Then why do they keep putting that "avowed" qualifier in there? It means something, or it wouldn't be in there. What it means as far as I can tell (based on things like the Camp Yawgoog case) is that gays in Scouting are acceptable to National as long as they keep their mouths shut.
What we are discussing here is Blue America's attempts to overthrow the rule by issue creep and what used to be called "salami-slicing".
What we are discussing here is BSA's policies on gays, how the BSA has expressed it, and what they mean by that expression.
BSA National may never have admitted it in a court brief or a public statement, but the entire issue has been precisely about pederasty and the gay drive to get at the boys.
Now this is issue creep. The BSA explicitly states (as referenced upthread) that it's not about pederasty, and you say, "Oh, well, they're lying, it really is, now let's talk about that." Well, no. I take National at their word. If they're lying, then they've got no right to uphold themselves as the guardian of American morality.
I certainly am concerned about child molestation in my unit and in the BSA in general. But since there's plenty of it that has been committed by people who have never been demonstrated to have sex with people their same age and gender, maintaining the BSA's current membership standards isn't going to decrease it. What's going to decrease and eliminate it is if Scouters and Unit Committees take the BSA's Youth Protection policies seriously. If they do, then the sexual orientation of Scouters won't matter with regards to the danger of child molestation. Every time I read a story about youth being molested in Scouting, I see a violation of Youth Protection somewhere in the story. Except for one case, where a couple of leaders colluded, but the Unit Committee and parents should have caught that.
As far as the main body of your post goes, it's quite informative, but it concentrates on where you're trying to move the debate to, not where it is.
It seems to me, as an outsider, that BSA's best course of action now is to step up and 1) reaffirm the "no gays" policy that they defended before the Supreme Court, 2) explain that the policy is an integral part of the YP program, 3) restate the need for the YP program, and 4) state for the record that yes, the gay ban is about pederasty and the disproportionate tendency among gay men to participate in, or wink at, pederastic abuse of youths, inasmuch as it is visited not just on gay youth, but on all youth indiscriminately. ... It's high time that BSA grasped that nettle and pulled it up.
You are of course entitled to that opinion. But the BSA has so far always held the opposite, that the two are not connected. So this would be a big change in policy. My guess is that the information they get is that there is no connection, so they won't adopt this as policy.
There are gays in Scouting. There have always been gays in Scouting. There always will be gays in Scouting. National understands this. They also understand that Scouting is for boys, not for adults. If a straight son of a homosexual wants to be in Scouting, National accepts that the boy's parent will want to register along with their son, just like any other parent, and as long as the parent keeps quiet about their own sexual orientation, they'll accept them. For the homosexuals who want to join to recruit or abuse children, the exclusion of "avowed homosexuals" and the YP policies serve to deal with them.
You mentioned Blue America. There are a lot of Scouts in Blue America, probably about 1/2 of them. Scouting is not reserved to, owned by, or made up overwhelmingly of Red America. Both are members of the BSA in full and have equal rights to determine what Scouting means and how it will be run. Some Scouters would hunt down and expel every single gay or lesbian Scout and Scouter. Some Scouters would welcome them all with open arms. The BSA needs to find a way to accomodate both parties, and their current policies are an attempt to do so.
No, it means that National thinks they can't (or in some Councils, as you point out, won't) do anything legally about gays who don't come out. The practical problem, then, is that you wind up waiting for tacitly gay Scouters to come out in a tent. You undermine both the BSA's position on "avowed" gay scouters generally and the Youth Protection program by winking at closeted gays and accepting the "there are always gays around" argument as a reason for acquiescing in their participation in Scouting, pace National's James Dale brief. That's called relaxation. Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York with de minimis policing, not with the relaxarian policies of his predecessors. "There's always a thief" -- yes, indeedy, and that's why you always chase him and collar him and never let him slide.
You also introduce cognitive dissonance, which countercultural advocates are perfectly happy with but which is damaging to the coherence of the "morally straight" message of Scouting, when you strongly imply -- or even explicitly state as the case you cited shows (with which I'm unfamiliar, sorry) -- that "avowed" gays who are honest about their orientation must be expelled, but that closeted gays who hide their orientation from National can be rewarded with continued participation. Not a very straight formulary.
Some other thoughts occurred to me when I read your post, but I'll save them for later, and more thought. Thanks for the reply.