Boy Scouts announces proposal to lift gay ban for youth members: Adult members wouldn’t be covered by the proposed vote, however. They certainly picked a pretty quiet news day to announce this news.
AP: In a pre-Super Bowl interview on CBS, US President Barack Obama said the Boy Scouts of America should open its membership to gays and lesbians when its national executive board discusses the issue this week.
During the interview, Obama praised the scouts as a ‘great institution’ that provides young people with lifelong leadership training and opportunities. He said “no one should be barred from that.”
What direction do you think the Scouts will ultimately go?
The Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation’s largest private youth organizations, is actively considering an end to its decades-long policy of banning gay scouts or scout leaders, according to scouting officials and outsiders familiar with internal discussions.
If adopted by the organization’s board of directors, it would represent a profound change on an issue that has been highly controversial — one that even went to the US Supreme Court. The new policy, now under discussion, would eliminate the ban from the national organization’s rules, leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts.
The policy has been officially recognized since 1980, though we suspect it was quietly enforced for a much longer period in some areas. Thoughts?
The Scouts have got to expose, list and severely punish every former employee or volunteer who ignored or concealed child sex crimes. Nothing will have a quicker and more long-lasting impact of changing the culture of recklessness and secrecy.David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests • Making his recommendation to the Boy Scouts of America as to what they should do next following the release of thousands of pages of confidential documents detailing abuse within the Boy Scouts. The release of the files created a firestorm of controversy regarding the organization and crashed the Web site of attorney Kelly Clark, who posted the files on his site Thursday, drawing 200,000 hits in a short amount of time. (The site’s back up now.) Could the Boy Scouts put this controversy behind them for good with the right response?
The Los Angeles Times has compiled a searchable database of the “perversion files”, a collection of more than 1900 documents outlining allegations of sexual abuse on the part of Boy Scouts of America employees and volunteers. The files cover a period of time spanning two decades, and case summaries from more than 3,100 cases opened between 1947 and 2005. The map above depicts each of the troops or units mentioned in one or more documents found in the LA Times’ collection. (Photo via LA Times) source
The LA Times is publishing Boy Scouts case files documenting decades of abuse by scout leaders.
Switching gears, this is super-important.
While we believe the files are an inconclusive record, the BSA will undertake a new review and analysis … to ensure that all good-faith suspicion of abuse [from 1965-present] have been reported to law enforcement.A Boy Scouts spokesperson • Explaining, in an e-mailed statement, that the group plans to investigate allegations that a series of child molestation scandals among its ranks went unreported for decades. The Scouts also released a statement from psychiatrist Dr. Janet I. Warren defending the group against the allegations it faces. source
Don’t ask, don’t tell – Boy Scouts edition: Jon Langbert, the father of a 9-year-old Cub Scout and a leader within his local chapter, was removed from the position because he’s gay. Apparently, other members of the Dallas, Texas chapter complained, and the complaints eventually got really loud. The organization, by the way, does not allow gays or atheists to be in leadership positions, but says it would have let Langbert stay in his position if he chose not to publicize it. The Supreme Court, by the way, allowed this in a 2000 court decision. With all the attention that gay suicides are getting right now, we have a feeling that this will eventually become a tough position for the organization to hold onto culturally. (BTW, we were in scouting as kids.) source
Oh yeah: Boy Scouts still legally allowed “Don’t Ask” policies
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