Pete Hegseth bullied Scouting America into scrapping LGBTQ+ spaces at the National Jamboree

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pressured Scouting America to curtail inclusive programming at its National Jamboree. The result was cancellations by Scouts who had looked forward to gathering in dedicated community spaces, including one for LGBTQ+ Scouts.

The meddling in the National Jamboree, which took place last week in West Virginia, follows months of Hegseth pressuring the youth organization through its century-old partnership with the Pentagon. The man overseeing an ongoing military conflict with Iran has also expended time and resources trying to end all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within Scouting America, previously known as the Boy Scouts of America, including demanding that it eliminate certain merit badge offerings.

Related: Pete Hegseth declares that Scouting America will eliminate transgender tolerance & diversity programs

At the Jamboree, the organization had planned dedicated activity spaces for girls in Scouting, Scouts of color and LGBTQ+ Scouts. But Scouting America’s leaders said Hegseth pressed them to eliminate those activities, according to the Associated Press. The decision dismayed many Scout leaders.

“Scouting fundamentally is a safe place for young people to have fun,” said Samuel J. Aronson, an assistant scoutmaster who organized prior inclusivity events. “In the absence of these spaces, we’re denying all that, both the safety and the fun, to thousands of young people.”

James Dale, the plaintiff in a landmark 1990s lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America, sued the Defense Department to obtain the six-page memo detailing Hegseth’s demands that the organization curtail its modern inclusive policies. While the BSA during Dale’s youth fought successfully for the First Amendment right to exclude members based on sexual orientation, the rebranded Scouting America has allowed transgender members since 2017 and girls since 2018.

Related: Scouting America 'surprised and disappointed' after U.S. military threatens to cut ties

The memo shows that the Defense Department demanded the authority to periodically review Scouting America’s programs and practices in exchange for continuing to allow service members and Scouts to participate in activities at military bases across the country. Hegseth has said he would someday like to remove girls from the organization again.

"They basically have their thumb on the organization, threatening them under constant pressure," Dale said in a press release. Dale, who was expelled from the Boy Scouts in the early 1990s for being gay and fought the organization for a decade before the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him in 2000, now sits on the board of Lambda Legal, which represented him in his original case.

"The targets may have changed, but the urgency remains," Dale said.

After Hegseth announced in February that Scouting America had agreed to stop adhering to “the destructive myth of gender fluidity and transgenderism,” the organization quickly clarified that all youth, including transgender Scouts, were still welcome. Hegseth has also banned transgender people from serving in the armed forces.

The changes imposed at the Jamboree disappointed many longtime Scouts.

John Andrew Segebarth, a 21-year-old Eagle Scout, canceled plans to attend the Jamboree this year because of the decision to stop providing the community spaces. “Scouting’s kind of walking back on its values that they told me they believed in,” he said.

The decision also prompted some longtime financial supporters to threaten to withdraw their support.

Related: Scouting America says transgender kids are still welcome after Pete Hegseth claimed they weren’t

“This saddens me greatly. The regime in Washington is perverting and destroying so much that was good in our world. Now they intimidate youth organizations to instill their evil world view,” Lawrence Carpenter, a retired executive for Timberline Construction, posted on Facebook.

“I am devastated to see that Scouting America, also previously known as BSA is folding to the regimes demands to back off on diversity initiatives related to this year’s national jamboree. This violates in my opinion a vast majority of what the scout law and oath are all about. After a lifetime supporting this organization, and over two decades of participation and volunteering in the programs, I will no longer support scouting until they stand up fully for the ideals they were founded on.”