Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and the group’s senior fellow Cathy Ruse dedicated a segment of Washington Watch on Friday to attacking the Girl Scouts over a Twitter “scandal.” In December, the Girl Scouts tweeted a link to a HuffPost Women article called, “These Incredible Ladies Should Be Women Of The Year For 2013.”
The article included a HuffPost Live video in which panelists mentioned Malala Yousafzai, Beyoncé Knowles and Wendy Davis as their picks for Woman of the Year. The mention of Davis, the Texas state senator and gubernatorial candidate who gained international attention for her filibuster of a bill curtailing abortion rights, infuriated anti-choice activists, who then attacked the Girl Scouts for linking to the post.
Such criticisms are nothing new from the Right. The FRC frequently lambasts and even prays against the Girl Scouts. In 2012, the group launched a boycott of Girl Scout cookies.
Ruse alleged to Perkins that the leadership of the Girl Scouts is encouraging promiscuity and abortion and that the group’s decision to let a transgender girl join a Brownie troop amounted to “child abuse.”
To them abortion and sex-ed and promiscuity for very young girls is a good thing. They just have a very different mindset but they do not share the values of most American parents and the values of most people who are in the Girl Scouts. So when the Girl Scout membership begins to learn about this they find it scandalous. There’s a reason why membership is down in the Girl Scouts, there’s a reason why cookie sales are down, because all of these things are scandalous. You know, Girl Scouts now admit cross-dressing boys as little Brownie girls; it’s child abuse, frankly.
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Look at what the organization at the head wants to do with your girls and where it’s taking the organization and then people can decide what they should do. You’ve got a cross-dresser in the front office, you’ve got little boys admitted as little girls and those poor little girls in those troops have to pretend this is a girl? That’s child abuse in some people’s estimation.
Perkins also revived the myth that the Girl Scouts circulated a Planned Parenthood pamphlet at an event in 2010. He argued that Planned Parenthood seeks to “encourage promiscuity and behavior that would lead [Girl Scouts] into Planned Parenthood clinics.”
Perkins: We’re talking about the agenda that’s really behind the Girl Scouts. I guess Cathy I can understand, it makes sense for Planned Parenthood to want to be teamed up with the Girl Scouts because that’s a client base for them if they can get this information into their hands to encourage promiscuity and behavior that would lead them into Planned Parenthood clinics.
Ruse: Absolutely, it’s logical isn’t it.
