NEW YORK (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons. 
 
 FILE - In this Sunday, June 8, 2014, file photo, a Boy Scout wears his kerchief embroidered with a rainbow knot during Salt Lake City’s annual gay pride parade. The Boy Scouts of America's top policy-making... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 23, 2014, file photo, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates addresses the Boy Scouts of America's annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn., after being selected as the organization's new... (Associated Press) 
 
 The new policy, aimed at easing a controversy that has embroiled the Boy Scouts for years, takes effect immediately. It was approved by the BSA's National Executive Board on a 45-12 vote during a closed-to-the-media teleconference. 
 
 "For far too long this issue has divided and distracted us," said the BSA's president, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "Now it's time to unite behind our shared belief in the extraordinary power of Scouting to be a force for good." 
 
 The stage had been set for Monday's action on May 21, when Gates told the Scouts' national meeting that the long-standing ban on participation by openly gay adults was no longer sustainable. He said the ban was likely to be the target of lawsuits that the Scouts likely would lose. 
 
 Two weeks ago, the new policy was approved unanimously by the BSA's 17-member National Executive Committee. It would allow local Scout units to select adult leaders without regard to sexual orientation — a stance that several Scout councils have already adopted in defiance of the official national policy. 
 
 In 2013, after heated internal debate, the BSA decided to allow openly gay youth as scouts, but not gay adults as leaders. Several denominations that collectively sponsor close to half of all Scout units — including the Roman Catholic church, the Mormon church and the Southern Baptist Convention — have been apprehensive about ending the ban on gay adults. 
 
 The BSA's top leaders have pledged to defend the right of any church-sponsored units to continue excluding gays as adult volunteers. But that assurance has not satisfied some conservative church leaders,' 
 
 "It's hard for me to believe, in the long term, that the Boy Scouts will allow religious groups to have the freedom to choose their own leaders," said the Rev. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. 
 
 "In recent years I have seen a definite cooling on the part of Baptist churches toward the Scouts," Moore said. "This will probably bring that cooling to a freeze." 
 
 Under the BSA's new policy: 
 
 —Prospective employees of the national organization could no longer be denied a staff position on the basis of sexual orientation. 
 
 —Gay leaders who were previously removed from Scouting because of the ban would have the opportunity to reapply for volunteer positions. 
 
 —If otherwise qualified, a gay adult would be eligible to serve as a Scoutmaster or unit leader. 
 
 Gates, who became the BSA's president in May 2014, said at the time that he personally would have favored ending the ban on gay adults, but he opposed any further debate after the Scouts' policymaking body upheld the ban. In May, however, he said that recent events "have confronted us with urgent challenges I did not foresee and which we cannot ignore." 
 
 He cited an announcement by the BSA's New York City chapter in early April that it had hired Pascal Tessier, the nation's first openly gay Eagle Scout, as a summer camp leader. Gates also cited broader gay-rights developments and warned that rigidly maintaining the ban "will be the end of us as a national movement." 
 
 The BSA faced potential lawsuits in New York and other states if it continued to enforce its ban, which had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. Since then, the exclusionary policy has prompted numerous major corporations to suspend charitable donations to the Scouts, and has strained relations with some municipalities that cover gays in their non-discrimination codes. 
 
 Stuart Upton, a lawyer for the LGBT-rights group Lambda Legal, questioned whether the BSA's new policy to let church-sponsored units continue to exclude gay adults would be sustainable. 
 
 "There will be a period of time where they'll have some legal protection," Upton said. "But that doesn't mean the lawsuits won't keep coming. ... They will become increasingly marginalized from the direction society is going." 
 
 Like several other major youth organizations, the Boy Scouts have experienced a membership decline in recent decades. Current membership, according to the BSA, is about 2.4 million boys and about 1 million adults. 
 
 After the 2013 decision to admit gay youth, some conservatives split from the BSA to form a new group, Trail Life USA, which has created its own ranks, badges and uniforms. The group claims a membership of more than 25,000 youths and adults. ||||| The statue of a scout stands in the entrance to Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas, February 5, 2013. 
 
 NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Boy Scouts of America on Friday proposed lifting a ban on gay scouts but maintaining a prohibition on gay adults from leading troops, a compromise that attempts to end a fight that has split the century-old American institution into bitter factions. 
 
 Reaction from scouting supporters ranged from outrage to limited approval. The biggest organization in scouts, the Mormon Church, said it was studying the proposal, leaving uncertain the outcome of a May vote by scout leaders that will set policy. Gay rights groups said continuing to bar gay adults was unacceptable, but they welcomed the change for youths. 
 
 "The general feeling is that this is a bad move," which could precipitate a major crisis, A.J. Smith, president of the Association of Baptists for Scouting, wrote in a website post, attempting to summarize Baptists' views. "This is about a concerted effort to bring down a cultural icon. We must brace ourselves for the long haul on this one." 
 
 The scouts' decision is a focal point of a heated gay rights debate in the United States, where polls show public opinion is fast moving toward greater acceptance and a core of social conservatives stridently oppose such change. 
 
 In the coming months, the Supreme Court will rule on whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In 2011, the military repealed a ban on openly gay soldiers. 
 
 The Boy Scouts proposal would create a situation where a gay youth could become a scout and then be forced to resign when he becomes an adult. 
 
 Scout leaders in 2000 won a Supreme Court battle over the right to exclude gays. There are more than 2.6 million youth scouts and 1 million adults, with faith-based groups sponsoring 70 percent of scout units. 
 
 If the resolution is approved, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," Deron Smith, the organization's spokesman, told Reuters. 
 
 But the policy is not changed for adults, the group said, and an internal document obtained by Reuters says that when youth members become adults, they "must meet the requirements of our adult standards" to remain in the group. 
 
 LONG STUDY BEFORE COMPROMISE 
 
 Smith said a parents in three of four U.S. regions opposed the current membership policy. 
 
 A report on the matter found religious groups linked to the Scouts were concerned with homosexual adult leaders, not with youth, and concluded "a change in the membership policy specific to youth only would be consistent with the religious beliefs of the BSA's major chartered organizations." 
 
 AT&T; Chief Executive and Chairman Randall Stephenson, a Boy Scouts board member who had called for allowing gays scouts and a key corporate advocate on the issue, endorsed the new policy on youths but did not comment on banning gay adults. 
 
 "I fully support the BSA Executive Council's resolution to ensure all youth have the opportunity to participate in scouting and benefit from the life-long leadership skills scouting helps develop," he said in a statement. 
 
 Gay rights groups were quick to say the decision was not far-reaching enough. 
 
 "By refusing to consider an end to its ban on gay and lesbian parents, the Boy Scouts have missed an opportunity to exercise leadership and usher the organization back to relevancy," said Rich Ferraro, a spokesperson for GLAAD, which promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. 
 
 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon church, which has more than 430,000 youths in scouts, "will take the time needed to fully review the language and study the implications of this new proposal," spokesman Michael Purdy said. 
 
 The Mormon church has consistently opposed gay marriage, and was a primary promoter of California's 2008 ban, known as Proposition 8. But recently it has emphasized respecting gay church members and declared that homosexuality is not a choice, reflecting changing attitudes among members. 
 
 "This was an exceptionally difficult decision as a business," said Patrick Boyle, whose 1994 book "Scout's Honor" examined sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America. 
 
 "They were stuck in a very bad spot with their constituents divided - constituents being the parents, and also the churches and the businesses that support the scouts." 
 
 The road to a decision has been long. In July 2012, the group's board voted to uphold the gay ban. Six months later, group leaders said they were mulling over whether to remove the national restriction, leaving local branches to decide whether to admit gays and lesbians. A final vote, expected in February, was delayed following a request from a coalition of 33 faith-based councils that represent about one-fifth of all youth members in the Boy Scouts. 
 
 Boyle notes that this reversal "shows how the gay rights movement has caught fire in the past dozen years." 
 
 Chuck Small, a BSA adult leader and the parent of 10- and 12-year-old scouts in South Carolina, welcomed the proposal. 
 
 "It's a hard and divisive issue, but what it comes down to is that we learn more from people who are different from us than people who are like us," Small said. 
 
 "I think it's a healthy thing, and I hope my boys are up to the challenge to accept people for what they do, rather than what they believe or how they're made up." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Chris Francescani and Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Vicki Allen, Andrew Hay, Eric Walsh and Stacey Joyce)
– It looks like the Boy Scouts of America may be ready to end its ban on openly gay scouts, but not on gay leaders. The organization today proposed doing away with the longstanding and controversial ban, which would mean that in the future, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," a spokesperson tells Reuters. However, the proposal would continue to exclude gay adult leaders, the AP reports. The policy won't become official, however, unless the organization's National Council, which has 1,400 voting members, approves it at its meeting in Texas the week of May 20. This proposal comes on the heels of three months of research the Boy Scouts did, including surveys sent to members.