A boycott of Girl Scout cookies by Texas pro-lifers in protest of the organization’s links to Planned Parenthood is reaching new levels, with dueling videos over a defense of Girl Scout policies by CEO Anna Marie Chavez.
The boycott initiated by Pro-Life Waco has gained the support of several major organizations, including the American Family Association, which has millions of supporters.
It’s effectiveness already has been demonstrated by threatening letters sent by the Girl Scouts of the USA to several pro-life groups that have been highlighting the youth organization’s cooperation with abortion-industry giant Planned Parenthood.
The editor of the pro-life news website LifeNews, Steven Ertelt, said he has been threatened with legal action for “articles that outline alleged ties to Planned Parenthood,” reported Breitbart News.
Scout leaders also sent a similar letter to a blogger who runs MyGirlScoutCouncil.com, demanding she stop using the Girl Scout logo.
Now Girl Scout CEO Anna Marie Chavez has posted a YouTube statement that boasts of the organization’s attributes and denies links to Planned Parenthood.
“I find it unsettling that anyone would use the Girl Scout brand to have very adult conversations,” she said. “A box of Girl Scout cookies is not a political statement.”
Critics, however, insist the cookies are political, because of the organization’s connections to Planned Parenthood.
WND has documented the connections. For example, in an interview with NBC in 2004, Kathy Cloninger, CEO of the Girl Scouts, admitted the group “partners with Planned Parenthood across the country to bring information based sex education programs to girls.”
John Pisciotta of Pro-Life Waco said, “Wow! The fourth week of Cookiecott brought a desperate Girl Scout CEO Anna Marie Chavez out on YouTube attempting to calm the media storm (traditional and social) over Girl Scouts pro-abortion and liberal leanings.”
He said that as expected, Chavez “claimed total innocence – even with a preposterous claim that Girl Scouts has NEVER had relationships with Planned Parenthood.”
Pisciotta’s group prepared a response, highlighting what it called “the gap between what Girl Scout leadership says it does and what it actually does.”
That gap, he said, is “as wide as the Grand Canyon.”
The pro-lifers’ video response says Girl Scout leadership uses faith in God when it serves their purposes.
Girl Scout Councils have collaborated with Planned Parenthood on many occasions and brings sexuality content into the communications and curricula for girls, the video says.
The video notes that while Chavez claims Girl Scouting is “committed to serving God and our country,” “God” actually is an option, because Girl Scouts allow members to remove God from their pledge.
See the video:
[jwplayer HZ80PD8f]
Further, Chavez denies a relationship with Planned Parenthood, even though Pro-Life Waco has traced a “long history of local councils working with Planned Parenthood. Documented examples go back as far as 1972.”
That year, Pro-Life Waco notes, a Planned Parenthood representative “presented a workshop called ‘Eve Has Changed’ at a Milwaukee Girl Scout ‘think-in’ event – the workshop looked at changing sexual direction and characteristics and a need for dissemination of the correct information about sex to young people.”
The Girl Scouts Bluebonnet Council has “co-sponsored Planned Parenthood’s Nobody’s Fool sex education program.”
In its 2009 annual report, Planned Parenthood of Western New York lists Girl Scouts of Western New York as its community partner.
And at the top of the heap is the Girl Scouts’ connection to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, which has linked to International Planned Parenthood Federation for decades.
The documents, links and evidence have been posted online.
As WND reported, the American Life League, the nation’s oldest Catholic pro-life education and advocacy group, joined the effort, and then AFA lined up.
That group said “buying Girl Scout cookies serves only to further facilitate a very liberal pro-abortion agenda.”
The Los Angeles Times reported the Girl Scouts of the USA has experienced a plunge in membership, from about 3 million to about 2 million in the last decade.
The American Life League’s president, Judie Brown, has an explanation for the decline. She said the Girl Scouts “was once a trusted organization dedicated to character building in young girls and women.”
“Now, GSUSA is abusing that trust,” she said “Most parents and grandparents remain painfully unaware the GSUSA has introduced so-called ‘family planning’ ideology in its curriculum and promotes groups like Planned Parenthood to our daughters and granddaughters.”
Last week, Breitbart reported the Girl Scouts had appointed a new “Girl Experience Officer” by the name of Krista Kokjohn-Poehler. Breitbart said she is “an out lesbian married to a woman named Ashley Kokjohn.”
“Given her sexual preference, it may strike some as odd that her job title is ‘Girl Experience Officer,'” the report said.
WND has reported on a variety of Girl Scout activities that have sparked protest, including its support for a pro-abortion politician. Girl Scouts also marched in a promotion of the “gay” agenda in San Francisco and were found to be removing “God” from their “Girl Scout Promise.”
The organization also has incorporated stone labyrinths, global warming, yoga, avatars, smudging incense, Zen gardens and lesbian role models into their teachings. In a lesson called “Amaze: The Twists and Turns of Getting Along,” girls were taught that they should read Buddha and explore mazes and stone or dirt labyrinths – symbols rooted in pagan mythology and popular within the New Age movement as meditation tools.
They also were introduced to Polish poet Anna Swir, known for her feminist and erotic poems, and Jane Addams, an ardent feminist and pacifist.
WND also has reported on numerous “whistleblower” forums that expose the Girl Scouts social agenda.
