(The Daily Signal) – The Girl Scouts recently expelled a Moms for Liberty chapter leader in what she believes to be retaliation for refusing to promote LGBTQ+ Pride to her troop for “Pride Month.” The expulsion comes after she received death threats and was swatted, in what she believes to be retaliation for criticizing a church’s LGBTQ+ Pride flag.

“I was told via the phone call that I was no longer allowed to be a leader,” Alexandra Bougher, 45, told The Daily Signal in a phone call Monday. “I was no longer allowed to be a member. Not only that, but my daughter cannot be a member.”

Bougher said the Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey expelled her over “a violation of the code of conduct for a social media post.”

“I said, ‘Would you mind telling me which social media post?’ and they refused to tell me,” she added.

The Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

Bougher told The Daily Signal she joined Moms for Liberty, a parental rights organization that grew out of opposition to prolonged COVID-19 school lockdowns and the growth of divisive racial and gender lessons in schools, in 2021. Activists on the Left have attacked the group, falsely saying it supports book banning due to demands that school libraries remove explicit books.

Growing Disenchantment With the Girl Scouts

Bougher told The Daily Signal that she had been involved in Girl Scouts since her daughter was in kindergarten, but the organization’s liberal direction started to alarm her about three years ago. Her daughter is entering sixth grade now.

She said some Girl Scout troops were “taking their kids to [Black Lives Matter] marches, and I said that’s completely inappropriate.”

“You’re putting these kids in danger, whether you agree with [the cause] or not,” Bougher said.

Some Girl Scout troops have joined Black Lives Matter marches, and in 2020, the national organization adopted a statement endorsing Black Lives Matter, calling on the Girl Scouts to help in “dismantling the systems that fuel racial inequalities in injustice,” and describing such activism as “not political.”

Yet Bougher says she thinks her expulsion had more to do with her decision not to engage in Pride Month.

Opting Out of Pride

On June 2, the Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey posted a graphic on Facebook celebrating Pride Month.

Bougher shared the post, adding: “To be clear WE DO NOT talk about this with our troop.”

“There is absolutely NO reason to be talking about anything sexual with children EVER at any time,” she wrote. “We take an oath to protect children and that means being safe adults.”

Bougher told The Daily Signal she thinks the Girl Scouts expelled her from the organization over this post.

The Girl Scouts exclusion does not represent the first retaliation Bougher has faced for opposing LGBTQ+ Pride, to hear her tell it.

The Church Flag

In a March Facebook post that she has since deleted, Bougher condemned an LGBTQ+ Pride flag at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Park Ridge, New Jersey, a location the Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey used to host events with multiple troops in the area.

Bougher’s Facebook post warned that parts of the flag represented “minor-attracted persons,” yet the designers of the flag never said such a thing. When The Daily Signal asked Bougher about this, she mentioned that many of the teens she knows use TikTok and have seen videos connecting the flag with “MAPs.” She said she asked the church to take down the flag, and the church refused.

She said she deleted the post after someone commented, calling for the flag to be burned.

“If it were actually true that anything represented MAPS, we would not fly it,” Mark Suriano, the church’s pastor, told The Daily Signal. He noted that the pink and blue stripes, which Bougher said refer to minor boys and girls, actually represent the transgender community, which he described as “the favored targets of Moms for Liberty and other authoritarian right-leaning groups.”

The Girl Scouts often hold events at the church, which include many local troops. Bougher’s troop did not meet at the church.

She said she started receiving death threats online and hate mail delivered to her house.

On April 11, police came to her house after receiving a call that her children had access to firearms.

“We had five police cars outside” the house, Bougher said. She said a false prank caller had “caused the whole SWAT team to come to our house.”

Suriano condemned the threats against Bougher.

“The church does not support any violence against persons, including Alexandra Bougher, and has never encouraged any such actions be taken,” he said.

He framed his church’s support for the LGBTQ+ agenda in terms of following as “the work of Jesus urges us to greater love and inclusion.” He said the church “had no role at all” in Bougher’s expulsion from the Girl Scouts.

Bougher attacked the Girl Scouts and the church as being “more concerned about making the adults feel comfortable than the children.”

She predicted that her expulsion from the Girl Scouts will doom the entire troop.

She said her co-leaders won’t have the same amount of time to dedicate to the program, and “right now it’s looking like about 70% of the chapter will be quitting, moving on.”

“We’re looking at an adventure group to do instead, perhaps American Heritage Girls or something that is more aligned with our values,” she added. American Heritage Girls launched as a Christian and pro-family alternative to the Girl Scouts in 1995.

“It makes me sad for the kids,” Bougher concluded.