One last bit of good news for this week. Two weeks ago, I gave a Hero Award to the Girl Scouts of America for the announcement that the group would accept transgender girls and the subsequent return by one chapter of a $100,000 donation, which had been given with the stipulation that it would not be used to support transgender girls.At that time, I said that the Boy Scouts of America continued to "struggle, fuss, and fume," trying to come up with policies that are sufficiently non-discriminatory to get it out from under criticism without having to actually be non-discriminatory.
Well, guess what, I may have spoken a bit too quickly.
On July 13, the executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America announced it had unanimously approved a resolution that would end the organization's blanket ban on gay adult scout leaders and let individual scout units set their own policy on the matter.
It will become official policy if ratified by the organization's 80-member National Executive Board at a meeting on July 27.The move is far from perfect as by its nature it allows indiviual scout units to continue being bigots, a move no doubt made to accommodate groups such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, which sponsor large numbers of Scout units. And it's worth noting that it comes only after a number of local scout councils adopted policies saying they would choose adult leaders without regard to sexual orientation, openly defying the national ban on gay scout leaders.
Still, when we recall that it wasn't until January 2014 that the BSA allowed openly gay youth as scouts even as it continued the ban on gay scout leaders, we can agree with Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, leader of Scouts for Equality, who said:
While this policy change is not perfect, it is difficult to overstate the importance of today's announcement.Put another way, it's good news.
Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2103-hero-award-girl-scouts-of-america.html
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/07/13/boy-scouts-executive-committee-oks-ending-ban-on-gay-leaders/21208789/
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