girls since its inception, is going strong. American Heritage Girls recently launched the free e-book “Raising Godly Girls” and produces a three-times-weekly podcast and free downloadable guides on gender, identity, resilience, mental health, and, this summer, body image in direct opposition to the woke LGBT garbage the Girl Scouts are promoting.
“American Heritage Girls tells girls the truth, and girls are hungry for it,” Garibay said. “She tells girls that they’re created female on purpose, that their femininity is a gift we’re celebrating, and that God doesn’t make mistakes. We’re not pretending biology is a social construct or that we’re assigned something at birth by a doctor in a medical code. We give girls a biblical framework for their identity before someone else hands them a very different one at camp or in a classroom or at a troop meeting.”
It’s working, the founder says. “If parents don’t arm their kiddos with a solid framework, somebody else will fill that vacuum. I think we’ve seen that in so many youth organizations today.”
The Girl Scout cookies are great, but it’s impossible to ignore that they come with a heaping side of unwanted indoctrination. Conservatives should stay vigilant and not make the mistake of assuming the best parts of our childhood have remained unchanged, no matter how nostalgic it makes us.