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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3691 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

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Probably late for it, but a truly small scale question- there’s lots of youth organizations in the USA which either imply conservatism or are conservative coded(Boy Scouts, 4H, etc) and which are household names, but are there progressive equivalents? I can’t think of any- ‘youth group’, unmodified, seems to imply church contexts to me, and ‘youth sports’ seem apolitical to possibly mildly conservative. The liberal version of whatever is usually not a household name, either.

Is this just a difference in TFR playing out, or is it an example of Cthulhu swimming right?

Isn't it the case that a lot of the legacy youth orgs have, whatever their past reputation, themselves been drifting left over time? The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts in particular are no longer considered safe by a lot of more conservative religious people (and it's not just about allowing gay scouts) and several more explicitly conservative Christian (Protestant, of course...) versions are, at least judging from some families I know, gaining in popularity because of this.

Yeah, they're also basically dead at this point. The BSA is less than half the size it was 5 years ago.

The Girl Scouts have their own issues relating to being a giant train wreck that doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing. The Boy Scouts have gotten more liberal compared to where they were in 2000, but more conservative relative to the culture as a whole- or so it seems.

A lot of that was because of the Mormons but they cut ties a few years ago and made their own youth organization. I haven't followed it closely since then but I suspect it's going to accelerate the BSA's move to the left.

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