Boy Scout leader John Stemberger, founder of OnMyHonor.net, speaks to reporters at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas. The OnMyHonor.net website says it supports ‘scouting’s timeless values and their opposition to open homosexuality in the scouts’.
AFP/Washington
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) said on Thursday that it will allow openly gay youths to join the organisation but maintain a ban on gay adult leaders, after a vote at its annual meeting in Texas.
Sixty-one per cent of the estimated 1,400 delegates of the BSA’s National Council voted to end a ban that for decades has barred open homosexuality in the movement.
The resolution, passed during the gathering at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Centre in Grapevine, Texas, will go into force on January 1, 2014.
“The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organisation to be consumed by a single, divisive, and unresolved societal issue,” the BSA said in a statement, adding that there were no plans to further review the issue. “While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting.”
The text said “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone”.
It updated the BSA’s “membership standards”, which are seen as symbolising traditional US values.
The measure reaffirmed existing rules for adult Scout leaders.
The 103-year-old institution, famed for its outdoor training programmes and support of wholesome virtues, has close links to the country’s conservative and religious heartland.
The Boy Scouts, which is separate from the Girl Scouts of the USA, counts 2.6mn boys in its membership.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 in favour of the Boy Scouts, saying that the prohibition against openly homosexual members was part of its right as a private organisation to free association.
Interest groups were quick to react.
“Today’s vote is a significant victory for gay youth across the nation and a clear indication that the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay adult leaders will also inevitably end,” said Rich Ferraro with the gay rights group GLAAD.
The BSA “heard from religious leaders, corporate sponsors and so many Scouting families who want an end to discrimination against gay people, and GLAAD will continue this work with those committed to equality in Scouting until gay parents and adults are able to participate”, Ferraro said.
Tony Perkins with the conservative Family Research Council vehemently disagreed with the vote result.
“Sadly, the Boy Scouts’ legacy of producing great leaders has become yet another casualty of moral compromise,” Perkins said in a statement.
The Boy Scout delegates “succumbed to a concerted and manipulative effort by the national BSA leadership”, he said.
The current BSA leadership “will bend with the winds of popular culture, and the whims of liberal special interest groups. There is little doubt that God will soon be ushered out of scouting”, Perkins said.
Until there is new leadership, his group “will stand with those BSA Councils who will now act to protect boys from a new policy that only creates moral confusion and disrespects the views of the vast majority of Scouting parents”, Perkins said.
A Quinnipiac University poll released in February found that voters across the country are 55% in favour of an end to the Scouts’ ban, with only 33% against.