Might as well add my two cents to this one.
I am an Eagle Scout and enjoyed scouting from Cub Scouts all the way through.
However, within the framework of the Boy Scouts, there is great latitude in how troops are operated.
The first troop I was drafted into, was essentially a paramilitary organization.
Lots of marching, standing at attention etc., in preparation for all of us heading into the service. Everybody who ran the troop was from World War II or Korea, and that’s how they wanted to run their troop.
But it was the 1970s, and we were in the middle of an unpopular war. Most of the scouts wanted no part of all of that drilling and standing at attention or polishing their brass.
I just wanted to have fun. Go camping. Enjoy the outdoors.
Do some backpacking, grow my hair long, just like every other 1970s kid.
I moved on to another troop like many other Young people that left that troop and I began to collect stuff. So now I have an extensive collection of Boy Scout things going all the way back to before when scouts were created.
I am sure that the World War II and Korean War and early Vietnam war vets that were operating our troop felt they were molding all of us into leaders of men.
But the turnover rate probably told the true story.
If it’s not fun, kids don’t stay involved.
We never touched any guns until we got to summer camp and then those of us who like to shoot had a ball
The troop had strict rules on showering using the buddy system, so apparently by the early 1970s, there was systemic anxiety over homosexuality or child abuse.
I Spent months of my life with one of the best men that I have ever known, who was at a minimum a devout bachelor but who also certainly never laid a hand on me. Nowadays people would say he was probably closeted. And I am grateful for all that I learned from him.
