Parents in the UK are up in arms because the Scouts have been caught hiring seven new Diversity & Inclusion officers. This however, is just the thin edge of the wedge. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the Scouts have gone woke and Australia is no exception.
From creating its own Diversity and Inclusion agenda with ‘Vision 2023 and Triennial Plans’, to signing up to the UN’s Women’s ‘HeForShe Movement’, which pretends to be about gender equity but is just another way of destabilising society by breaking down the relationship between the sexes, to adopting the UNs Sustainable Development Goals, Scouts Australia has drunk deeply from the well of Critical Social Justice Activism.
In 2019, it appointed a National Adviser of Diversity & Inclusion to roll out the social justice agenda. In 2021, it sent a delegation of children to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras as a Scouting activity. Other children also went to similar events in Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. It has teamed up with ANZ Bank and Reconciliation Australia to produce an online Indigenous Cultural Awareness training session, which no doubt peddles Critical Race Theory. I’m willing to be corrected I’m wrong.
Scouts Australia is an unquestioning and uncritical proponent of removing healthy body parts under the guise of so-called ‘Gender Affirming Care.’ In its 10-page manual for Scout leaders entitled ‘Supporting Gender Diverse Members in Scouting’ it rejects biological reality by stating that the words ‘‘trans’, ‘transgender’ or ‘gender diverse’ are used to describe people whose gender identity differs from the anatomical sex they are assigned at birth’ and that ‘being transgender or gender diverse is seen as part of the natural spectrum of human diversity.’
The document then goes on to explain that people can change this reality by transitioning. ‘Transition can also be known as ‘gender affirmation’ it states and may ‘include medical care such as hormone therapy, counselling and/or surgery.’ This is the message that Scout leaders will be conveying to the children in their care.
According to its own principle, ‘Scouting is non-political, in the sense that it is not involved in the struggle for power which is the subject-matter of politics, and which is usually reflected in the system of political parties.’ Scouts Australia has now aligned itself with a highly political movement which takes as axiomatic the notion that power structures dominate society and underpin all human interactions. It might well be in breach of its own constitution, which requires a non-political character from all national associations, and which is a basic characteristic of the Movement.
