Scouting for All: Committed to Scouting, Open to Diversity. Working to end discrimination against gays, atheists, agnostics, other non-theists, and all other groups in the Boy Scouts of America.

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Activist Groups Urge Obama to Reject Boy Scout Honor

From Fox News:

Activist groups, including Scouting for All, urge President Obama not to accept the honorary Presidency of the Boy Scouts of America until they stop discriminating.

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Narragansett Council of the BSA Announced Once Again They Asked National BSA to Review its Ban on Gays

Concord Monitor, January 11, 2001
http://www.concordmonitor.com/stories/news/newengla/ri__gayscouts_18y17y46.html

Boy Scout council seeks review of national policy
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) --

The Narragansett Council of the Boy Scouts announced Wednesday they have once again asked national scout leaders to review the organization's ban on gays as troop leaders. Narragansett president Robert Pease Jr. said the local chapter believes the first review was inadequate.

"We believe the completed review was clearly not of the scope and breadth which we recommended," he said in a statement. "We sense a growing concern and movement for such a review across the country."

The council's first request was made in 1999 after a gay Eagle Scout was denied a job at a Rhode Island scout camp then filed a complaint with the state Human Rights Commission.

The national group completed its review after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban saying no changes would be made.

The Narragansett Council has never said outright whether they support or object to the policy, but said they would comply with it.

It was unclear how the Boy Scouts of America would respond to the second request. Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the 5.8 million-member organization, did not return a call to his office.

Pease said no Scout in the council had ever been dismissed because of his sexual orientation.

The 16-year-old Eagle Scout who said in 1999 that he was denied a job at Camp Yawgoog in Hopkinton because he was gay has dropped the complaint after the Narragansett Council gave him back his job.

Pease said the dispute with the teen was a "mistake" and said the boy remains a Scout in good standing.

Officially, troops that ignore the policy will have their charter revoked. However, the Boy Scouts of America has not revoked the charter of any troop, including at least two in Rhode Island, that have rejected the ban.

Pease previously said he believes most Americans are comfortable with the ban and he condemned critics of the Scouts, saying "the agents of so-called 'tolerance' have been most stridently intolerant of our constitutional right to freedom of association."

Scouting For All is not an alternative scouting program.
We are an education and advocacy organization reaching out to gay and nontheist youth and adults in our effort to get the Boy Scouts of America to rescind its exlusionary policy.

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