Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
A 14 year-old girl scout and her family who initiated a boycott of Girl Scout cookies in order to stop the organization from using funds to promote liberal causes, has been the subject of vile attacks by gay activists who were so intolerant of her viewpoint that they had her YouTube video silenced and exposed her real name to the public.
Taylor
A variety of news outlets are reporting that a girl originally identified only as Taylor, joined with parents and other Girl Scout alumni to call for a boycott of the group’s famous cookies because the organization uses the proceeds to promote a radical homosexual agenda at the expense of Scout safety.
Taylor made a YouTube video about the boycott which she says came about as a result of a controversial move by the Scouts to admit a transgender boy who claims to be a girl into a scouting troop. The incident involved seven year-old Bobby Montoya who was accepted into the Girl Scouts of Colorado after his mother claimed the boy was living as a girl. The Scouts claimed that “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”
Taylor’s video cites Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) materials that outline the importance of the Scouts’ all-girl format and expresses concern that 12th-grade boys could pass themselves off as girls.
“The real question is, why is GSUSA willing to break their own safety rules and go against its own research institute findings to accommodate transgender boys?” Taylor asks in her video.
“Unfortunately, I think it is because GSUSA cares more about promoting the desires of a small handful of people than it does for my safety and the safety of my friends and sister Girl Scouts, and they are doing it with money we earned for them from Girl Scout cookies.”
She goes on to say that “GSUSA and councils are focusing on adult agendas that have nothing to do with helping girls. I ask all fellow Girl Scouts who want a true, all-girl experience not to sell any cookies until GSUSA addresses our concerns. I ask all parents of Girl Scouts who want their girls to be in a safe environment to tell their leaders why you will not allow your girls to make any more money for GSUSA.”
Instead of prompting more dialogue about Taylor’s concerns, which are only a fraction of the troubles GSUSA has been experiencing in recent years because of its radical politics, LGBT groups across the country have launched a vicious smear campaign against Taylor, even going so far as to reveal her real name.
In this blog appearing on Qbits, gay activist David Badash employs the usual line of attack on Taylor, calling her eight-minute video “self-righteous, bigoted and ignorant.” He then goes so far as to publish Taylor’s real last name, potentially endangering both her and her family for doing nothing more than publishing their opinion.
Badash’s blog includes threatening quotes against Taylor that were published on a website known as Dangerous Minds. This blog was founded by Richard Metzger, a man who recently told the New Yorker’s Culture Desk that the mission of his site is to “inject a Marxist/socialist political viewpoint between the purely cultural stuff . . . ”
Metzger continued the threatening line of attack on Taylor: “Pretty soon, Taylor’s last name is going to come out. It seems inevitable that she’s going to face an Internet backlash for this obnoxious video. The Internet has a rather long and unforgiving memory. It’s going to come up every time some one will do a Google search for her. To all future employers, college admission officers, potential boyfriends, she’s going to be this girl. No matter what her thoughts on this matter might evolve into when she’s an adult (not that I have especially high hopes that Taylor is ever going to be a tolerant or open-minded person, but who knows?) is she prepared for her new life with an Encyclopedia Dramatica entry?”
Taylor’s video was nothing more than the exercise of free speech by an American citizen who voiced her opinion in a brief, to-the-point, and courteous way, but the firestorm of hate that was ignited by this smear campaign managed to force YouTube to “silence” her video. It is now private and unavailable for viewing.
How’s that for tolerance?
If these are the kind of friends GSUSA keeps, I think the time has come to swap those Girl Scout cookies for a bag of Keebler’s.
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Anyone looking for even more reason to turn away those tempting cookies this year should read this excellent article by Mary Rice Hasson, a Visiting Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C
