Boys Scouts of America to Accept Openly Gay Youth

The Boys Scouts of America announced Thursday May 23 the 103-year-old organization will accept openly gay youth as members.

The new policy overturns decades of policy banning gays, and it comes after years of BSA denial that some Boy Scout leaders molested youth members in multiple states across the nation.

Leadership for Redlands Boy Scouts Troop 11 could not immediately be reached to comment for this report.

In a story datelined Grapevine, Tex., the New York Times reported Thursday afternoon, "The Boy Scouts of America on Thursday ended its longstanding policy of forbidding openly gay youths to participate in its activities, a step its chief executive called 'compassionate, caring and kind.'"

The Boy Scouts of America National Council is located in nearby Irving, Texas.

The BSA decision followed years of resistance and wrenching internal debate, the Times reported.

More than 1,400 volunteer leaders from across the country voted, with more than 60 percent approving a measure that said no youth may be denied membership 'on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone,' according to the Times.

The vote overturns a 22-year-old ban on openly gay scouts, USA Today reported.

The ban was based on a line from the 1911 Boy Scouts of America oath: "On my honor I will do my best . . . to keep myself physically strong, mentally alert and morally straight." 

Since 1991 the Scouts had banned openly gay individuals from participating in Scouting because leaders interpreted that being gay was incompatible with being "morally straight," according to USA Today.

Although the proposal ends the ban on gay youths, the Boy Scouts of America put off "the even more divisive question of whether to allow openly gay adults and leaders," the NY Times reported.

For more information on sexual abuse allegations and BSA denials reported by the Associated Press, visit www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/boy-scouts-refused-to-act.

For more information about the Boy Scouts of America from the organization itself, visit www.scouting.org.