While Girl Scouts across the country spent this past weekend selling and distributing Girl Scout cookies, many right-wing activists will not be joining the rest of us in enjoying Thin Mints and Samoas. For the past several years, conservative groups have urged their members not to touch the cookies, warning that doing so will support communism, abortion and homosexual indoctrination. The Girl Scouts’ right-wing detractors commonly cite the discredited myth that the group is funding Planned Parenthood, and the even stranger that it is turning children into lesbian, socialist activists.
Like many Americans, I’m a big fan of Girl Scout cookies. It’s just one of those traditions that, while it may not do wonderful things for my waistline, has remained blessedly unchanged since I was big enough to know what a Girl Scout was. I know I’m hardly unique in my inability to walk past a cute little Girl Scout and her mother without buying at least a couple boxes (tried to do it last week…didn’t work so well). I’m not even bothered that a few ninnies who call the Rabid Christian Right home are convinced that Girl Scout cookies are the primary funding source for lesbianism, witchcraft, communism, abortion rights, promiscuity, and transgender girls (and probably Green Bay Packers fans). Hell, if anything, the fact that Girl Scout cookies are suspected of supporting so much evil and mischief makes me want to buy even more cookies. Who knew cookies could exercise so much power and influence while being so damned tasty?
It’s difficult to know what winds up hyper-Christian ninnies, or why they’re so predisposed to assuming the worst of virtually everyone and everything. I find their self-righteous caterwauling to be rather amusing. Christian radio host Kevin Swanson once literally BEGGED his listeners not to buy Girl Scout cookies…they’re Just. That. Evil.
Linda Harvey accused the Girl Scouts of teaching the homosexual lifestyle to their vulnerable young charges, who evidently immediately declared war on the entire White homophobic bullshit paradigm. Yep, start ‘em young and you’ll have a committed militant lesbian for life.
Jane Chastain has accused the Girl Scouts of using the proceeds from cookie sales to “promote prostitution.”. I’m not sure how you go from a box of Thin Mints to a night blindfolded and chained to a bed in a cheap motel with a teenage hooker, but it seems that’s a thing now.
And don’t even get me started on the Girl Scouts of Colorado deciding to accept a transgender girl and thus causing the Earth to stop spinning on its axis.
Meanwhile, the zealots are missing easily the most insidious and dangerous aspect of Girl Scout cookies.
How is it that something so delicious can pose such a danger to our immortal soul? Perhaps if the Girl Scouts threw in an exorcism with every 10 boxes of Thin Mints….
