Recall the diary of 7/13 where the BSA Executive Committee unanimously voted to end the exclusion on LGBT adults.
Today the full Executive board voted to formally end the ban on LGBT adults!
This is wonderful news and it was expected the vote would be positive since it is almost unheard of for the full Executive Board to reverse a vote of the Executive Committee.
Follow below the fold for more.
The national organization will no longer allow discrimination against its paid workers or at BSA-owned facilities. But local troops and councils will be permitted to decide for themselves whether they will allow openly gay volunteer leaders.
Though whether to allow gay adults will be left up to the local troops and council this is a huge step forward towards full equality. I applaud the BSA for taking this critical step!
The vote comes two years after the BSA lifted its ban on openly gay youth, a dramatic step for an organization whose leaders went to the Supreme Court to fight accepting openly gay members. Some 70 percent of Boy Scout troops are run by faith-based groups, many from orthodox communities including Mormons, Catholics, Southern Baptists and Muslims who do not accept gay equality.
The march toward a fully inclusive BSA is one big step closer to a reality!
Brian Peffly, a 35-year-old lifetime Scout who the Boy Scouts pushed out earlier this year — citing his violation of the ban — said Monday he had mixed feelings about the potential change. He is glad the organization is becoming more open, but officials are making clear they are doing so because they have no other choice.
True, but it is still a major step in the right direction. Over time, even the BSA will wonder what the big deal was to begin with and once they realize that the BSA did not fall apart because they started allowing LGBT youth and adults they will support the inclusiveness because they want to.
Chad Griffin, president of the GBLT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, called the vote “a welcome step.”
“But including an exemption for troops sponsored by religious organizations undermines and diminishes the historic nature of today’s decision,” Griffin said. “Discrimination should have no place in the Boy Scouts, period.”
This formal vote to end the ban today is a very welcome step and we will continue to push for full inclusiveness. But we have to recognize that since the SC ruled that the BSA, as a private club does have the right to exclude LGBT people we can mostly only encourage but not force the full inclusion.
If the parent BSA mandates full inclusion then local groups would have to comply however.