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| Stephen Cyr, 13, left, and his brother Paul Cyr, 15, of Boy Scout Troop 21 in Oak Cliff, Texas, attend the ìSave Our Scoutsî Prayer Vigil and Rally in front of the Boy Scouts of America National Headquarters in Irving, TX Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. The Boy Scouts of America said Wednesday it needed more time before deciding whether to move away from its divisive policy of excluding gays as scouts or adult leaders. |
It promises to be a
campaign as passionate and dramatic as any big election. For the next 14
weeks, the Boy Scouts of America will be the focus of prayers,
petitions and pressure tactics aimed at swaying a vote on
whether to
ease its ban on gays as Scouts or adult leaders.
The
decision will be made the week of May 20 by the roughly 1,400 voting
members of the BSA's National Council. The policy was supposed to be
settled Wednesday by the Scouts' 70-member national executive board, but
the board concluded the issue was so complex that the organization
needed more time to study it.
At stake is a
proposal to ease the ban by allowing sponsors of local Scout units to
decide for themselves whether to admit gays. Gay-rights groups say the
plan is inadequate, and that no units should be allowed to discriminate.
Some conservative religious leaders and advocacy groups want the ban to
stay in place nationwide.
Both sides are girding for intensive lobbying between now and late May, hoping to influence the outcome.
"Keep the pressure on," was the message Thursday from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to its supporters.
GLAAD,
which has been active in several recent campaigns opposing the ban,
provided information on how to telephone or email BSA headquarters and
offered suggestions for how to advocate using Twitter and Facebook.
"Take action!" GLAAD exhorted. "Send a message to the Boy Scouts that we won't rest until they end the ban."
The
Human Rights Campaign, a major gay-rights group, said it will caution
the BSA's corporate donors that they would lose points in an annual
"equality index" if they continued to support the Scouts as long as any
units were allowed to exclude gays.
Similar campaigns were being waged by conservative groups seeking to keep the ban in place.
"This
is far from over," wrote Tony Perkins of the Family Research Center in
an online message. The center "will continue in our efforts to help the
BSA stand strong against the corporate executives and activists who care
more about conformity than character."
Perkins
said the efforts would include outreach to Scouting parents, liaisons
with religious denominations that sponsor Scout units and an extension
of an ongoing campaign to flood BSA offices with calls and emails.
Several
other conservative groups have joined in an online campaign calling for
the resignation of BSA executive board member Randall Stephenson, the
CEO of AT&T, who said last year he would try to move the Scouts away
from the ban on gays.
"It seems Stephenson's
mission is to destroy the Boy Scouts of America from within," said the
American Family Association. "As an executive board member, he is using
his corporate influence to bully the BSA into gay assimilation."
Under
the executive board's timetable, Stephenson is set to become its
chairman in 2014. An AT&T spokesman, Mark Siegel, said neither
Stephenson nor the company had any public comment about the BSA
membership debate.
While the executive board
includes several high-powered business executives and civic leaders, the
national council is more reflective of Scouting's nationwide
grassroots. Members include regional presidents and representatives of
the Scouts' 290 local councils.
Given the
impassioned views on two sides of the debate, the BSA risks alienating
large segments of the national Scouting community no matter what the
decision is in May.
Ian Mitroff, who runs a
crisis-management consulting firm and is an adjunct professor at the
University of California-Berkeley, said he would advise the BSA to move
toward an easing of the ban.
"More and more in our society, people are saying, `We're not going to put up with inequality of any kind,'" he said.
But
he acknowledged the risk of a backlash from those who oppose any
change. "You're going to have a PR problem, no matter what," Mitroff
said.
About 70 percent of all Scout units are
sponsored by religious denominations, including many by conservative
faiths that have supported the ban, including the Roman Catholic Church,
the Mormon church, and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Frank Page, president of the SBC's Executive Committee, was relieved that the BSA had delayed a decision.
"At
least this gives all segments of the Scouting family an opportunity to
express their views," he told Baptist Press, the SBC's official news
agency.
The Mormons are the largest sponsor of
Scout units, with more than 420,000 boys in nearly 38,000 units,
according to BSA figures. While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints has supported the ban on gays, it has made no official statement
about the proposal that would give troop sponsors leeway to set their
own policy.
"We caution others not to
speculate about our position," Mormon church spokesman Michael Purdy
said.
"Neither has the church launched any campaign either to affect or
prevent a policy change."
On the liberal side
of the religious spectrum, a leader of the Reform branch of American
Judaism released the text of a letter to BSA President Wayne Parry,
urging the ban on gays to be lifted nationwide. Reform synagogues have
been discouraged from sponsoring units since 2001 because of the ban.
"We
look forward to the day we can encourage our congregations to return to
their historical role in hosting BSA troops," wrote Rabbi David
Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
"Indeed, we hope that day may be soon."
In
Houston, civil rights lawyer and scoutmaster Bill Helfand worries that
the eventual outcome might fracture the Scouting movement.
"Whatever
decision is made, there will be people absolutely certain it is wrong,"
he said. "I hope Scouting doesn't suffer for whatever the decision is,
because it is the boys who will suffer."
Helfand
says his Troop 55, one of the country's largest with 225 Boy Scouts,
will abide by whatever rules the BSA leadership sets, but he hopes the
end result is a uniform policy for all Scout units.
"I don't think it's productive for Scouting's goals to have different rules for different troops," he said.
While
some gay-rights activists criticized the BSA for delaying a decision,
Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay issues,
expressed empathy.
"It's important for gay
groups to keep the pressure up ... but the Boy Scouts may have done the
right thing for now," he said. "If they need more time to get people on
board with the new policy, I'm fine with that. Getting it right is more
important than getting it fast."
