Boy Scouts change policy on gay members a little bit

[GenuineRisk]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/23/us/boy...al-orientation

I say "a little bit" because gay adults are still not permitted in Boy Scouts.

Thoughts? Any progress is progress, so good on Boy Scouting for the members under the age of 18, but at this point, there's no option for gay boys to continue being involved in Boy Scouts when they become adults.

I was a Girl Scout until I graduated High School (Gold Award, yay!), but they've always been a very secular organization, even though the pledge mentions God, or at least it did when I was a scout. My favorite Scout song ("On My Honor") also had a pretty strong spiritual theme. But there was never, to my knowledge, any sort of official issue about sexual orientation. Girl Scouts, in fact, said last year that transgendered kids that identify as female are welcome, too. The Boy Scouts, though, are really dependent on religious organizations supporting them and those organizations clearly have a big say in the BSA policies.

So, I get the BSA dilemma, which is, if they join the 21st Century, they run the risk of losing their main base of membership and support. But I think it shows the danger of depending on faith-based organizations to provide charity and social opportunities- those organizations can very easily be exclusionary by claiming something offends their religious principles, and how do you have a argument with the claim, "Because God told me so"?

So, a sort-of props to BSA for a tiny step forward, and I hope the leadership gets it through their heads soon that gay =/= pedophile. Because, seriously? We're still having this discussion? Criminy.