U.S. Boy Scouts set to end ban on gay members : spokesperson

Reuters ^ | April 19, 2013 | Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

[broken_arrow1]

The Boy Scouts of America called to end a long-standing ban on openly gay members, a spokesman said on Friday, but the organization's board must still vote in May on whether to ratify the resolution.

If the vote is approved, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," Deron Smith, the organization's spokesman, told Reuters.

Smith noted that the decision drew from three months of research, surveys and discussions and was "among the most complex and challenging issues facing the BSA and society today." he deliberations over whether to admit openly gay and lesbian members to the Boy Scouts has divided organizers, polarized its corporate and religious sponsors, and placed the group at the center of a nationwide debate over gay rights over the past two years.

"This is a historic change for the Boy Scouts," said Patrick Boyle, whose 1994 book "Scout's Honor" examined sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America.

"You have a more than hundred-year-old organization changing what it considered a fundamental belief just a decade ago. That says a lot about the Scouts and a lot about how far the gay rights movement has come in the United States."

[MichaelCorleone]

“Please don’t punish your kids for what the leadership is doing.”

Punish?

Methinks you don't understand the situation here. What ‘the leadership is doing’ will have far-reaching effects that makes every boy vulnerable to the urges and whims of the homosexuals, not to mention the likelihood of indoctrination.

Once a boy is traumatized from the perversion of homosexual sex it's too late; the damage has been done.

[sickoflibs]

I donated every year for about the last 8 years but no more.
Let the gays give them money.

[SandRat]

Scouts may give in to homosexual activists

[grobdriver]

"You have a more than hundred-year-old organization changing what it considered a fundamental belief just a decade ago."

And why?

Might as well close it down so that other people with more courage can create another organization.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

If this happens, a new organization, a “Heritage Scouts of America” will need to be formed.

[presently no screen name]

I firmly believe that the majority of the BSA has honor and is still “morally straight”. I’m very eager to see how we will repel the interlopers.

So do I! Repel them by casting them out - anyone who votes to allow 'it'/evil in' as they have no honor! Or those with honor - vote to disband the organization.

[informavoracious]

Didn’t the “Little Rascals” already create the “he-man woman haters club?

That's the idea. Get boys at the age that they think girls have cooties and convince them it means they're gay before they have a chance to grow out of the woman-hating stage.

[Antoninus]

It means the end of the Scouts, really. After what we Catholics have experienced, I wouldn’t even consider putting my kid in a situation that is tolerant of homosexuals being around my kids. Sorry, not playing.

[informavoracious]

Its ‘cool’ to be gay now.

Or gender fluid. I flipped on MTV one day and there was a teenage girl who a year before decided she wanted to be a boy and started taking testosterone. After a year she decided she wanted to be a girl after all and stopped taking me hormones but still had a beard. So she had to go to a laser dermatologist to get the beard removed. The last scene was her standing in the kitchen with her mom who was saying if she changed her mind again she did not think she would be able to support it. The girl said she did not understand why her mother would not support her exploring her gender expression.