Starting New Year's Day, January 1, 2014, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) will accept openly gay youths, according to MSN News.
BSA's new policy, approved May of this year, is an historic change that has prompted the organization to reflect on myriad potential complications. These include tentmates and shower policies or whether Scouts can join gay pride parades, the report said.
"My hope is there will be the same effect this Jan. 1 as the Y2K scare," Brad Haddock, a BSA national executive board member who chairs the policy implementation committee, told MSN News, while referring to the new policy as a non-event like the 2000 Y2k fear that proved false. "It's business as usual, nothing happens and we move forward."
However, some churches are already dropping their sponsorship of Scout units because of BSA's new policy. Also, some families are already switching to Trail Life USA, which is a new conservative alternative to BSA.
So far, no massive defections from the BSA have taken place and most of its major sponsors such as the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches are still maintaining ties, the report said.
"There hasn't been a whole lot of fallout," Haddock, who is also a lawyer from Wichita, Kan, told MSN News. "If a church said they wouldn't work with us, we'd have a church right down the street say, 'We'll take the troop.'"
The BSA's new policy was approved in May, which garnered 60 percent of support from its National Council's 1,400 voting members. The vote followed bitter nationwide debate, and was accompanied by an announcement that the BSA would continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership positions, the report said.
But withr the new membership policy, gay youths can no longer be barred from the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts or coed Venturers program. However, there are some limitations gay Scouts faces.
"Any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting," one BSA document said. "No member may use Scouting to promote or advance any social or political position or agenda, including on the matter of sexual orientation."
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