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Boy Scouts executive committee OKs ending ban on gay leaders

W!nston

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Boy Scouts executive committee OKs ending ban on gay leaders
Associated Press | By DAVID CRARY | 4:24 pm July 13 2015

NEW YORK (AP) — The executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously approved a resolution that would end the organization's blanket ban on gay adult leaders and let individual scout units set their own policy on the long-divisive issue.

In a statement Monday, the BSA said the resolution was approved by the 17-member executive committee on Friday, and would become official policy if ratified by the organization's 80-member National Executive Board at a meeting on July 27.

The committee action follows an emphatic speech in May by the BSA's president, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, declaring that the longstanding ban on participation by openly gay adults was no longer sustainable.

In 2013, after bitter internal debate, the BSA decided to allow openly gay youth as scouts, but not gay adults as leaders. That change took effect in January 2014.

Under the new resolution, local scout units would be able to select adult leaders without regard to sexual orientation — a stance that several scout councils had already adopted in defiance of the official national policy.

"This change allows Scouting's members and parents to select local units, chartered to organizations with similar beliefs, that best meet the needs of their families," the BSA statement said. "This change would also respect the right of religious chartered organizations to continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own."

Several denominations that sponsor large numbers of Scout units — including the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention — have been apprehensive about ending the ban on gay adults.

Gates, who became the BSA's president in May 2014, said at the time that he personally would have favored ending the ban on gay adults, but he opposed any further debate after the Scouts' policymaking body upheld the ban. In May, however, he said at the BSA's annual national meeting that recent events "have confronted us with urgent challenges I did not foresee and which we cannot ignore."

He cited a defiant announcement by the BSA's New York City chapter in early April that it had hired the nation's first openly gay Eagle Scout as a summer camp leader. He also cited broader developments related to gay rights, and warned that rigidly maintaining the ban "will be the end of us as a national movement."

The Scouts' resolution was hailed by Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout raised by two lesbian moms who now heads the advocacy group Scouts for Equality.

"While this policy change is not perfect — BSA's religious chartering partners will be allowed to continue to discriminate against gay adults — it is difficult to overstate the importance of today's announcement," Wahls said.

SOURCE

And the "Proud Mary" Riverboat of Gay Equality keeps on rollin', rollin', rollin' down the river ... :thumbs up:

:cheers:

Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary [Official Video]

 

gb2000ie

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Good!

Lets hope this was done because they realised the error of their ways, and not because a lawyer told them it was the safest thing to do post-recent-SCOTUS-ruling.

B.
 

W!nston

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Either way it adds to the momentum Gay Equality has going for it as the next battles loom. We have to win anti-discrimination protection in all 50 states and at the federal level.

Bigots and homophobes will always exist. We cannot change everyone's minds or their hearts. But we can expect fair treatment under the law in education, employment, housing and in our pursuit of happiness be free from persecution.
 

W!nston

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How the Boy Scouts changed their stance on gay leaders
Los Angeles Times | By JENA MCGREGOR | July 10 2015 5:00 AM ET

What a difference a year makes.

In May 2014, in his first speech as president of the Boy Scouts of America, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he wouldn't push the issue of gay leaders in the Scouts.

While he would have personally supported allowing gay troop leaders, he said, he would "oppose any effort" to reopen the discussion during his tenure. Such a debate, Gates said, could "provoke a formal, permanent split in this movement" that neither side would be likely to survive.

And yet, just 12 months later, Gates made a speech in which he said exactly the opposite: The Boy Scouts of America faced a threat to its very being if it did not reconsider its national ban on gay leaders, he told attendees at the same meeting in May of this year.

"I support a policy that accepts and respects our different perspectives and beliefs," Gates said, adding that he supported allowing religious groups to set their own standards. "I truly fear that any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement."

Last week, the Boy Scouts announced that its executive committee had unanimously adopted a resolution that was much like what Gates proposed.

It would end the national ban on openly gay volunteer leaders, allowing local units to set their own policies. (This would mean religious organizations that charter Boy Scout troops could choose not to include gay leaders.)

If the change is ratified by the Scouts' National Executive Board on July 27, it will become policy.

Gates' experience with the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy made him uniquely qualified to manage this likely transition for the Scouts. And his speech this May helped to pave the way for the changes that the executive committee has now approved.

Gates spoke about how quickly the country is changing, the need to "deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be," and his reasons for pushing for a revision to the policy.

"My only purpose — my only reason for assuming this leadership role — is to preserve the Boy Scouts of America in recognition of all it has done for this country, and all it can and must do in the future," he said.

Yet while it was an urgent speech, it was also a reactive one. Gates did not call for changing policy because it was the right thing to do to be more inclusive, or because of the mixed message the policy was sending gay members about what the organization thought of them once they became adults.

Rather, his case for change was based on the challenges that he expected the organization would face if it didn't adjust its ways.

In other words, Gates appears to be responding to pushback against the current policy, together with rapidly changing laws and public sentiment on the issues of gay rights.

In New York, the local Scouts council hired an 18-year-old openly gay Eagle Scout named Pascal Tessier to work at a camp this summer. In doing so, its leaders defied the national ban.

Richard Mason, a board member of the Greater New York Councils, told the New York Times that "this young man applied for a job. We judged his application on the merits. He's highly qualified. We said yes to him irrespective of his sexual orientation."

That kind of proactive leadership within an organization is key for forcing change on divisive issues.

New York wasn't alone: Gates mentioned not only the New York council's provocation in his May speech, but the "more and more councils taking a position in their mission statements and public documents contrary to national policy."

He also noted churches that had rejected the national policy against gay leaders, a position that ended up "placing scouting between a boy and his church."

No doubt the shifting legal and public opinion landscape on gay rights provided air cover for those local groups to defy the ban.

The Supreme Court's recent landmark ruling on gay marriage, and state and local laws that increasingly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, all make for a vastly different legal context. Legal threats may have played a role too.

But change on an issue as controversial as this one takes leadership from those at the top of the organization as well as lower down, especially in an entity as historically tied to the status quo as the Boy Scouts.

Gates may have been reactive and hesitant to push for change from the start, but he's ultimately addressing the issue straightforwardly and with urgency.

The real credit, however, once again goes to those putting pressure on him from within the scouting community itself.

When local Boy Scout leaders decided that the best message they could send to young people was not about following a national rule but taking a stand for their beliefs, they exemplified what leadership in their organization ultimately looks like.

Jena McGregor writes a daily column analyzing leadership in the news for the Washington Post's On Leadership section.

SOURCE

As very young children we had a nanny named Marie. One of the things she often said was 'The Devil may have brought it but the Lord surely sent it'.

That saying came to mind as I read this, hehe.

"... ♫ oh the times they are a changin' ♫ ..."
 

W!nston

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Boy Scouts to end ban on gay leaders
Dallas Morning News | 26 July 2015 12:07 PM

The Boy Scouts of America is expected on Monday to end its blanket ban on gay leaders — a turning point for an organization that has been in turmoil over the issue.

But some scouting groups will still be able to limit leadership jobs to heterosexuals.

To gain the acquiescence of conservative religious groups that sponsor many dens and troops, like the Mormon and Roman Catholic Churches, the policy will allow church-run units to pick leaders who agree with their moral precepts.

“There are differences of opinion, and we need to be respectful of them,” said Michael Harrison, a businessman who led the Boy Scouts in Orange County, Calif., and is one of many leaders who lobbied internally for change. “It doesn’t mean the Mormons have to pick a gay scoutmaster, but please don’t tell the Unitarians they can’t.”

Already struggling to reverse a long-term decline in membership, the Boy Scouts have been increasingly consumed over the last two decades by battles over the exclusion of gay people, divisions that threatened to fracture the organization. Conservative partners saw the policy as a bulwark against unwanted social change, but the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay stance was costing it public support and cachet as well as corporate funders, and lately has brought on the threat of costly lawsuits.

In a contentious meeting in 2013, the Scouts decided to permit participation by gay youths but not adults. On Monday, bowing to still-accelerating shifts in opinion and law, the Scouts will relax their policy barring openly gay adults from serving as the den leaders, scoutmasters and camp counselors who are at the heart of the scouting experience.

The Scouts will also on Monday bar discrimination based on sexual orientation in all official facilities and paying jobs across the country, heading off potential suits and violations of employment discrimination laws.

But to keep some of the larger church sponsors in the fold, Scout executives concluded that they must allow for diverse policies for local volunteers. Church-based units may “continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own,” according to a statement that the Scouts’ top executives sent this month to regional board members.

The step, if incomplete in the view of many gay rights campaigners, is nonetheless a momentous one for an organization that has struggled to keep the allegiance of conservatives as it faced open rebellion from more liberal regions.

The proposal follows a public warning in May by Robert M. Gates, the Scouts’ voluntary two-year president and a former defense secretary, that the ban on gay adults “cannot be sustained.” The national governing board, which includes scores of corporate, civic and church leaders who share a devotion to scouting, is expected to provide overwhelming support for the resolution in a meeting to be conducted Monday by telephone.

With this latest change, Mr. Gates and other Scout executives hope to defuse an issue that has caused growing turmoil, even as membership — more than 2.4 million youths in 2014, with nearly a million adult volunteers — has steadily declined. Over time, the share of units sponsored by churches of all denominations has climbed to 70 percent, with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the United Methodists and the Roman Catholics accounting for the largest shares.

“It’s a great day for America and for scouting,” David Boies, a prominent lawyer, said of Monday’s expected decision. His firm helped create pressure for change, threatening to sue the Boy Scouts if the organization tried to bar a gay Eagle Scout from a camp job this summer in New York. Mr. Boies has also been a legal champion of same-sex marriage.

But Mr. Boies added: “I think this will be a way station on the road to full equality,” and he questioned whether the exemption for religious sponsors could endure.

Mr. Gates has won praise for acting decisively to resolve a conflict that threatened to fracture the Boy Scouts. An Eagle Scout who ran the C.I.A. and who served as defense secretary under Republican and Democratic presidents, he oversaw the end of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay service in the military.

“Because of his history, he was in a position to exercise leadership on this issue,” said Zach Wahls, 24, an Eagle Scout and executive director of Scouts for Equality, which has mounted public campaigns for change. “The people in the Scouts trusted him to handle it well.”

The Boy Scouts have a tortured history on gay rights, reflecting both the wider culture wars and the pull of regions and partners with conflicting views.

In 2000, the Scouts’ exclusionary policy prevailed before the Supreme Court. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court said the Scouts had the right to force out a gay assistant scoutmaster because the private organization’s stance that homosexuality was not “morally straight” was part of the group’s “expressive message.”

But the victory proved Pyrrhic. Many schools and public agencies severed their ties. At the same time, the share of religious sponsors climbed, and the Scouts began attracting more conservative families, said Richard Ellis, a political scientist at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., and author of the 2014 book “Judging the Boy Scouts of America: Gay Rights, Freedom of Association and the Dale Case.”

Now, he said, “the Boy Scouts are playing catch-up” as they seek a broader constituency.

The issue reached a boiling point over the last three years. In 2012, the group announced that it would retain the ban on gay members. But gay rights groups like Glaad and Scouts for Equality helped publicize cases of discrimination and push several major corporate donors, including Intel, United Parcel Service and Merck, to withdraw their support.

In 2013, the national leadership proposed what proved to be an illusory middle ground — to permit gay youths, a less sensitive issue with conservatives, but to continue to ban openly gay adults.

The change was welcomed, but brought little peace. More corporate donors withdrew, and lawsuits claiming illegal discrimination under state laws were brewing that, the Scouts’ own lawyers concluded, the group was sure to lose.

An acute legal threat emerged this year from the Greater New York Councils, in New York City. In a public challenge designed to force the issue, the affiliate hired Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout and gay activist, as a camp counselor.

Mr. Boies and his firm announced that they would represent Mr. Pascal and that they were ready to sue under New York law if the Scouts’ national headquarters rescinded the job offer.

“We tried to structure this so that the national organization didn’t have any realistic alternative but to change policy,” Mr. Boies said in an interview.

In the end, national officials did not interfere. Instead, at the Scouts’ annual meeting in May, Mr. Gates said the Boy Scouts must quickly change before the courts made them do so.

After the vote to permit gay youths in 2013, some evangelical Christian churches ended their sponsorships, and membership declined by 6 percent, compared with declines of 2 percent to 4 percent in previous years. Youth membership fell again in 2014, by 7 percent.

But Mr. Gates appears to have persuaded major sponsors, including the Mormons and the Roman Catholics, to accept the new policy for adults so long as their own units are given latitude. In a recent statement, the Mormon Church reiterated its “right to select Scout leaders who adhere to moral and religious principles that are consistent with our doctrines and beliefs.”

In May, after Mr. Gates’s plea, Edward P. Martin, chairman of the National Catholic Committee on Scouting, said: “We agree with Mr. Gates that there is cause to act. We also agree with Mr. Gates that chartered organizations must be allowed ‘to establish leadership standards consistent with their faith.’”

Further defections are likely, especially by Southern evangelical members, said Jay L. Lenrow, a lawyer and voluntary Scouts executive from Baltimore who, like Mr. Harrison, has long pushed for change from within.

“But I think we’ve lost far more people over the last 14 or 15 years because we were not inclusive,” said Mr. Lenrow, who served as chairman of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting, among other senior roles.

SOURCE

What a load of crap:

But Mr. Gates appears to have persuaded major sponsors, including the Mormons and the Roman Catholics, to accept the new policy for adults so long as their own units are given latitude. In a recent statement, the Mormon Church reiterated its “right to select Scout leaders who adhere to moral and religious principles that are consistent with our doctrines and beliefs.”

In May, after Mr. Gates’s plea, Edward P. Martin, chairman of the National Catholic Committee on Scouting, said: “We agree with Mr. Gates that there is cause to act. We also agree with Mr. Gates that chartered organizations must be allowed ‘to establish leadership standards consistent with their faith.’”

I guess religious freedom does trump human rights. I wonder how this would be playing out if the ban was aimed at Blacks rather than Gays and I wonder if the religious bigots wanted to be allowed an exemption to ban Black leaders how that would be handled by the Scouts?
 

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Boy Scouts End Ban on Gay Leaders, Over Protests by Mormon Church

Boy Scouts End Ban on Gay Leaders, Over Protests by Mormon Church
AP/NYTimes | By Erik Eckholm | July 27 2015

Boy Scouts End Ban on Gay Leaders, Over Protests by Mormon Church

The Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its ban on openly gay adult leaders.

But the new policy allows church-sponsored units to choose local unit leaders who share their precepts, even if that means restricting such positions to heterosexual men.

Despite this compromise, the Mormon Church said it might leave the organization anyway. Its stance surprised many and raised questions about whether other conservative sponsors, including the Roman Catholic Church, might follow suit.

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today's vote," said a statement issued by the church moments after the Scouts announced the new policy. "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."

Only two weeks ago, the Mormon Church hinted it could remain in the fold so long as its units could pick their own leaders.

The top Boy Scouts leaders, including Robert M. Gates, the current president and a former defense secretary who pushed for the new policy, did not immediately respond to the Mormon declaration. In previous statements, Mr. Gates expressed the hope that with the exemption for religious groups, the Boy Scouts might avoid a devastating splintering.

Many scouting leaders said they had not expected the Mormon Church's sharp response and threat to leave.

"My assumption was that the concept voted on today had been fully vetted so as to avoid any unnecessary surprises," said jay Lenrow, a longtime volunteer scout leader in Baltimore who is on the executive committee of the Scouts' northeast region and serves on the organization's national religious relationships committee.

"I can only say that I'm hopeful that when the leadership of the L.D.S. Church meets and discusses the issue, that they will find a way to continue to support scouting," Mr. Lenrow added.Mormons use the Boy Scouots as their main nonreligious activity for boys, and the Cub Scouts units they sponsor accounted for 17 percent of all youths in scouting in 2013, the last year for which data have been published.

Under the policy adopted Monday, discrimination based on sexual orientation will also be barred in all Boys Scouts offices and for all paid jobs - a step that could head off looming lawsuits in New York, Colorado and other states that prohibit such discrimination in employment.

One legal threat was immediately averted. In response to the change, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, announced on Monday that his office was ending its investigation of the Scouts for violating state anti-discrimination laws.

The Boy Scouts' national executive board, composed of 71 civic, corporate and church leaders, adopted the changes with 79 percent of those who participated in a telephone meeting voting in favor, according to an announcement issued by the Scouts. The announcement did not say how many board members were not present.

The policy change, which was expected, was widely seen as a watershed for an institution that has faced growing turmoil over its stance toward gay people, even as it struggles to halt a long-term decline in members. It was praised by gay-rights organizations as a major if incomplete step toward ending discrimination.

In 2013, facing growing public and internal pressure, the Scouts decided that openly gay youths could participate, but not adults. That approach satisfied no one, forcing the ejection of gay Eagle Scouts when they turned 18 but still causing some conservatives to quit.

Mr. Gates gave an urgent warning in May that because of cascading social and legal changes, the organization had no choice but to end its ban on gay leaders.

In a statement on July 13, the Mormon Church seemed to suggest that it could accept the compromise adopted on Monday. The statement said that any new leadership standard must preserve for its churches "the right to select Scout leaders who adhere to moral and religious principles that are consistent with our doctrines and beliefs."

But the tone of Monday's statement from the Mormons, after the formal announcement of the new Boy Scouts policy, was markedly more negative.

"The church has always welcomed all boys to its scouting units regardless of sexual orientation," the statement by the Mormon Church headquarters said. "However, the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the church and what have traditionally bee the values of the Boy Scouts of America."

The statement also suggested another reason the Mormons are considering withdrawing from the Boy Scouts: the possible creation of its own boys' organization to serve its worldwide membership.

"As a global organization with members in 170 countries, the Church has long been evaluating the limitations that fully one-half of its youth face where Scouting is not available," the statement said.

Some conservative evangelical churches ended ties with the Boy Scouts after the 2013 decision to admit openly gay youths. Total national enrollment of youths, which had declined by a few percentage points in many prior years, fell by 6 percent in 2013 and by 7 percent in 2014, to 2.4 million.

More departures by religious conservatives are likely, said Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mr. Moore expressed skepticism about the Scouts' promise to let church-sponsored units exclude gay leaders on religious grounds.

"After the Scouts' shift on membership, they told religious groups this wouldn't affect leadership," he said. "Now churches are told that these changes will not affect faith-based groups. Churches know that this is the final word only until the next evolution."

But scouting executives hope that with Monday's change they can renew ties with corporate donors, schools and public agencies and attract parents who had steered their children away from scouting because of the policy.

"Moving forward, we will continue to focus on reaching and serving youth, helping them to grow into good, strong citizens," said the statement Monday from the Boy Scouts.

The toughest challenge, Scout leaders say, may be to capture the time and enthusiasm of today's increasingly urban, diverse and over-scheduled youths. To increase their appeal, the Boy Scouts have built new adventure camps with mountain biking and zip lines, and have created new merit badges in fields like robotics and animation.

SOURCE

The L.D.S. are showing their true colors, again. Now they will use their wealth and power to go into commercial competition with the B.S.A. That's 'religious freedom' at its finest, isn't it?

I hope the B.S.A. does the right thing by becoming a leader in the struggle for Gay Equality. I hope we will soon see ad campaigns for the 'New Boy Scouts of America' that shows Gay Scouts and Leaders participating in scouting. There are some great examples of successful ad campaigns for so many companies now. The BSA should have not trouble getting it done and I hope GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign and the Episcopal Church all stand up for the BSA in the commercial. Inclusion not exclusion.

The Mormons are just as power crazy and just plain old crazy as Scientology. Their dogma is very similar, IMO.
 

gorgik9

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If "religious freedom" means that religious organisation - No, I take back: not "religious" but SOME christian organizations, so let's call a spade a spade - got the right to spit some groups of american citizens in the face, then you don't got problems not with the religious / christian organizations, you got this much more fundamental problem of the acidic homophobia in american society.

As far as I know it's the US Congress allowing the so-called religious freedom to out-trumph all different other civic rights and freedoms. Slavery is a very biblical notion, what do you do about that, so having a few dozens of black people and owning them must the right of us biblical biblicists. I mean, NOT owning slaves is an abomination, isn't it?
Sure it is!!!!
 

gb2000ie

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The LDS just look like idiots.

The scouts bent over backwards to let them continue to be bigots, but even that was not good enough. If they splinter off, who is going to think they were in the right and the scouts were in the wrong? Not history!

B.
 
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