Credit: Los Angeles Times

The Boy Scouts of America lifted a blanket ban on gay scout leaders Monday but will allow religious-backed scout groups to deny leadership positions based on sexual orientation.

Seventy-nine percent of the youth organization’s national executive board voted to immediately lift the ban in a conference call Monday after the measure had been tentatively approved July 10.

“Due to the social, political and legal changes taking place in our country and in our movement, I did not believe the [ban on gay leaders] could be sustained,” Boy Scouts President Robert M. Gates said in a statement after Monday’s vote. “Any effort to do so was inevitably going to result in simultaneous legal battles in multiple legal jurisdictions and at staggering cost.”
The best way for the Boy Scouts organization to press ahead while maintaining its “core values” was to “address the issue and set our own course,” Gates said. “And that’s what we’ve done.”

The decision caps two years of public debate over the role of gays in one of the […]