Boy Scouts cave to financial pressure, political correctness, lifts gay leader ban
The executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously approved a resolution that would drop the group’s blanket ban on openly gay leaders, a key step that puts the organization on the verge of another historic shift.
In 2013, the BSA ended a ban allowing openly gay boys to become scouts.
Earlier this year, former US defence secretary Robert Gates, who is BSA president, told the group’s national meeting that the ban on gay adults needed to end, saying it was no longer sustainable.
By “sustainable,” Gates means that the BSA are losing financial backers and corporate sponsors and have been battling several lawsuits.
In a statement, the Scouts cast the proposed shift as the “result of the rapid changes in society and increasing legal challenges at the federal, state, and local levels.”
The Canteen Boy sketch on SNL served as a parody of the Boy Scouts ban on gays in the organization.
“What this means is that gay adults who want to get involved, and there are lots of them, they can put the uniform back on, and they can serve openly and honestly in an inclusive unit that will accept them,” Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout and executive director of Scouts for Equality, said in a telephone interview with the Washington Post. “I couldn’t be happier about that.”
While the inclusion of homosexuals appears to be motivated by tolerance, the recent threats by UPS and Merck to pull their financial support appears to also be a factor: “Shipping giant UPS Inc. and drug-manufacturer Merck announced that they were halting donations from their charitable foundations to the Boy Scouts as long as the no-gays policy was in force.” (more on that story here)
“Boy Scouts of America” march (sheet music) Page 1 of 6 1916 Photo/John Philip Sousa public domain via wikimedia commons
