The Boy Scouts’ New Year

The Boy Scouts of America will accept openly gay youths starting on New Year’s Day, a historic change that has prompted the BSA to ponder a host of potential complications — ranging from policies on tentmates and showers to whether Scouts can march in gay pride paradesimages-3

Yet despite their be-prepared approach, BSA leaders are rooting for the change to be a non-event, comparable to another New Year’s Day in 2000 when widespread fears of digital-clock chaos to start the new millennium proved unfounded, as Huffington Post reports:

“My hope is there will be the same effect this Jan. 1 as the Y2K scare,” said Brad Haddock, a BSA national executive board member who chairs the policy implementation committee. “It’s business as usual, nothing happens and we move forward.”

“Some churches are dropping their sponsorship of Scout units because of the new policy and some families are switching to a new conservative alternative called Trail Life USA. But massive defections haven’t materialized and most major sponsors, including the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches, are maintaining ties.

“There hasn’t been a whole lot of fallout,” said Haddock, a lawyer from Wichita, Kan. “If a church said they wouldn’t work with us, we’d have a church right down the street say, ‘We’ll take the troop.'” Continue reading “The Boy Scouts’ New Year”

Boy scouts fail again

imgres-2In a disappointing conclusion to a struggle that has galvanized Americans across the country, a Boy Scout was told he would not be receiving his coveted Eagle Scout award because he is openly gay.

Ryan Andresen, 18, had fulfilled his Eagle Scout requirements back in October but was shut down by his local scoutmaster due to his sexuality. On appeal, a volunteer Eagle Scout Board of Review decided that Andresen was in fact worthy of the award and approved his application.

Eagle Scout and Scouts for Equality founder Zach Wahls told GLAAD that once an application has been OK’d by a Board of Review, the understanding is that the member has been approved. Continue reading “Boy scouts fail again”