Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts! Here Are 5 Lessons You Could Teach the Boy Scouts

Elise Solé

Way back in 1912, a 45-year-old widow named Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Law got together with 18 young girls from her hometown of Savannah, Georgia, to talk about making friends, job hunting, playing sports, and participating in community service — and in doing so, the first Girl Scouts troop was born. Fast-forward to 2014 and the Girl Scouts of the USA boasts 3.2 million members and the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama as its Honorary National President. To celebrate the group's 102nd birthday on March 12, we're taking a side-by-side comparison of the Girl Scouts and its male counterpart, the Boy Scouts of America. Here are five lessons the boys can learn from the girls.

Lesson 1: Your gender and sexuality are no one else’s business: Gay or straight, girls of any sexual orientation can join the Girl Scouts and the group upholds a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Ditto for gender differences: In 2011, a Colorado troop granted membership to a 7-year-old transgender girl named Bobby Montoya. "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," a Girl Scouts rep told CNN in 2012.

Its inclusive policies contrast with the Boy Scout’s notorious ban on gay members. In 1991, the Boy Scouts fired a scout leader after he came out in a New Jersey newspaper, and even when a 2012 Change.org petition signed by 290,000 people demanded that the group drop its no-gay policy, the organization refused. Although in 2013, the Boy Scouts finally lifted its gay membership ban (which, according to Time magazine, is outlined on its 2013 BSA employee application), it still refused to hire gay troop leaders, a decision that recently caused The Walt Disney Company to withdraw funding beginning in 2015.

Lesson 2: Religious freedom is a right: Although the official Girl Scout motto is, “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout Law,” in 2013, the GSUSA allowed members to drop the word “God” and replace it with one of their choice, in order to be more inclusive of various religions. The group also opened its doors to atheists, who were formerly only considered “associate members.”

Meanwhile, as recent as 2013, the BSA prohibited membership to agnostics and atheists or anyone who didn’t recite the oath "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law,” verbatim. The rule may stem from the fact that 70 percent of BSA units are sponsored by religious organizations (half are Mormon-backed), according to the BSA website.

Lesson 3: Practice what you preach: Although, since 1993, the BSA has offered a badge for “disability awareness” for completing an educational program, the Girl Scouts one-ups them with Troop 200, a small but expanding Illinois troop for disabled girls ages 7 to 17. The mother of an autistic Girl Scout launched the group in 2008 so that girls with various disabilities could get the full Girl Scout experience, with modified activities that meet their needs.

Lesson 4: Scouting is colorblind: The BSA states that employees are considered without regard to race, but that wasn't always the case — in 1910, during its first executive board meeting, the Boy Scouts passed a resolution that allowed councils to set their own racial policies despite its public message that the group was "open to all American boys!" Yet in 1917, an entire 47 years before the Civil Rights Act was passed, the Girl Scouts launched a national effort to desegregate all Girl Scouts troops, even earning praise from Martin Luther King Jr. for being "a force for desegregation."

Lesson 5: Cookies make everything better:Boy scouts don’t sell cookies; Girl Scouts do. Thin Mints, Lemonades, Thanks-A-Lot, Do-Si-Dos, Chocolate Chip Shortbread — need we say more?