Boy Scouts hearing it from all sides as organization considers allowing gay kids

The Boy Scouts are really in a no-win situation. No matter what the organization decides about allowing openly gay kids into the program at its national meeting next week, it is going to be hammered by all sides of the debate.

Sharon Moulds knows she’ll be walking into a hornet’s nest when she arrives in Dallas next week for the national Boy Scouts meeting. “This has been a very complicated and fast-moving issue over the years,” she said.

The Scouts are considering allowing openly gay kids into the program, changing the current membership standards, but continuing the ban on openly gay adults as leaders.

Moulds is the CEO of the Chief Seattle Council of the scouts, which has seven members voting on this issue. “People are really mad right now,” she said. “They’re either saying ‘It’s going too far’ or ‘It hasn’t gone far enough.'”

The Scouts decided to consider this major change after three years of surveys and studies and then one final questionnaire for current leaders and scouts. “When our volunteers took the survey, it was pretty much split 50-50,” Moulds said. “There’s no clear answer.”

The one place where the answer is clear, Moulds said, is with the kids. She said they don’t seem to care if fellow scouts are gay or not. They just want to enjoy the program and have fun. She said the results of these surveys show a great geographical and generational divide. The Northeast likes the change. The south does not. Older leaders don’t like it. Younger leaders are fine with it.

But regardless of what the Boy Scouts decide next week, Moulds said nothing is going to change in what Scouts offer to kids. “We understand that we have gay kids in the program already,” she said. “I don’t think there’s going to be a whole bunch of kids that have wanted to come into Boy Scouts that haven’t. Our mission is still our mission, and that’s all I concentrate on.”

The Scout law, promise and motto are not going to change if gay kids are allowed in, but Moulds knows it’s going to be rough sailing for the Scouts as it deals with its decision and the reaction that will come with it. “Either way it goes, there’s going to be some angry people and some upset people, and we’ll have to get through that and keep mission focused.”

And that mission is to give the kids a great experience and teach them how to be physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight. And no, morally straight has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It’s about being honest and truthful.