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Subscribe to RSSJennifer Tyrrell, who was ousted as a den mother for her son's Cub Scout troop because of her sexual orientation, is fighting back. Tyrrell talks to msnbc's Thomas Roberts about her petition to change the Boy Scouts of America's long-standing policy on banning gays and lesbians.
The Boy Scouts of America will keep their controversial policy banning gay scouts and leaders after a confidential two-year review, the organization said Tuesday.
The announcement comes amid a stepped-up campaign from activist groups urging an end to the membership standards.
“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” said Bob Mazzuca, Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts. “While a majority of our membership agrees with our policy, we fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”
The Boy Scouts convened a committee of 11 senior volunteers and professional leaders to decide whether the policy was still in the organization’s best interests after a resolution was put forward to reconsider it, the private group said in a statement that was first reported by The Associated Press. The nearly two-year-long review began in 2010.
The committee reached a "unanimous consensus" that it was the "best policy" for the BSA, Scouts' spokesman Deron Smith said in an email. That conclusion was shared at a February board meeting and recently reviewed by the officers of the board, he said.
“The committee included a diversity of perspectives and opinions. The review included forthright and candid conversation and extensive research and evaluations -- both from within Scouting and from outside the organization. The committee’s work and conclusion is that this policy reflects the beliefs and perspectives of the BSA’s members, thereby allowing Scouting to remain focused on its mission and the work it is doing to serve more youth,” the statement said.
The review was conducted confidentially "to allow the committee to make the best decision for the organization," Smith said.
In June, the Boy Scouts said the organization was considering another resolution proposed at the group's annual meeting the month before that also called for ending the policy. But the decision announced Tuesday means the Scouts’ board will take no further action on that resolution, Smith said.
"Resolutions can always be submitted as defined by our bylaws, but the officers of the board have no plans to further review this issue," he said.
Boy Scouts review controversial anti-gay policy
Eagle Scout son of lesbian moms: Boys Scouts must end gay discrimination
Gay mom upset after dismissal by Boy Scouts
Boy Scouts board member opposes anti-gay policy
The Boy Scouts’ policy became a focus of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, when the justices sided with the organization in a lawsuit involving a former assistant Scoutmaster who was gay, citing the protections of the First Amendment.
Courtesy of Jennifer Tyrrell
Tyrrell, a 32-year-old stay at home mother of four, said she agreed to become the den master on the day she signed up her son, Cruz Burns, for the local troop, last year. She had concerns about the Boy Scouts' policy against homosexuals, but a Cubmaster said that – locally -- they wouldn't have problem.
Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout who is the son of a lesbian couple, has recently campaigned for changing the policy, along with Jennifer Tyrrell, who was ousted from her post as a Tiger Cubs’ den leader in April because she is a lesbian. She started an online petition to seek changes to the Boy Scouts policy.
Smith said the Boy Scouts would accept Tyrrell's petition on Wednesday, but did not plan to discuss the policy. Another big batch of petition signatures was delivered by Wahls to the Boy Scouts' annual meeting in May.
Wahls denounced what he said was "the secretive nature surrounding how this conclusion was reached" and called the announcement "old news."
"We've heard this line before, and we'll hear it again before this is all said and done. I've said this before and I'll say it again: this will be the official BSA policy up until the day it finally ends," he said in an email to msnbc.com. "Regardless of your thoughts on homosexuality, surely we can agree that gay people who serve our troops and communities deserve our respect and gratitude."
BSA board member James Turley, global chairman and CEO of consulting and tax firm Ernst & Young, said in mid-June that he was working within the organization to encourage dialogue on the policy, which is not one he would “personally endorse.” When contacted Tuesday, his firm's media representatives said he would have no comment beyond his earlier remarks.
“Scouting believes that good people can personally disagree on this topic and still work together to achieve the life-changing benefits to youth through Scouting," the BSA National Executive Board said in the statement. "While not all Board members may personally agree with this policy, and may choose a different direction for their own organizations, BSA leadership agrees this is the best policy for the organization and supports it for the BSA.”
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Good job scouts! They're are plenty of orginaztions that cater to alternate lifestyles and still offer the same training that the scouts do. If the scouts want to hold onto principals that they have adhered to since 1914 then more power to them. Scouts have a commitment to their principles and Im glad to see an orginazation not bow down to pressure from groups that are being excluded.
And that is also why their membership is at all time lows. This decision will kill the organization.
Membership is at all time lows becasue our coutry's morals are at an all time low. The Boy Scouts is a moral orginazation that promotes family values. In today's times of divorce, single parent households ( exspecially those where the parent is more worried about the social life than their childs), and numerous other reasons it isn't surprising that membership is down. The scouts will survive just like it always has.
Membership at all time lows based off of standing up for what they believe to be morally right. Let the numbers keep dropping, at least they do not sink to the level that most in the US sink to.
Change to make those happy that are morally incorrect seems to be the way of some government officials. They are doing such a good job in D.C. I think a organization that has never gone broke and is still in operation should really follow their ignorant ways. WRONG!!!
Minor point, but the Boy Scouts of America was founded in 1910, not 1914. The BSA celebrated its centennial two years ago.
It took 2 years to do this research and come to a conclusion. And people say government is inefficient. Let them fade away through attrition.
Guess they don't want the problems two colleges have right now.
Yeah, that post made a lot of sense. The colleges aren't having trouble because of anything to do with gays. They are having trouble because pedophiles not only abused children in their midst, but there was a cover up involved. But keep posting that if you would rather make things up then learn some facts.
Good for the Boy Scouts of America. Good private christian organization with good moral values. For those of you who are not the Majority, why don't you start your own organization maybe the "Queer Scouts of America".
You give Christians a bad name. Such great moral values you have their spewing your hate by calling them queers.
wsch, with Christians like you, Christianity doesn't need enemies.
wsch
I thought I saw everything! You don't have to agree with everything and have every right to express your opinion...but you have to make such cruel statements? I guess it takes all types to make the world go around, but he Jesus I know loved everyone no matter if they were lepers, gay, straight, whores...whatever. Who are YOU to be making such awful and hurtful comments?
Maybe you aren't old enough to remember the chants of "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" in the streets? So, now you take offense at a suggested name for an alternative organization and then proceed to disregard the suggestion while hurling insults at the other poster? Nice.
Grow up and get a clue.
Cruel, awful, and hurtful comments? Where?!? The part where he suggested starting a new organization? If you don't like the proposed name, pick a different one, but nothing he said was "cruel, awful, and hurtful," so your own comments were out of line.
Funny, gay or lesbian, this would never happen in the Girl Scouts!
Kudos for the BSA, they should have the right to run their organization as they see fit. Gays can always start their own similar type program full or liberal rhetoric and whatever values they want to espouse. GLBT or whatever should quit trying to force their values on the rest of society. They are after all a "minority" group and therefore do not represent the majority of opinion.
"In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson.
Thanks Boy Scouts for taking the "morally right stand" and not yielding to homo lobby of America....
Morality is subjective, and under most measures of modern logically derived moral systems, homosexuality is perfectly moral.
This is such Horse**** but unfortunately that's what I thought would happen.
If the B.S.A. decided to allow gays and atheists into the organization, they would lose troops (and money from those troops) left and right from the Latter Day Saint's organization. The LDS holds a major percentage of enrollment in the B.S.A. because way back when the LDS bailed out the BSA during tough financial times, they promised the LDS that they would never allow gays and atheists to join.
I'm contemplating my resignation from the organization myself as I am a gay man. This sickens me.
Why just contemplating?
All the proponents of gay scout leaders: would you want a group of 12-14 year old girls be led by a man? Because if you want a gay man leading a group of 12-14 year old boys, you better be consistent about other possibilities. I am very pro-gay rights, but I can see why some parents would have qualms about the possibility of attraction between scout leaders and their charges to be a major problem for some parents.
Umm...sure. Problem is that pedophiles are for the most part not attracted to underage kids just as straight men aren't attracted for the most part to underage girls. That is a totally different situation and if you are truly "pro-gay", please go educate yourself.
Please don't try to say that you are pro gay rights while in the same post equating gays to pedophiles.
That's why I used 12-14 as the age range. Pedophilia has to do with pre-pubescent children. Attraction to teenagers is biologically different and has nothing to do with pedophilia. Please educate yourself.
Just as I thought - a bunch of morons who have no idea what pedophilia is.
And the 12-14 range can be pre-pubescent, so it would be appropriate to call that pedophilia.
Mostly not, and anyways the reason I used that age group is because they are teens so for the purpose of my comment treat them as not pre-pubescent. I do not equate gays with pedophiles.
They let male teachers teach females 12-14.
They let male coaches coach females 12-14.
They let male fathers father females 12-14.
The gays got told where to shove their demands, up their a**es like they do everything else.
Having children be taught directly by people who involve themselves in repugnant sodomy is not acceptable.
The courts may say sodomy is ok, but it is quite vile, but the courts finally said, "if you want to play with poop, have at it....". I don't feel one bit sorry for the sodomites who get intestinal sickness, diseases that get transmitted or other nasty complications that come with sodomy.
You are so full of love and peace. I'm glad to see you aren't full of bitterness and hate.
I don't have to have love for something I find extremely repugnant, idiot, and you cannot force me to either!
Phil,
I find your post extremely repugnant, yet I still don't hate you. I just think you're kinda sad.
So Phil, you would be OK with having a scout member that is gay, but doesn't engage in anal sex. How about a gay member that does not engage in sex at all...like the overwhelming majority of the gay kids that would like to be scouts? This is not an issue of sexual activity, it is an issue of banning someone because of their genetic makeup. And please don't bring up that outdated argument that it is a choice, not genetics. No thinking person believes that anymore. Yes the BS have a right to ban anyone they want to, but that does not make it correct.
Didn't this article mention, actually center around, a lesbian scout master? So um, where is the connection between lesbians and anal sex? Based on your high moral standards against anal sex then I am assuming that you would have no problem with lesbian scout masters? And what about a straight married man that enjoys anal sex with his wife? So again, based on your strong moral belief against anal sex, then this man could also not be a scout leader?
And speaking of disease, what about those like syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and countless others spread by heterosexuals? On that band wagon too, since after all you are only trying to protect the masses from all those icky sexually transmitted illnesses, want to ban scout masters that have straight sex too? Sad weak arguments Phil, with your strong and steady moral base, one would think that you could have done better than using the old "poop/disease" card.
Ever had a BJ, Phil? Then you are a sodomite in most states. But, I gather from your post, you probably only had straight missionary sex, after marriage of course, only twice to father your two children. Bully for you.
I think it probably is genetics. But so is Parkinson disease. I believe there is something "Wrong" in the brain and we just write if off as "well its ok because society doesn't want to "cure" this". Do we not agree that "pedophilia" is a sick disease in people? Why do we not do more to find out "Why" people are gay? The truth is we don't want to. Even though the LBGT community makes up such a tiny percent of the population you want a say how everyone should should feel or act. I find it amazing that you're attacking a RELIGIOUS organizational who says that homosexuality is a SIN people and pissed when they say "Well umm no".
Move on to something more important. Create the LBGT Scouts. Then you can certainly get all this mystical funding you keep complaining about and the BS and GS won't get it right?
The medical and scientific communities do not consider homosexuality a "disease" to be "cured," nor as something "wrong in the brain," and their word on this trumps yours. Furthermore, homosexuality is inborn, just as heterosexuality is -- or tell us when you chose to be straight.
Comparing homosexuality, which involves consenting adults and is legal, to pedophilia, which involves children and is illegal, totally destroys what little credibility you have had. You obviously have no concept of "legal consent".
dan123: Less than 15% of Parkinson's disease cases are genetic - the rest are idiopathic, and, in fact, there is strong evidence that certain chemicals and metals leeching into water cause most of these idiopathic cases. Furthermore, there is a big difference between Parkinson's (which is a disease) and homosexuality (which is a variation). Parkison's directly causes negative medical affects to the person; homosexuality does not, which is why it's a variation and not a disease. Equating homosexuality with a disease is wrong.
Think about it like this - there are a lot of things that are genetic. Eye color, for example, is genetic. In humans, the dominant eye color is brown. All the other eye colors are derived due to variations in the genes that cause brown eye color. So, brown eyes are the "standard" eye color, with other eye colors being the "variants". No one would say that having green eyes or blue eyes or amber eyes or grey eyes is a disease - instead, it's an accepted variation from the standard eye color. This is because having green eyes, blue eyes, amber eyes, grey eyes, or any of the other variations of eye color doesn't cause a disease state that isn't present in brown eyed people. Same can be said for homosexuality - it doesn't cause a disease state in the person with that genetic (and environmental causes - studies show that sexuality, whether homosexuality, heterosexuality or bisexuality are causes by a confluence of genetics and environmental factors, granted the environmental factors can be something such as in utero hormone exposure - not necessarily the way a person is raised, for example) variation. Heterosexuality appears to be the dominant genetic setting, but homosexuality is simply a variant from that. It's not better or worse - it simply is.
The boy scouts are not a hate group. Just because you disagree with some one else agenda does not make you a hate group. But that is the mind set of the socialistic liberal Democrats.
It is a private organization that has it's own rules. If you do not like the rules then don't be a bad as*and start calling people names.
There are many people who do not accept gays for what ever reason.
Picking on the Boy Scouts is like picking a Gold Fish out of an aquarium full of Gold Fish. The gay agenda is still yet to be accepted into main stream.
Hollywood and NY Broadway would have you think other wise, but then Hollywood/Broadway is full of gays and to them this is normal, when it is not really as main stream as you think.
Neither is having an axle on your home, but to each their own I guess.
Not to burst that high moral bubble of yours but you do realize that poll after poll shows more than half of the American public supports gay marriage? And so therefore tolerance of gays may be much more "main stream" than you think or are willing to believe. And obviously if there is that much support how could it only be by socialist liberals? Hollywood and Broadway seem to be doing just fine, lots of people still going to plays and watching movies. Oh right, that must be because only again, socialist liberals are the only ones going. Wow, just wow..
Much like many religious institutions of late I think when the membership and revenues severely decline from this policy they will suddenly "see the light".
ROTFLMAO.. I always enjoy your bigoted and ignorant posts. The Boy Scouts chose to forgo any public funding decades ago when Bill Clinton tried to extort them into taking in Gay Leaders. Please keep up with current events.
They still get support from government on various levels.
Every US president since Taft has served as Honorary President of the BSA, and has hosted their annual Report to the Nation at the White House. If that's not government support, I don't know what is.
Uh......actually "government support" would typically involve the government giving someone or some organization $$$. To say the President serving as Honorary President or hosts the Report to the Nation is considered government support is hilarious! Your last statement is correct however, as you don't know what government support is.
I am guessing you are also getting "government support" as well, you know because he is serving as YOUR President and Commanding Officer?
DRK
Obama didn't
No, he didn't go to the Jamboree one year, in 2010 but instead sent a video. Oh, the conservatives were up in arms about it, even though Reagan did the same thing one year.
Interesting thing about the national Jamboree, too. It's been held every year for years at Fort AP Hill, and the DOD has been spending about $2 million a year in taxpayer funds helping the BSA stage it. Nice to know that the BSA has decided to move to a nongovernmental location for their next Jamboree; no word yet on whether the military will be helping the scouts with that, too.
Now if taxpayers could just not have to fund the preferential access and fees the scouts often have to public lands. Or for that matter, if only we could stop giving them public land outright.
http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/14556/
Amazing that ALL of the other posts disagree with the choice of the BSA.
It seems to me that the GAY community has an agenda to make the rest of the world conform to their point of view and all who might disagree are hate filled people.
IF you don't like who they are, then don't try to join just to push your own agenda.
And yet it is perfectly fine for the Christian "right" to force their agenda on gays? Isn't that the Christian way, force their views on the world? As of yet I have not had a gay knock on my door handing me literature about the virtue of their lifestyle. As of yet I have not been at a rock concert and had some representative from a gay group hand me something about their lifestyle. I haven't walked out to my car to find a gay recruitment brochure stuck under the wiper. Guess that I missed that ten "rules of gay enlightenment statue" in a court house.
Perhaps its time to form a new youth organization, more in keeping with our evolving inclusive attitudes, and leave the BSA in the dusty past.
Like the "Rainbow Rangers" or "Flaming Feathers". Can't wait to see the merit badges you come up with. Start your own group.. by all means.. stop talking about things and get off your butt and do something.
Organization have the right to choose who can be part of them. BSA has a standard laid out in their oath. If this is such a bad organization, why are those living the alternative lifestyle so dead set on getting BSA to change their high standards so they can be part of it. If BSA announced today, oh never mind we will let you be part of our organization, then the next drop in numbers would come from those parents and young men that know the gay and lesbian lifestyle is immoral, just the same as saying there is no God. If the numbers in the organization are going to drop, why not keep it for the right decision.
makes ya wonder how many of these same policy makers are secretly in the closet....or worse.......
This is so sad and disgusting. Who would want their children to be part of such an ignorant and homophobic hate group besides the KKK?
This from someone with a RUSH avatar? Who would want their children to be part of such an ignorant and homophobic hate group, besides the Rush Limpdick fans?
Fla,
The avatar is Rush, the band.
Isnt the Boy Scouts a private organization.. and if so is it really any of your business what they do? You have a choice not to join them.. start your own youth program based upon your own ideals. Stop trying to force feed your opinion of lifestyle down everyone elses throat. I DONT agree with their decision.. but its still none of my business. We are talking about less than 2% of the population and maybe 10% of those would ever have children or want to be involved with the BSA.. so you all want to force an organization based upon principles with contradict that entire lifestyle for less than 1% of the populations whining.. about something they have a CHOICE to be involved in?
Hobogoblin - That 2% pays taxes it seems and are up in arms about this. I don't understand why they care so much and all of the HATE that is coming out about this. Make an LBGT Scouts and forget the BSA or GSA. IS it really that hard?
One of the reasons that I do not contribute donations to the United Way in my area is that they continue to fund and support BSA. This is not a way to protect children. When my son was in scouting it turned out that one of the local organizers was a convicted pedophile under supervision and was not banned from the local organization. The parents of the locally sponsored troops decided that all troop meetings would take place on the same day and time at a school gym so all the leaders and parents could be present and aware.
Like the Catholic Church, the BSA refuses to accept the idea that increased awareness and knowledge is a good reason to constantly reassess and reinterpret old beliefs.
It is a shame as scouting could be teaching real values of diversity, inclusion and charity. I expect that over time they will eventually diminish to irrelevance and disappear.
They weren't able to ban me- I am gay AND an eagle scout and even an Order of the Arrow recipient. I am proud to be gay but not that proud to have been a part of what is now a hate group.
egould - then they obviously don't know you're gay then. Tell the national board you are and let's just see what happens. If you hate it so much WHY are you a member of it. How many black people just HAVE to be in the KKK again?
They have a right to ban anyone in their organization, just as I now have the right to ban any and all donations to them. Mark me off your mailing and door to door list Boy Scouts of America, I will never support a group who promotes hate and bigotry to children and or adults. It is sad because in my community the Boy Scouts are active in selling Christmas trees, Fireworks and doing other types of fund raising events and I know a lot of people who will not support this decision or give to their cause due to this policy.