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  • 2018-05-22 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the Boy Scouts of America Implement a New Policy Requiring Condoms to Be Available at Jamboree? (en)
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  • The late 2017 decision to allow girls into the Boy Scouts of America caused considerable outrage in certain circles, as some argued that the change would lead to the organization's downfall. In May 2018, as BSA eyed a name change, blogs such as DailyWire.com took advantage of the controversy by publishing articles connecting the change to a policy requiring condoms to be available at the World Scout Jamboree: A WND.com article had similarly misleading paragraphs: These articles heavily implied that the condom policy was new, and that it was directly connected to the decision to allow girls into BSA: At best this is misleading, as the policy requiring condoms to be available at the World Scout Jamboree comes from the World Organization of the Scout Movement, not BSA. WOSM is an international scouting organization that oversees a regular Jamboree (usually every four years) attended by scouts from all over the world. In guidelines for the event adopted in March 2016, the WSOM said: The 2019 Jamboree will be far from the first time condoms have been made available at the event. A 2011 handbook for an event in Sweden encouraged safe sex and noted the availability of condoms at the health center: An article from BBC also reported that condoms would be made available to attendees of the 20th World Scout Jamboree in Thailand in 2002. (Some outlets at the time expressed outrage about the availability of condoms and warned about a Boy Scout orgy.) According to a 2006 report, condoms have been made available at international scouting events at least 1992: WSOM officially implemented a policy requiring condoms to be available at the World Scout Jamboree in 2002, releasing a statement about it at the time: We reached out to WSOM about the articles attempting to connect the decades old policy to the Boy Scouts of American recent decision to include girls and were told that these two decisions were in no way related. WSOM also clarified that condoms are not distributed directly to participants but are available at the health center: Vice Chairperson of the World Scout Committee Andy Chapman confirmed to us that WSOM sets the guidelines for the Jamboree, and that the three host organizations of this year’s event —Scouts Canada, the Scout Association of Mexico, and the Boy Scouts of America — are working to implement the requirements in an appropriate manner. Chapman also noted that the WSOM policies take into account the concerns of a variety of countries, not just the United States: The articles insinuating that the condom policy was new and somehow connected to Boy Scouts of America's decision to welcome girls into the organization were ignoring the fact that girls already make up a large portion of the global scouting community, and that they have for years been allowed to join the Scouts in a majority of countries (emphasis ours): In fact, a group of girls were in attendance at the first World Scout Jamboree in London in 1920. The WSOM has officially accepted female members since the early 1970s, and the majority of scouting programs welcome both boys and girls: In other words, 2018 headlines about condoms being the latest symptom of scouting decline are little more than warmed-over outrage clickbait. (en)
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