Posted on 03/01/2004 12:53:22 PM PST by RonF
CRAWFORD, Texas - Brownie Troop 7087 is no more, and another Girl Scout troop has only two members left after the other girls were yanked out by their parents.
A Christian radio station in nearby Waco aired ads for two weeks urging folks to boycott Girl Scout cookies.
Dozens of people in this deeply conservative Central Texas area have been protesting what they call a "cozy relationship" between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood, which provides various health services, including abortions.
"It's not that we're a bunch of activists. We're just a bunch of moms who care about their kids," said Lisa Aguilar, who took her 10-year-old daughter out of a Crawford troop. "For us, it's the morality. Where is Girl Scouts going?"
The Bluebonnet Council of Girl Scouts, which oversees troops in the Waco area and 13 other counties, recently said it would not be affiliated with two Planned Parenthood-sponsored sex-education programs this year.
But the Crawford mothers and Pro-Life Waco remain convinced of the two groups' ties. The Bluebonnet Council gave the Planned Parenthood of Central Texas executive director a "woman of distinction" award last year.
Despite the protest, cookie sales have skyrocketed this year as many people - including some first-time customers - bought cases just to show their support of Girl Scouts, said Becky Parker, a troop leader who is the cookie distributor for Waco troops.
"People thought the boycott was ridiculous and was one man's extremist views," Parker said Friday. "For some people, it (Planned Parenthood programs) became the only issue in Girl Scouts, and that's tragic."
Beth Vivio, director of the Bluebonnett Council, declined to say if parents in any other troops had taken their kids out.
Girl Scouts has no national collaboration or relationship with Planned Parenthood and does not provide support to the organization, according to the Bluebonnet Council.
New York-based Girl Scouts of the USA, which has 2.9 million girl members and 986,000 adult members nationwide, said it takes no position on sex education or abortion. All money from cookie sales goes to local councils and their troops and to no other organizations.
The uproar started earlier this month when John Pisciotta, the director of Pro-Life Waco, aired a 30-second ad asking listeners not to buy the cookies because of the "cozy relationship."
"It was a way to bring attention to the issue and wasn't really about cookies," said Pisciotta, an economics professor at Baylor, the world's largest Baptist university.
The ads stopped this week after the Bluebonnet Council announced it would not sponsor this year's sex-education programs. That pleased some, but disappointed others.
"Girl Scouts have given the community who worked so hard for them these past two weeks a clear message: Bullying tactics are more effective than an informed democracy," Pam Smallwood, the Planned Parenthood of Central Texas director who was honored by the Girl Scouts last year, wrote in an editorial in Friday's Waco Tribune-Herald.
Some 400-700 fifth- through ninth-graders attend the half-day "Nobody's Fool" conference in Waco each July, according to Waco-based Planned Parenthood of Central Texas.
The program helps prepare youngsters for adolescence and never mentions abortion, said Pat Stone, the organization's education director. The program has a dozen co-sponsors other than Girl Scouts, who were approached because of the group's mission of helping girls, Stone said.
"If we agencies don't hold hands and work together, we all lose. The kids lose," Stone said.
Aguilar and other parents didn't find out until recently that Girl Scouts for years was listed on brochures for "Nobody's Fool" and another sex-education program called "3R Coalition."
Children attending "Nobody's Fool" received a book with chapters on homosexuality and masturbation, as well as illustrations of couples having sex, people examining their naked bodies and a boy putting on a condom.
She and other mothers who took their daughters out of Troop 7527 in Crawford call the book soft porn.
"It embarrassed me to look at it with my husband," said parent Shannon Donaldson.
The Crawford mothers are forming their own girls organization and will use a Christian-based curriculum.
Donna Coody, who led Brownie Troop 7087 that disbanded, said she is upset by the association with Planned Parenthood.
"You're telling these girls to raise their fingers up to pledge to honor God and country, and yet you're handing out materials saying homosexuality is OK," Coody said.
The two Crawford troops had already taken cookie orders when they decided not to deliver them a few weeks ago. Customers don't pay until the treats arrive, so they didn't lose money, Coody said.
Meanwhile, their daughters are excited about starting a new group. Some parents decided to explain abortion to their girls, while others gave a vague explanation about the uproar.
"Our girls have been through a lot these past three weeks," said Jennifer Smith, former leader of Troop 7527. "After I told my 10-year-old daughter that they are supporting some things that are not morally right, she understood."
Understand, folks, that the program presented by a GSUSA Troop is much more dependent on the leaders involved than in a BSA Troop. It is also a lot more dependent on who's running the local GSUSA Council than in a Boy Scout Council, since in the GSUSA the Girl Scout Council fufills many of the roles that the sponsoring organization does in a BSA Troop.
Finally, I would recommend to parents of either a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout that you can't just drop your kids off to meetings and outings. You need to get personally involved at some level. It doesn't take a lot of expertise. Whether you teach your kids cooking, sewing, knots, astronomy, etc. doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the real lesson is that a parent goes out of their way to teach their child, and if you teach you kid that lesson, you've done a big job.
I seem to remember an "expose" a while back saying that most of the money from cookie sales went to the Girl Scout Headquarters back east. It had a lot of descriptions about the money being used by the National leaders for their own surroundings and gratifications. Anybody else remember anything about that?
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