After years of severe pressure from legislators, including a recently-proposed California bill that would remove their nonprofit status, officials from the Boy Scouts of America said Friday that they would look to end their ban on openly gay scouts. The voting members of the Boy Scouts will have to approve of changing Boy Scout policy. The new policy would read: “No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” The policy would not change for “all adult leaders.”
The resolution states further – and contradictorily – that “any sexual conduct, whether homosexual or heterosexual, by youth of scouting age is contrary to the virtues of scouting.” It remains inexplicable how talking about sexual orientation would not be considered “sexual conduct,” and how being openly gay would be possible without talking about sexual orientation.
Abstaining from the issue completely, the Boy Scout policy will say, “The Boy Scouts of America does not have an agenda on the matter of sexual orientation, and resolving this complex issue is not the role of the organization, nor may any member use scouting to promote or advance any social or political position or agenda.”
Undoubtedly, the all-out assault on the private institution that is the Boy Scouts drove this decisionmaking. Now it will be up to the rank and file Boy Scout voting members to determine whether to change policy thanks to political correctness.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).