Scouts propose to lift ban on gay youths
Majority in membership survey support continuing to exclude homosexual adults as leaders
NEW YORK The Boy Scouts of America is proposing to lift the ban for youth members but continue to exclude gays as adult leaders, under pressure to lift its long-standing ban.
The Scouts announced Friday that the proposal would be submitted to the roughly 1,400 voting members of its National Council at a meeting in Texas the week of May 20.
The iconic organization has been under intense pressure from activists and advocacy groups on both sides since it announced last January that it was considering ending the ban, but leaving the final decision in the hands of local groups.
Under that change, the different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units would be able to decide for themselves how to address the issue — either maintaining an exclusion of gays, as is now required of all units, or opening up their membership.
Gay-rights groups have demanded a complete lifting of the ban, while some churches and conservative groups want it maintained in its entirety, raising the likelihood that the new proposal will draw continued criticism from both sides.
Indeed, the BSA, in making its announcement, estimated that easing the ban on gay adults could cause widespread defections that cost the organization 100,000 to 350,000 members.
In January, the BSA said it was considering a plan to give local Scout units the option of admitting gays as both youth members and adult leaders or continuing to exclude them.
On Friday, the BSA said it changed course in part because of surveys sent out starting in February to about one million members of the Scouting community.
The review, said a BSA statement, “created an outpouring of feedback” from 200,000 respondents, some supporting the exclusion policy and others favouring a change.
“While perspectives and opinions vary significantly, parents, adults in the Scouting community and teens alike tend to agree that youth should not be denied the benefits of Scouting,” the statement said.
As a result, the BSA’s executive committee drafted a resolution proposing to remove the ban on gay youth while keeping it for all adult leaders.
“The proposed resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting,” the statement said.
The BSA described its survey as “the most comprehensive listening exercise in its history.”
In a summary of the findings, it said respondents supported the BSA’s current policy of excluding gays by a margin of 61 per cent to 34 per cent, while a majority of younger parents and teens opposed the policy.
It said overwhelming majorities of parents, teens and members of the Scouting community felt it would be unacceptable to deny an openly gay Scout an Eagle Scout Award solely because of his sexual orientation.
Included in the survey were dozens of churches and other religious organizations that sponsor a majority of Scout units.
The BSA said many of the religious organizations expressed concern over having gay adult leaders and were less concerned about gay youth members.
Many Scout units are sponsored by relatively conservative religious denominations that have supported the ban on gays in the past — notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.