Hate Group Claims Girl Scout Cookies Fund 'Sexual Promiscuity' and Abortions

According to the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA), those green-vest-wearing girls selling Thin Mints outside your local grocery store are just a small part of the largest girl-led business in the world, adding up to $800 million dollars in sales every year. “When a Girl Scout sells you cookies, she’s building a lifetime of skills and [confidence],” the organization says. “She learns goal-setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics—skills essential to leadership, success, and life.”

But according to the hyper-conservative grown men at the Liberty Counsel, every box of Samoas you buy is actually promoting a lifestyle of sexual promiscuity and an endless parade of abortions.

First, if you don’t recognize the Liberty Counsel by name, you definitely know the company they keep. The co-founder of the organization, Mat Staver, is the attorney who defiantly defended Kim Davis, the Kentucky woman who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Liberty Counsel as a hate group, one that “[advocates] for anti-LGBT discrimination under the guise of religious liberty.” And the Human Rights Campaign labeled Staver an “American Extremist,” profiling him in the first six seconds of its “Export of Hate” campaign. So yeah, it’s a super collection of people, and exactly the kind who should criticize and objectify the Girl Scouts.

In a combination press release-and-blog post called “Girl Scout Cookies Crumble,” the Liberty Counsel says that Girl Scouts is no longer an innocent, badge-earning, cookie-selling service organization, but instead a “politically divisive, pro-abortion” group of pre-adolescent anarchists that “abandoned its mission years ago.”

Although the post itself is riddled with inaccuracies, debunked conspiracy theories, and links to other anti-Girl Scouts websites, the group primarily takes issue with the Girl Scouts’ relationship with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). “WAGGGS aggressively promotes abortion and promiscuous sex on behalf of its 10 million members,” the Counsel writes. Except… no.

In a document explaining its position on addressing adolescent pregnancy, WAGGGS writes of a need to “[call] on the international community and national governments” to provide girls and young women with “ensure that young women have access to full and accurate information, and are given the opportunity to discuss openly and safely issues about sex and sexuality.” That hardly seems aggressive, but it does aim to nurture and promote a new generation of educated, informed women.

“WAGGGS supports education on sexual and reproductive health, however we have no position on reproductive rights or abortion,” Megan Hunt, WAGGGS Communication Manager, told MUNCHIES. “To be clear, WAGGGS does not promote abortion or promiscuous sex.”

In an FAQ that reads with the weariness of having been misrepresented on a thousand misguided fake news sites, the Girl Scouts explains that its positions and endorsements do not always overlap with those of WAGGGS. “GSUSA's relationship with WAGGGS is akin to the United States' relationship with the United Nations (UN),” it says. “The United States may not agree with every position the UN takes, but values having a seat at the table.”

The Girl Scouts also says that it does not take an official position on the issues of sexuality, abortion, or birth control. “Rather than spend time debunking decade-old myths about our organization, GSUSA chooses to put our efforts into ensuring all girls have the tools they need to make the world a better place,” a Girl Scouts spokesperson told MUNCHIES.

But back to the cookies: the Liberty Counsel is insinuating just short of suggesting a boycott of those delicious seasonal goodies. “Girl Scout cookie sales fund troops, local councils and GSUSA,” it writes. “With approximately 200 million boxes of cookies sold annually, this amounts to millions of dollars of funding for GSUSA every year, much of which goes toward aggressively promoting youth reproductive/abortion and sexual rights to innocent girls.” The post neglects to mention the goal-setting, decision-making, and business-savvy skills that young saleswomen learn while they’re stacking boxes of Samoas and counting customers’ change.

“Liberty Counsel is not promoting untruths,” Holly Meade, Director of Communications for Liberty Counsel told MUNCHIES. “If you research the attached documents to the press release, you will find facts which support the political agenda behind the once great organization. However, for obvious reasons, Girl Scouts does not market this on their website.”

But another “obvious reason” why the Girl Scouts don’t publicize their views about promiscuity and say, buy-one-get-one-free abortions are because they don’t advocate either one.