Kids & Family

Scouts to Admit Gays – Guarded Applause in Bay Area

The Boy Scouts national leadership voted Thursday to accept openly gay members but not leaders. An Alameda den mother active in urging equal rights for gays welcomed the move but called for more action.

By Bay City News Service

In a historic vote, Boy Scouts of America's national leaders decided today to allow openly gay members, according to BSA officials.

The BSA's National Council decided in a 61.4 percent vote in Texas today to approve a resolution lifting the ban on openly gay Scouts, according to a statement from the national organization.

"Today, following this review, the most comprehensive listening exercise in Scouting's history, the approximately 1,400 voting members of the Boy Scouts of America's National Council approved a resolution to remove the restriction denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual orientation alone," the statement reads.

A ban on openly gay adult Scouting leaders is still in place, however.

The policy shift opens the door for openly gay Scouts in the nine councils throughout the Bay Area and nationwide, but does not allow openly gay parents of scouts or other openly gay adults to serve as leaders.

"I'm glad they've taken a teeny-tiny step, but there is so much more they could have done," said Alameda resident Maya Goehring-Harris, a den leader for her son's local Cub Scouts troop.

Goehring-Harris is a member of the national organization Scouts for Equality and one of many people across the country and Bay Area who started an online petition urging her local Boy Scouts council to reject the BSA's national policy banning gay members.

Ryan Andresen, an 18-year-old Moraga resident who was denied his Eagle Scout badge after coming out as gay, also launched an online petition and has been at the forefront of the national campaign against the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policy.

Goehring-Harris said she is proud of the National Council's vote lifting the ban but is still waiting for them to lift the ban on openly gay Scout leaders.

"Hopefully it'll push the national Scouts organization to go 100 percent and say this isn't something anybody should be even discussing," she said.

The local mother said she knows some gay parents in the Bay Area who don't allow their children to join the Boy Scouts due to the BSA's national policy, even if their local councils have voiced their opposition to the ban.

"It's sad because the Scouting program is good, but the politics are bad," she said.

Copyright © 2013 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.


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