The Boy Scouts of America is asking members to vote on whether to allow gay kids to join, but still plans to exclude gay adults from leadership positions in the organization.
A proposed addition to the Boy Scouts’ Membership Standards would stipulate that: “No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” The change was recommended by the National Executive Committee, which spent weeks soliciting feedback from Scout members and listening to public opinion.
The Boy Scouts will continue to prohibit gay adults from becoming scout leaders, however. The resolution “would maintain the current membership policy for all adult leaders of the Boy Scouts of America,” according to a press release.
The new policy doesn’t go far enough to remedy the Boy Scouts’ discriminatory treatment of gays, said a former scout leader.
“The Boy Scouts are once again forcing me to look my children in the eyes and tell them that our family isn’t good enough,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, a scout leader who was expelled last year for being a lesbian, in a statement to MSNBC.
But Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said that any concession to gay activists was too much.
“This resolution would introduce open homosexuality into the ranks and eventually the leadership of Scouting,” he said in a statement.
The FRC will sponsor a webcast event next month called “Stand with Scouts Sunday” that will focus on ways “to preserve Scouting as its founders envisioned it — as a resource for young men to develop in morally, mentally, and physically healthy ways, free to be boys and teens without the invasion of cultural controversies.”
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