NBC News: Boy Scouts Close to Ending Ban on Gay Members, Leaders

[Xithras]

90. The proposal would not leave the decision to the units, but to the chartering organization.

Remember, the structure of scouting is that each unit is effectively an independent franchise "owned" by its chartering organization. The chartering organization can be anything from a church, to a community group, to schools and private businesses. That organization creates, and is ultimately responsible for, the units it creates.

For what it's worth, the Moron Church is the chartering organization for thousands of THEIR OWN units. The Mormon units generally meet in their church facilities, and consist exclusively of boys who are members of those Mormon churches. Even in deepest, reddest Mormon Utah, however, there are plenty of units in existence that are NOT chartered by the Mormon church, which belong to other community groups and are generally open to the public. None of them would be bound in any way by the decisions of the Mormon units, even if those units are located in Mormon dominated councils.

If the Mormons stood by their statement, it would mean that homosexuals could not join scouting units that actually belonged to the Mormon church. I agree that it's bad, but IMO no right-minded parent would send their kids to one of those units anyway (Mormon units are notorious for various other "issues&quot . There would be nothing stopping other units in those same areas from opening themselves up.

In many ways, this change would be MORE responsive to outside pressure as well. If a unit is chartered by a church or community group, gay rights advocates can bring pressure to bear DIRECTLY on those chartering groups. That would lead to the charters either dropping the bigot-units to avoid the publicity, or caving and ordering the units they've chartered to be inclusive in order to save their own arse.

Many chartering organizations simply aren't going to fight it because they don't want any bad press. Others will support it because of their own anti-discrimination policies. My kids belong to units chartered by a local public law enforcement group, and our charter rep has told us bluntly that the ban is gone the moment they're permitted to eliminate it.