US scouting movement lifts 22-year ban on gay members

 
Bo Wilson24 May 2013

Equal rights campaigners claimed a partial victory today as the Boy Scouts of America threw open its doors to openly gay scouts — but kept its current ban on gay leaders.

More than 60 per cent of the national council, with 1,400 voting members, backed the ending of the ban, in force for 22 years, at a meeting in Texas. The result angered some religious groups that sponsor local scouting chapters.

Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, said: “Homosexual behaviour is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the scout oath and scout law.” However, the Mormon church reacted positively, saying it trusted the policy would be implemented “in an appropriate and effective manner”.

Liberal scout leaders vowed to fight on for the ban on gay adults to be lifted. Rich Ferraro, of gay rights group Glaad, hailed “a significant victory for gay youth across the nation and a clear indication that the ban on gay adult leaders will also inevitably end”.

The change is effective from January. The Boy Scouts of America, with 2.6 million boys and a million adult leaders and volunteers, stressed: “Any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of scouting age is contrary to the virtues of scouting.

“While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in scouting.”

The vote followed a survey of 200,000 leaders, parents and scouts. Openly gay Pascal Tessier, 16, was elated. “I was thinking today could be my last day as a boy scout,” he said. “For gay scouts like me, this vote is life-changing.”

The Boy Scouts of America, which is 103 years old, has long excluded both gay and atheist scouts, but protests over the no-gays policy grew in 2000, when the US Supreme Court upheld the organisation’s right to exclude gays. Scout units lost sponsorship from schools and other groups that adhered to non-discriminatory policies.

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