Boy Scouts to Consider Allowing Gay Scouts and Leaders 
 
 The Boy Scouts confirmed today that it is considering a change of policy that lets gay scouts and leaders serve openly in local chapters. 
 
 
 
 The announcement comes after activist Zach Wahls delivered 275,000 petition signatures to the group and met with its leadership. Wahls, an Eagle Scout who has two moms, was outraged that a lesbian mother had been removed as den leader for a Cub Scout troop. And he got back into his uniform and delivered the petition on her behalf last week. 
 
 
 
 "I love the organization and I refuse to stand by idly as it forfeits its cultural relevancy at the very moment this country needs it most," said Wahls, author of My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family. 
 
 
 
 Ohioan Jennifer Tyrrell was a volunteer for her 7-year-old son's troop and said that after a year of service she lost the post and had her membership revoked "just because I happen to be gay." Tyrrell was told that being gay meant she did "not meet the high standards of membership that the BSA seeks." 
 
 
 
 Now nearly 300,000 people have signed Tyrrell's petition on Change.org. And that includes a growing list of celebrities such as The Hunger Games's Josh Hutcherson, singer Ricky Martin and Glee's Dianna Agron. 
 
 A spokesman for the Boy Scouts said a resolution on the change was submitted by a Scout leader in April, before Wahls's visit, and it will now be considered by a committee. He emphasized that similar resolutions have been considered in the past, as early as 2000. 
 
 If the policy change is approved this time, the Boy Scouts wouldn't make any change until 2013, but Tyrrell said in reaction that it "is definitely a huge step in the right direction." 
 
 
 
 "I was heartbroken," Tyrrell said of losing her job a den leader. "But the blow was softened by the outpouring of support I received from my community and the parents of the boys I had dedicated myself to. I know if it was up to my community, I'd still be a Cub Scout Den Leader today." ||||| The Boy Scouts of America will review a resolution that would allow individual units to accept gays as adult leaders, but a spokesman says there's no expectation that the ban on gay leaders will in fact be lifted any time soon. 
 
 The resolution was submitted by a Scout leader from the Northeast in April and presented last week at the Scouts' national meeting in Orlando, Fla., according to BSA spokesman Deron Smith. 
 
 Smith said Wednesday it would be referred to a subcommittee, which will then make a recommendation to the national executive board. The process would likely be completed by May 2013, according to Smith, who said there were no plans at this time to change the policy. 
 
 During last week's meeting, the Scouts were presented with a petition, bearing more than 275,000 names, protesting the ouster of a lesbian mother, Jennifer Tyrrell, who'd been serving as a Scout den mother near Bridgeport, Ohio. 
 
 Among those who presented the Change.org petition, and met with Scout officials, was Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, an Iowa college student who was raised by lesbian mothers. 
 
 Wahls, in a telephone interview, said he and his allies planned a campaign to mobilize opposition to the gay-exclusion policy from within Scout ranks, with the goal of building pressure for the resolution to be approved. 
 
 "Up to the day they end this policy, they'll be saying they have no plans to do so," Wahls said. "But there's no question it's costing the Boy Scouts in terms of membership and public support." 
 
 The Scouts, who celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2010, have had a long-standing policy of excluding gays and atheists. Controversy over the policy intensified in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Scouts to maintain the policy in the face of a legal challenge. 
 
 Leaders of several regional scouting councils have asked for the policy to be scrapped or modified, to no avail. ||||| Angry parents threatened to pull their sons out of scouting, saying they would never let them share a tent with a gay boy. 
 
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 Current and former Boy Scouts who want to end the exclusionary policy, including several who were forced out of scouting for being gay, gave their own news briefing. 
 
 David Rice, 84, of Petaluma, Calif., who said he was ejected as a scout leader in 1998 after he publicly advocated including gays, said that if scouting did not change with the culture, “it will be left behind.” 
 
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 “We cannot afford to lose this American icon,” he said. 
 
 Mythologized by Norman Rockwell and a formative experience for no fewer than 181 NASA astronauts, the Boy Scouts have for more than a century been a symbol of an upright America. 
 
 But over the last year, the growing public acceptance of homosexuality has collided with the social conservatism of many Boy Scout leaders and parents, as well as the churches that sponsor a majority of Cub Scout packs and Boy Scout troops. The longstanding policy of barring openly gay members — the Scouts’ version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — has been sharply challenged from outside the organization and from within. 
 
 After publicly wavering, which only fueled the divisions, Boy Scout executives conducted exhaustive research this spring on member attitudes. They devised a plan that they hoped might defuse the debate, opening the door to gay youths but keeping it shut for gay adults, a step that, based on their surveys, they feared would cause mass defections. 
 
 But more conflict appears inevitable no matter which way the vote goes. Last week the Connecticut Yankee Council promised it would defy national policy in either case, saying it intended to accept gay leaders and would be “open to all youths and adults who subscribe to the values of the Scout Oath and Law regardless of their personal sexual orientation.” 
 
 The vote Thursday is expected to be close. Prospects for passage improved when the Mormon Church, the largest single sponsor of scout units, indicated support for limited change, and the Roman Catholic Church, another major sponsor, also said that it would not abandon scouting so long as any new policy applied to youths and not leaders. 
 
 Glaad, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and other rights groups as well as internal advocates said that allowing openly gay youths would be a step in the right direction, but only that. They vowed to continue with a public campaign against any discrimination. 
 
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 Evangelical conservatives, the public spearhead of opposition, said that even the limited opening being voted on would expose youths to immoral behavior and pro-gay politics, ruining a rare bastion of traditional America. 
 
 “Allowing openly gay scouts will mean the blunt injection of hypersexuality and gay activism into a youth organization,” said John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative evangelical group. Mr. Stemberger, an Eagle Scout who has crusaded against gay marriage and abortion, has sought to mobilize like-minded former scouts with a group called OnMyHonor.Net. 
 
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 Zach Wahls, a 21-year-old Eagle Scout who was raised by two mothers and who took this year off college to organize Scouts for Equality, called Mr. Stemberger’s fears absurd. “Being open doesn’t mean waving a rainbow flag or advancing some agenda,” he said. “It means that two gay parents can feel comfortable going to their son’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor.” 
 
 Those on both sides predict that once gay scouts are allowed, the Scouts will soon be forced to allow gay leaders, too, whether by lawsuits or the simple lack of logic in forcing a gay Eagle Scout to quit the day he turns 18. 
 
 The Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Venture Scouts and other branches include more than 2.6 million youths — down by some 40 percent since the early 1970s. They are guided by about one million adult volunteers, including parents and many former scouts. 
 
 Arguments over the exclusion of gays have simmered for years, and some municipal agencies, charities and corporations have ended donations because of it. The issue erupted with force last year after a lesbian in Ohio, Jennifer Tyrrell, was ousted as leader of her 7-year-old son’s Tiger Cubs den. 
 
 Glaad and other rights groups took up the cause, enlisting celebrities like Madonna, who wore a Boy Scout uniform to an awards ceremony, and publicizing calls for change by corporate executives whose companies embrace gay and lesbian employees. 
 
 Nearly two million people signed online petitions on Change.Org, calling on the Boy Scouts to end discrimination. 
 
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 Over the last few months, as the scouts surveyed youths and adults and met with sponsoring religious and civic groups, they found divisions by region and age. 
 
 Councils in the Northeast endorsed opening the Scouts to gay leaders as well as youths, arguing that a failure to do so would accelerate a “death spiral” for scouting, further alienating younger parents who are “the lifeblood of the organization.” 
 
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 But majorities in the Midwest, South and West, except for parts of California, were against changing policy and were especially hostile to allowing openly gay leaders. 
 
 In conservative forums, some people have warned that allowing gay scouts and leaders would lead to more cases of sex abuse. The Boy Scouts, who have dealt with revelations of abuse by Scout leaders going back decades, dismissed that concern in their information package for delegates, citing expert opinion and studies showing that gay men are no more likely than others to commit sex abuse. 
 
 In their public statements, the Boy Scouts have not clearly explained why they proposed relaxing the policy for youths but not for adults. Scout officials who spoke on condition of anonymity concluded that a proposal to allow gay leaders would have no chance of passing and could drive away large numbers of sponsors and conservative parents. 
 
 Some liberal parents and scouts, however, said they could be driven away if the proposal fails to pass on Thursday. 
 
 Max Sullivan, 15, a ninth grader from Gillette, Wyo., who is working on his Eagle badge in a Mormon troop, said he was shocked to learn this year that gay scouts were prohibited. 
 
 “As soon as I learned about it, I said I would leave if they did not change their policy,” he said, adding, “I don’t want to be associated with any sort of organization that would be discriminatory.” 
 
 Max said that most scouts in his troop disagreed with his stance, but that he had the support of his family. 
 
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 He will miss scouting, he said, if Thursday’s vote pushes him to quit. 
 
 “I like the kind of skills I learn with scouting and the way that it will look on college applications,” he said. “Plus, it’s fun.”
– The Boy Scouts of America isn't making any promises, but it will at least review its policy that seeks to keep gay people out of the organization. The group says it will consider a resolution that would allow gay adults to serve as leaders in individual units, reports AP. The issue has been front and center following the dismissal of a lesbian den mother in Ohio, along with the Change.org petition that arose on her behalf. It now has close to 300,000 signatures, notes the Advocate. During the group's national meeting last week, activist Zach Wahls presented the organization with 275,000 signatures calling for a change in the policy. Wahls is an Eagle Scout with two lesbian moms who rose to fame with his public defense of them. "I love the organization and I refuse to stand by idly as it forfeits its cultural relevancy at the very moment this country needs it most," said the author of My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family.