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Boy Scouts’ President calls for an end to ban on gay leaders

By Will Stroude

The president of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has urged the organisation to move towards ending its ban on gay leaders.

Speaking at the group’s annual general meeting in Atlanta, BSA President Robert Gates warned that failure to adapt to the modern world could spell the end of the 105-year-old organisation.

boy scouts

“I must speak as plainly and bluntly to you as I spoke to presidents when I was Director of CIA and Secretary of Defense,” Gates said. “We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained.”

He added that courts may eventually strike down the group’s banning of atheists as well:

“Waiting for the courts is a gamble with huge stakes,” he said. “Alternatively, we can move at some future date – but sooner rather than later – to seize control of our own future, set our own course and change our policy in order to allow charter partners – unit sponsoring organizations – to determine the standards for their Scout leaders.

“I truly fear that any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement,”

The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organisations in the world with around 2.7 million youth members and 1 million adult members. The BSA prohibits “open and avowed” LGBT adults from participating in the organisation.

The BSA ended its ban on openly gay scouts in 2013, but the ban still applies once a scout reaches the age of 18 and applies to be an adult group leader or employee.

Zach Wahls, executive director of Scouts for Equality, a group that has campaigned for change, said Mr. Gates’ comments were “undeniably a step forward,” New York Times reports.

“It seems like the Boy Scouts will continue an internal dialogue about the subject,” he added.

The move comes after Disney announced last year that they would be cutting all funding to the group, saying it did not support groups which discriminate.

Last month, the Boy Scouts’ Greater New York Councils announced that it had hired a gay man as a summer camp leader, in defiance of the organisation’s national rules.

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