Scouts to allow gay leaders

A Boy Scout wears his kerchief embroidered with a rainbow knot during Salt Lake City's annual gay pride parade. File photo: Rick Bowmer

A Boy Scout wears his kerchief embroidered with a rainbow knot during Salt Lake City's annual gay pride parade. File photo: Rick Bowmer

Published Jul 28, 2015

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Dallas - The Boy Scouts of America lifted its outright ban on openly gay adult leaders and employees on Monday, rolling back a policy that has deeply divided the membership of the 105-year-old Texas-based organisation.

The new policy, which takes effect immediately, comes three years after the organisation removed its prohibition on gay youth, but local Boy Scout units chartered by religious organisations will still be permitted to exclude gay adults from serving as den leaders, scoutmasters or camp counsellors.

Churches and other faith-based organisations account for about 70 percent of the 100 000-plus Boy Scout units nationwide. The rest are chartered to civic groups and educational organisations.

The latest action, the Boy Scouts said in a statement posted online, “respects the rights of religious chartered organisations to choose adult volunteers whose beliefs are consistent with their own”.

However, no adult applying for a job as a paid employee or as a volunteer outside a local unit will be denied on the basis of sexual orientation, according to the resolution approved on Monday night.

The resolution lifting the blanket ban on gay adult leaders was approved by 79 percent of the National Executive Board members voting and present, the Boy Scouts said.

The organisation's executive committee had unanimously recommended adoption of the new policy on July 13, citing a “sea change in the law with respect to gay rights”.

The decision follows the landmark ruling in late June by the US Supreme Court legalising same-sex marriages nationwide. In May, the Boy Scouts' president, former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, called the blanket ban on gay Scout leaders “unsustainable” and said it needed to change.

The Irving, Texas-based organisation lifted its ban on gay youth in 2013, but had continued to prohibit the participation of openly gay adults.

The selection of Gates as president of the organisation last year was seen as an opportunity to revisit the policy since he helped end the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy that barred openly gay people from serving in the US military.

The Boy Scouts of America, whose stated mission is to prepare youth for life and leadership, has 2.5 million youth members between the ages of 7 and 21 and about 960 000 volunteers in local units, according to the organisation's website.

The anticipated end of the Boy Scouts ban has been welcomed by gay rights advocates and criticised by conservatives.

Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout and executive director of Scouts for Equality, has labelled the ban a “towering example of explicit, institutional homophobia”.

John Stemberger, chairman of the Christian youth outdoor programme Trail Life USA, said on Friday that lifting the ban would be an affront to Christian morals and will make it “even more challenging for a church to integrate a (Boy Scouts) unit as part of a church's ministry offerings”.

Reuters

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