Design by Sam Donndelinger. Photo: Screenshot/American Heritage GirlsSubscribe nowGrowing up, Kenzie remembers dragging her feet as her mom sent her to American Heritage Girls (AHG) programs.I describe it as Girl Scouts but indoctrination, says Kenzie, a 20-year-old dance major from Oklahoma. Ever since I was little, I always knew I was queer; different from the people around me. [In the eyes of AHG staff] it felt wrong to be feminine, but also wrong to be masculine.AHG and Trail Life USAa similar organization for boyshave troops in all 50 states and more than 110,000 members. They teach kids that homosexuality is sinful and that anything outside the gender binary is wrong. The messaging is often provided by anti-LGBTQ hate groups, like Focus on the Family, which still promotes so-called conversion therapy.AHG and Trail Life's fixation on sexual immorality reinforces a theology that punishes non-heterosexual, non-monogamous, non-cis lives, says Fernando Salinas-Quiroz, an assistant professor at Tufts University who specializes in child study and human development.LGBTQ-exclusive policies dont just harm the kids they shut outthey send a loud, damaging message to the kids inside, too, they say. Its awful. But more than that, its strategic. These policies are not accidentsthey are deliberate projects to maintain a binary, heteronormative, Christian nationalist order.Subscribe nowHow It StartedAHG and Trail Life were created in response to the Boy and Girl Scouts' increasing acceptance of LGBTQ kids.In 1991, the Girl Scouts affirmed lesbians could join, stating that they respect the values and beliefs of [their] members. Shortly after, they began allowing members to substitute the word God in the Girl Scout Promise in an effort to be inclusive of all religions.These changes were too much for Patti Garibay, a devout conservative Christian who, in 1995, founded AHG as a Christian alternative.Almost 20 years later, in 2013, AHG leadership helped launch Trail Life USA, the conservative Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts which was created after the organization announced that they would allow openly gay members.John Stemberger, who was chairman of the board at Trail Life when it was founded, said in a 2024 interview of the Boy Scouts decision to allow gay members that theyre going to allow an openly gay boy to decide who hes gonna unilaterally sleep with. This absolutely creates a radical increase of boy-on-boy contact.John Stemberger discusses the Boy Scouts inclusion of gay youth.Salinas-Quiroz thinks the Christian hypersexualization of kids is concerning. Suggesting that a gay boy choosing a tentmate is a threat isnt just homophobic: It sexualizes queer presence, equates intimacy with danger, and teaches all kids to see desire, affection, and identity through a lens of fear.Exclusionary Membership PoliciesThis fear is baked into all of AHGs and Trail Lifes policies. AHGs membership policy says, All biological girls of any color, race, national origin and socioeconomic status are invited to be members of [AHG]. The term biological girls is a transphobic dog whistle which implies a persons real sex can only be either male or femaledenying the reality of transgender and intersex people.Theyre ignoring both the scientific evidence and the lived experiences of so many of us, says Salinas-Quiroz.American Heritage Girls logo.Trail Lifes handbook states, [A]ny sexual activity outside the context of the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is sinful. We grant membership to adults and youth who do not engage in or promote sexual immorality of any kind.Homophobia and Transphobia in the Form of Strict Gender RolesKenzie remembers AHG prepping us to be good mothers one day, like learning how to sew. Activities that would make us good and pure Christian girls. She says they didnt do much outdoors. You dont need to be playing a ton outside, thats what boys do, they would tell her.Subscribe nowI remember from a young age hearing, This will make you a good housewife, a good mom. Whos to say I want to get married? Whos to say I want to have children? says Kenzie, who only felt comfortable using her first name because she isnt out to her family. It felt like [AHG was] putting us in a very gendered box.Being forced to conform to the gender binary is also true over at Trail Life. No matter what our culture says, boys and girls are different, reads one blog post by Trail Life entitled Letting Boys be Boys in a Toxic Culture.Discussions about toxic masculinity, a blurring of gender lines, fewer and fewer fathers in the home, and the watering down or extinction of programs that train and equip boys to become men have left too many boys frustrated, fearful, and floundering in their struggle to understand what it means to be a man.At Trail Life, even though women are allowed to assist a troop, only men can become leaders so that they can show the boys what it is like to be a man, according to another blog post. You need men to instill masculinity into boys, helping show them how to become a man.What Do They Teach?Both AHG and Trail Life provide resources for parents and carers of young people that serve to bolster their anti-LGBTQ teachings.In 2020, Trail Lifewhich operates as a ministrypartnered with two Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups: the Alliance Defending Freedom and Focus on the Family. The groups presented a webinar for troop leaders and connected officials that explored religious freedom, child safety and gender confusion.We need to know there is not an LGBT community. So dont think that any of us have to be respectful of the LGBT community, Glenn Stanton, director of Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, said during the webinar.Stanton also used the discussion to promote conversion therapy resources from Focus on the Familys partner organizations for those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions.Same-sex feelings and all that is rooted in just pure political ideology, [and] those things have to be resisted, he told pastors and ministry leaders on the webinar.Screenshot from Focus on the Familys presentation at the Trail Life Protect Your Ministry Summit.In 2022, AHG self-published an e-book called A Raising Godly Girls Guide to Gender and Identity, aimed at supporting parents whose children are questioning their gender or experiencing gender dysphoria. The bookwritten by an unnamed authorundermines and denies the reality of transgender and gender-diverse identities.The cover of AHGs book, A Raising Godly Girls Guide to Gender & Identity.In the founders note, Garibay writes, For centuries, the beauty of God-given femininity has been under attack, its definition debated, [and] its behavior contested. Today, it has gone one step further to claim an embrace of non-binary sexual identity.The anonymous authors define so-called Biblical femininity as the core essence of every woman relational, nurturing, and vulnerable beings. They suggest that readers who know someone struggling with confusion should encourage them to go through conversion therapy by [seeking] the professional clinical and spiritual care of a Christian counselor and find[ing] healing.This narrative may be cloaked in spiritual language, but its function is deeply political: It teaches girls that their value lies in submission, emotional labor and supporting othersparticularly menrather than in discovering who they are on their own terms, says Salinas-Quiroz. These [gender] roles arent naturaltheyre socially constructed and often steeped in colonial, white-supremacist and Christian nationalist ideals.Rgg Gender And Identity E Book For Media4.19MB PDF fileDownloadDownloadTrail Lifes counterpart book, Raising Godly Boys, teaches a patriarchal view of masculinityone that requires men to view care as feminine and positions women as less capable. Women, for the most part, may not be the strong, action-oriented, stoic risk-takers men are. There is beauty and intention in these differences.What [Trail Life] really means is that boys must perform a very specific kind of masculinityone tied to dominance, emotional suppression and patriarchal authority. These messages dont just harm [queer] youth, says Salinas-Quiroz. They also limit cis children, especially those who dont see themselves reflected in these rigid templates.ShareWhat Are the Alternatives?Its unlikely AHGs or Trail Lifes LGBTQ-exclusive membership policies will face a legal challenge anytime soon. Both groups have some protection because of a 2000 Supreme Court ruling which upheld the Boy Scouts First Amendment right to exclude an assistant scoutmaster after learning he was an avowed homosexual and gay rights activist.There is, however, a new, more inclusive option thats gaining momentum. Founded in 2014 after Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed by police officers, the Radical Monarchs is an alternative scouting organization for girls and gender-expansive youth, rooted in social justice and aimed specifically at girls of color to provide kids with a place where difference is celebrated, not disciplined.Radical Monarchs badge. Rather than asking how to raise boys into men and girls into women, we should be asking how to raise young people into whole compassionate human beings. This requires spaces rooted in trust, exploration and self-determinationnot segregation and control, says Salinas-Quiroz.Children know who they are. Our job is to listen, affirm and make space for that knowing to grow.Kenzie says shes done a lot of unpacking after her years at AHG and her Christian upbringing and says shes now at peace. If I could just be a straight cis woman and the ideal Christian girl it would make my life a hell of a lot easier, but I cant push that into myself.The American Heritage Girls and Trail Life USA did not respond to Uncloseted Medias request for comment.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media