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With the Boy Scouts of America set to vote on a policy that would allow openly gay youths to participate, activists ramp up the volume on their protests.

After years of emotional debate, the Boy Scouts of America are considering a proposal at their annual meeting to allow gay youths to participate openly in the popular organization for the first time.

The exclusion of gay Scouts has been the subject of much wrangling and soul searching in the century-old organization -- from local troops and councils to online petitions to national board meetings. The dispute was even heard by the Supreme Court, which said 13 years ago that as a private membership organization the BSA was free to decide who it would admit.

Here is a rundown of what is at stake in the vote, which is scheduled to take place Thursday among the 1,400 delegates of the National Council gathered in Grapevine, Texas.

What would the new membership policy look like?

The proposal would lift the organization’s ban on openly gay youth participants, but it would continue to bar gay adults from being Scout leaders.

Subject to gut-wrenching debate over morality and rights, the proposal would impact more than 100,000 scouting units, such as Cub Scout packs and Boy Scout troops, that involve nearly 3 million youths and more than 1 million adults. Generations of Scouts have weighed in on the issue in private and in public, with partisans on both sides threatening to withdraw from participating depending on how it is resolved.

Why is the scouting organization considering this change now?

BSA leaders won’t say exactly why now, but more than a decade after the Supreme Court said the organization was on solid legal ground in excluding gays, the debate quite simply won’t go away. Last summer, the Boy Scouts reaffirmed their anti-gay policy, after a two-year examination by a committee. Since then, some local chapters have been pushing for a reconsideration.

Meanwhile issues related to gay rights -- such as gay marriage and adoption -- are gaining wider public acceptance, and lobbying campaigns by Jennifer Tyrrell, a lesbian who was ousted from her role as den mother last year, and Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout who was raised by two lesbian mothers, kept the debate in the public eye. Activists have also pressured corporate sponsors, many of which have non-discrimination clauses tied to their giving, to withdraw funding unless the policy is changed.

Stephen B. Thornton / Stephen B. Thornton for NBC News

Pack 215 Cub Scouts recite the Pledge of Allegiance at their pack meeting at Eagle Heights Baptist Church on Tuesday in Harrison, Ark. The church's pastor has said it will not stay on as sponsor if the policy is changed.

Who is for the proposal, and who is against?

It’s unclear exactly how many scouts and councils -- which oversee the scouting units -- are on each side of the debate, and we’ll have to wait for the results of the secret ballot to see which side is victorious. Some councils have publicly said they will not continue if gay youths are allowed, while others have called for gay adults to be included too.

Religion looms large over the debate. The Scouts explicitly invoke God in their membership guidelines, and more than 70 percent of Boy Scout units are sponsored by religious groups. One of the Southern Baptist Church leaders, Dr. Frank Page, last week implored the Boy Scouts not to change the policy. But The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints – the BSA's biggest charter partner-- has given tacit endorsement to the plan; the National Catholic Council on Scouting has yet to take a position.

Even Barack Obama and Mitt Romney weighed in on the debate during the presidential race. Perhaps one of the most important voices, BSA President Wayne Perry on Wednesday wrote an op-ed in USA TODAY supporting the inclusion of gay boys.

Under the proposal, what would happen to an Eagle Scout who is gay and wants to volunteer as an adult? That wouldn’t be allowed?

That is the big criticism of this policy in more progressive quarters: That life-long, successful scouts essentially will be banned from the organization on their 18th birthday because they are gay. Conservatives also note the tension inherent in the policy, saying it could be a slippery slope: They believe allowing gay youths would undermine the legal underpinnings of the Supreme Court decision, ultimately leading to gay adult volunteers being admitted into the organization.

Will individual local troops be allowed to exclude gay youths if they have moral objections?

In short, no. Here is how Deron Smith, spokesperson for the BSA puts it: “If passed, no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” This has led some parents and Scout leaders who object to homosexuality to consider alternatives to Scouting, for fear that the resolution might pass.

If gays are allowed, will parents be able to object, for example, to their son sharing a tent with a gay Scout?

This is a real concern among some parents, as evidenced by its inclusion on the BSA’s internal survey on the issue. But Scouting leaders haven’t addressed the matter directly. Instead, they refer generally to maintaining a “supportive and safe environment for young people.” The organization has created a task force to make sure the policy could be implemented smoothly, and they are looking into how other organizations have handled these issues.

If it passes, will this proposal end the infighting, or is this just the beginning?

The BSA may hope this vote will end the debate, but more likely, it will touch off a whole new one. Some troops may disband. Those affiliated with Southern Baptist churches, for example, could lose their charters. And more liberal Scout leaders will lobby to have gay adults included as well -- an issue that is not going to fade anytime soon.

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the possibility of a change in the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

Related:

• Scouts await decision on gay membership
• Boy Scouts consider ending ban on gay members, leaders
• Scouts propose allowing gay scouts, but banning leaders
• Mormon church OK with ending Scouts' ban on gay youth

A screenshot of the new website, mormonsandgays.org.

The Mormon Church has launched a new website in an attempt to "encourage understanding" with gays and lesbians, an effort heralded by activists as a departure from the church's perceived hostility toward the LGBT community.

Presented as a “collection of conversations” with LDS leaders and Mormons “who are attracted to people of the same sex,” the website, mormonsandgays.org, launched Thursday.

The site includes an unusual statement for a major religious body: that sexuality, including same-sex attraction, is not a personal choice. But it maintains that acting on that attraction is still a "sin."

“What we do know is that the doctrine of the church – that sexual activity should only occur between a man and a woman who are married – has not changed and is not changing,” Elder Quentin Cook said in statement announcing the site's launch. “But what is changing and what needs to change is to help our own members and families understand how to deal with same-gender attraction.”

The website, which a spokesman said has been in production for more than two years, features a number of videos from top church leaders and gay and straight lay Mormons, who share their experiences counseling Mormons who suffer from AIDS and advising Mormon parents not to reject children who pursue a gay lifestyle. 

The development of the site was launched only a short time after the Mormon Church encouraged its members to get involved in the high-profile fight over Proposition 8 -- a ban on gay marriage -- in California in 2008. 

The church, which was blasted by the LGBT community at the time, has since ended directives that Latter-Day Saints should oppose civil rights for gay families. In 2009, it officially endorsed gay rights initiatives in Salt Lake City that stopped just short of civil unions or marriage.

“On this website we witness something that church leaders rarely do: admit that we’ve done things wrong in the past. In light of this, the clear admission that things need to change is particularly welcome, if long overdue," Spencer Clark, executive director for Mormons for Marriage Equality, said in an email to NBC News.

Public acceptance of gay marriage among all Americans has increased to record highs. A Gallup poll released Wednesday showed that 53 percent of Americans favor legalizing same-sex marriage.

Year-to-year membership statistics for the Mormon church place it among the fastest-growing religions, with more than 5 million members in the U.S. and more than 14 million members worldwide, the church reported in early 2012. 

Randall Thacker, president elect for Affirmation, an organization supporting gay and lesbian Mormons, said the site brings to surface the openness of the Mormon culture to adaptation.

“The church is adaptable because we have a worldwide religion, which brings in people every day from all different perspectives and frames of reference, and so we have to be able to have a church membership that is ready for change,” Thacker told NBC News.

For Clark, the website represents a turning point for his faith’s stance on homosexuality.

“Too often, gay Mormons and their families have felt that they had to choose between their loyalty to each other and to their church,” Clark said. “Latter-Day Saints have often described gay individuals as ‘struggling with same-sex attraction’ without considering whether the true test from God was on those who are straight to see if they would struggle loving those who are gay. We simply can’t claim to love God, and not love the gay children, parents or neighbors that he has placed in our lives.”  

Jim Dabakis, a former Mormon missionary and soon to be the only gay person in the state legislature, told the Salt Lake Tribune he’s thrilled with the new site.

“I give tremendous credit to the LDS Church,” Dabakis said. “This can’t have been easy,” acknowledging ever-improving relations between the Mormon church and the gay community. 

Clark said he believes the website will help heal deep-seated wounds.  

“It is clear that church leaders have heard the voices and stories of so many Mormons who have been working to make things better for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, and I believe this will help open the door to even greater progress in the future.” 

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A study out Thursday takes another look at the uneasy relationship between Mormons and evangelical Christians, a timely issue as Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, seeks to wrap up the Republican presidential nomination next week in heavily evangelical South Carolina.

The report, by the Forum on Religion & Public Life of the Pew Research Center, says Mormons and white evangelicals share strong beliefs in prayer, the Bible and conservative politics but disagree sharply over theology. About half of Mormons in the survey said they felt hostility from evangelicals.

• Read the full Pew study

The Associated Press has a breakdown of the data here.

The report is generally consistent with several that have been undertaken in the last few years, most recently a survey in October of Protestant ministers, 75 percent of whom disagreed with the statement, "I personally believe Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) to be Christians." Sixty percent said they "strongly disagreed."

The survey found that evangelical ministers were more likely to "strongly disagree" that Mormons are Christians than were mainline Protestant ministers.

In a look at the issue in the context of Romney's campaign, Philip Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a leading Southern Baptist institution in Kansas City, Mo., told msnbc.com that the evangelical distinction was drawn over much more than differences of opinion that developed a millennium after the crucifixion of Jesus:

The LDS Church "radically reconstructs the historic Christian doctrines on God, Jesus and salvation," said Roberts, the author of "The Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism" and for many years a senior leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's second-largest denomination.

"I think evangelicals look at Mormons as basically having a belief in God and the 10 Commandments, and Mormons are generally known to be morally traditional and to confirm much of the Judeo-Christian ethic," Roberts said in an interview. ... 

But "they deny the confessions of the church," he said, referring to a series of statements of fundamental Protestant beliefs about salvation over the centuries.

Read the full msnbc.com story: Romney campaign puts Mormon faith in spotlight