Long before I had any boys, I was determined to bring about the demise of the long-standing affiliation between the church and the Boy Scouts of America.

It's not that I hate the scouting program or what it stands for. I've just always been bothered by the disparity between BSA and the Young Women program du jour.

As a young girl, with two older brothers involved in scouts, I was deathly envious. They had meetings and activities and hikes and camping adventures. They had uniforms and hand-carved neckerchief slides and badges and pins and red berets and socks with fancy thingees on them. They got to play with fire and learn Indian hoop dancing and lash latrines. (OK, so that last one I didn't envy so much.)

And they had their own magazine: Boys' Life.

I spent hours pouring over Boys' Life. It was so cool. And I was pretty much a girly-girl. It had fun stuff to do and neat things to make and amazing things to buy (like live sea horses). Wow.

When I was eight, I didn't get to do much of anything. Of course I could look forward to being ten, when I'd get to crochet a hot pad and make a Kiddy Care Kit.

As vocal as I am about it all, I've tried to keep it from my daughters. I don't know how my annoyance will serve them. And I keep doing what I can to bring some level of parity to the programs. If you've been around here for long, you've already heard a bunch of it.

As my oldest son approached his eighth birthday with the scouting program well entrenched in US mormondom I realized my quest had failed. And much to my surprise, I found myself kind of excited. Not for what the girls don't have, but for what he will have.

Today just five days after his birthday I got the “dreaded” call. The scoutmaster was calling to tell me that scouts ?has been cancelled for the summer. We'll try again in August.

I guess I have two more months to ratify my sinister plan. Then I'll probably be shopping for a uniform.