We may have found a new standard for effortless advocacy.

It isn’t really news that people sometimes lie to get their way, but is it my imagination that there has been a sharp uptick in the sheer brazenness of the lying? I’m not talking here about the weaselly, defensive type of lying that public figures often engage in when caught in compromising positions (yawn). I’m talking about utterly making things up with the intention of compromising other people, wholly fabricated things that the liar knows are demonstrably false, but doesn’t care. Things that the liar wishes were true, but are not. So the liar just goes ahead and says they are anyway.

Things like stating as fact (click ‘See more’ under the first block of text) that a kind of rape scenario has occurred in a community when no such thing has ever happened.

Things like claiming that the Girl Scouts of America “promote abortion”, or have a “partnership” with Planned Parenthood, or encourage girls to have promiscuous sex. People dedicated to promoting these and other lies about the Girl Scouts have produced a media campaign that has the fingerprints of hate groups like American Family Association all over it, and are going after, of all things, Girl Scout Cookie sales.

They’ve also managed to get a church in Chantilly to evict the local Girl Scout troops that were meeting there, although the pastor of said church lacked the courage and integrity to face the media.

Diane Tipton, president of the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital, must find correcting the record quite tiresome by now. “The Girl Scout organization does not take a position on abortion or birth control, and these topics are not part of the Girl Scout program or our materials. We believe these matters are best discussed by girls with their families.” She gently characterizes the situation this way: “Misinformation is passing as fact.”

That’s true, but too kind. “Misinformation” doesn’t get up by itself and pass as anything. Identifiable people are choosing to tell intentional, deliberate, malicious lies with the objective of doing harm to the Girl Scout organization. People who tell lies like this are lacking a moral center and are not shamed by being exposed as liars. They don’t care, so that isn’t really a consequence.

The good news is that Girl Scout cookie sales are up 6% in response to these attacks. And if you don’t happen to know any local Scouts, you can always find them through the website.

Oh, and the plan to pack that public hearing with liars, by what Equality Loudoun calls the showerheads? That pretty much fell flat, too (but did win a coveted “Worst Person in the World” nod for one of them, so congratulations for that).