They made a mistake in trying to make "everyone" happy ....

If they had stayed focused on Outdoors / Camping and very traditional "Boys" stuff, I think they would have been fine.

They tried to be everything for everyone ... and to please the "non-traditional" crowd that wanted everything changed. By trying to do everything that the "you have to change to please me" crowd wanted, they lost their core, and the organization kind of fell apart.

Please note ... I'm NOT a big camping / outdoors kind of guy, and neither is one of my two sons. So we are NOT necessarily the people that are the core for what BSA should have been. We probably would have done SOME stuff with BSA because I want my boys to have some outdoor/camping kind of experiences. BUT the people we know who are HUGE into BSA (or were) are typically the Outdoors/Camping people. They lost those people trying hard to go after people even further from the core than my family.