Boy Scouts president: We can’t keep banning gay leaders
“The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained.”
–Boy Scouts of America president Robert Gates, speaking at the BSA’s annual national meeting in Atlanta, Yahoo! reports.
Gates, a former Secretary of Defense, told attendees that the BSA couldn’t “ignore growing internal challenges to our current membership policy.”
“Nor can we ignore the social, political and juridicial changes taking place in our country,” he continued. “Changes taking place at a pace over this past year no one anticipated. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.”
Two years ago, the Scouts voted to end a ban on allowing openly gay members, but it did not include adult leaders or paid staff.
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