Boy Scout Board Approves End to Blanket Ban on Gay Adult Leaders
Source: Associated Press
Boy Scout board approves end to blanket ban on gay adults
BY DAVID CRARY
JUL. 27, 2015 7:32 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons.
The new policy, aimed at easing a controversy that has embroiled the Boy Scouts for years, takes effect immediately. It was approved by the BSA's National Executive Board on a 45-12 vote during a closed-to-the-media teleconference.
"For far too long this issue has divided and distracted us," said the BSA's president, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "Now it's time to unite behind our shared belief in the extraordinary power of Scouting to be a force for good."
The stage had been set for Monday's action on May 21, when Gates told the Scouts' national meeting that the long-standing ban on participation by openly gay adults was no longer sustainable. He said the ban was likely to be the target of lawsuits that the Scouts likely would lose.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c4795353c1904ca1ab56691cb0a356e6/boy-scout-leaders-vote-ending-blanket-ban-gay-adults
= new reply since forum marked as read
By ERIK ECKHOLMJULY 27, 2015
[font size=3]The Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its nationwide ban on openly gay adult leaders. But despite a compromise allowing conservative church-sponsored units to pick their own volunteer leaders, the Mormon Church, the country’s largest sponsor of Scout units, said it might leave the organization.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board,” said a statement issued by the Mormon Church moments after the Scouts announced the new policy.
“In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the church’s governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet,” the statement said. “When the leadership of the church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with scouting will need to be examined.”
Mormons use the Boy Scouts as their main nonreligious activity for boys, and the Cub Scout and Boy Scout units they sponsor accounted for 17 percent of all youths in scouting in 2013, the last year for which data have been published. The negative reaction to Monday’s vote took many Boy Scout leaders by surprise; it had been widely assumed that the exemption for religious sponsors would keep them in the fold.
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The Mormons are welcome to form their own organization. Maybe they'd like to join the Seventh Day Adventists, and form their own scouting-like organization, rather than warping scouting to make it fit their expectations.
http://www.gcyouthministries.org/Ministries/Pathfinders/tabid/54/Default.aspx
