As an Eagle Scout, I feel a debt to the Boy Scouts of America, but I also think the BSA abandoned its defining values by embracing transgender ideology. Both the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of the USA have embraced far-left social agendas that alienate many of the young families who form their natural constituencies. I sat down Wednesday with Patti Garibay, founder and executive director of American Heritage Girls, the leading scouting alternative to the Girl Scouts. She founded American Heritage Girls back in 1995, after she realized that the Girl Scouts were promoting homosexuality and abortion. While the Girl Scouts had begun moving in that direction during the 1970s, Garibay said, it really hit her in 1993 when the Girl Scouts removed an oath to God from the Girl Scout Promise. “Well, when you kick God out of a character-development program, what are you going to set the stone on? It’s going to be the shifting sands of cultural winds, and that can be crazy,” she said. “They have come out of the closet with this,” Garibay added. She mentioned a “Pride patch” with a “very enticing” rainbow and a “Camp Culture Code that tells campers and leaders that you have to use the proper pronouns of whoever the camp counselor might be.” “I’ll tell you, they are manipulating our kids,” she said. “I believe it’s indoctrination.” She tried to reform the Girl Scouts from within, but eventually realized she needed to start a separate organization. “Sometimes, we can’t just curse the darkness. We have to light a candle, and we’ve got to start to be part of the solution, rather than the problem,” she said. American Heritage Girls grew and grew, and it even partnered with the Boy Scouts of America from 2009 to 2013

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