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What can you say? Gay Eagle Scouts, you’re outta there. How many more young boys will now realize their fellow Scouting families reserve the right to discriminate and get them booted. AP:
After a confidential two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, ruling out any changes despite relentless protest campaigns by some critics.
An 11-member special committee, formed discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, “came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts,” the organization’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, told The Associated Press.
…The Scouts’ chief executive, Bob Mazzuca, contended that most Scout families support the policy, which applies to both leaders and Scouts.
“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” Mazzuca said. “We fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”
That means there will be no action on the current submitted resolution asking for reconsideration of the membership policy.
Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin:
“This is a missed opportunity of colossal proportions. With the country moving toward inclusion, the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have instead sent a message to young people that only some of them are valued. These adults could have taught the next generation of leaders the value of respect, yet they’ve chosen to teach division and intolerance.”
Darlene Nipper, Deputy Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:
“Clinging to a policy of exclusion and intolerance is hardly a good lesson for our young people. Once again, officials of the Boy Scouts of America have turned their backs on a chance to demonstrate fairness, exercise sound judgment, and serve as a role model for valuing others, free of bias and prejudice. This is deeply disappointing. Discrimination is never the right policy, period.”
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So BSA will continue to teach “Christian” values — intolerance, arrogance, discrimination, and ignorance.
There, fixed it for ‘em.
They’re a Mormon front group. That’s all anyone needs to know about them
You are correct about “christian values”. You have to understand that even bigger than the gay exclusion for leaders is the “spiritual” requirement for the boys/girls themselves. If the boy/girl (taking into account the explorers, doesn’t believe in a god, thay cannot be a member of scouting.
And for the rest of the readers, did anyone ever believe that the boy scouts would change their policy just because of a resolution. They have a big enough problem now with natural experimentation.
This is what happens when a perfectly respectable nonpartison, nonsectarian youth group gets captured by radical sectarian religious intolerants. My Scout troop was sponsored by the American Legion in our small town; there was no religious test except faithfulness to one’s own creed. I’m not sure athiests could be members but we had the full range of religions in our troop represented in our town.
And there were gay scouts. To that I can attest with accuracy.
Just boys. The Girl Scouts don’t discriminate against either atheism or sexual orientation
When this “reconsideration” topic first came up…waaaay back in my mind there was a little glimmer of hope…but now it’s sadly a “no surprise here” kinda feeling.