Boy Scouts formalizes policy allowing openly gay leaders

LifeSiteNews.com

IRVING, Tex. — The Boy Scouts of America took the final step in July to lift its ban on Scout leaders who openly profess homosexuality – but many gay activists decried the change for not going far enough.

The BSA executive committee passed a resolution to lift the ban and then on July 27, the National Executive Board ratified the decision, with 79 percent of the board’s 80 members agreeing.

The shift in policy incurred lukewarm approval from homosexual activists, with many expressing disapproval of the policy’s religious exemption clause. Gary Signorile, the editor-at-large for the Huffington Post’s “Gay Voices” site, blasted the BSA’s provision allowing individual chapters to cleave to their consciences on the matter of same-sex-attracted Scout leaders.

“By allowing the religious-affiliated troops to still ban gay adults,” Signorile wrote, “the BSA is making a religious exemption seem like a reasonable compromise when in fact it is allowing the very people who would discriminate to keep discriminating.”

Signorile echoed the sentiments of liberal groups who hope to curtail the freedom of religious expression for Catholics, Mormons, and others in the United States who define marriage as between one man and one woman.

The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, declared recently that it would no longer defend Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) federally or among the states.

Scouts for Equality, a homosexual activist group formed in 2012, called the decision the “beginning of a new chapter,” an example of “going forward, not back.” A press release from the group piled on against people who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds: “In effect, Boy Scout units sponsored by churches will have the right to continue discriminating against gay adults on a troop-by-troop basis.”

The National Catholic Committee on Scouting offered a guarded response to the July 27 resolution, noting, “it appears that the resolution respects the needs of Catholic-chartered organizations in the right to choose leaders whose character and conduct are consistent with those of Catholic teaching.”

However, “we express strong concern about the practical implications of this resolution, especially for our young people in Scouting, and whether the term ‘sexual orientation’ will be correctly understood and applied only in reference to sexual inclination and not to sexual conduct or behavior.”