A New Direction for Scouting
Today, July 27, 2015 (yesterday by the time the post is live), the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America approved a policy change to allow gay adults to serve as adult volunteers in units, with an exception for units sponsored by religious organizations that allows those units to "use religious beliefs as criteria for selecting adult leaders, including matters of sexuality" (for adults only). My church and the sponsoring organization of all of the Scouting units for which I have volunteered, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , gave a fairly strong response , objecting both about the scheduling of the vote and about the outcome of the policy, saying "the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America." The mission statement of the Boy Scouts of America is: The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people