The Boy Scouts of America voted earlier this week to end the ban on gay Scout leaders, permitting local groups to make their own rules. Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary, told the Boy Scout board litigation threats would bankrupt the organization if they did not eliminate the ban.
But the Boy Scouts will continue to let local religiously affiliated troops implement their own rules for leaders. The Human Rights Campaign is not celebrating. Instead, consistent with gay rights leaders’ hatred of almost all religious exemptions, HRC president Chad Griffin thunderingly denounced the Boy Scouts new policy:
“Half measures are unacceptable and discriminatory exemptions have no place in the Boy Scouts,” Griffin said in a statement. “It’s long overdue that BSA leaders demonstrate true leadership and embrace a full national policy of inclusion.”
This is not the first group that is going to bend to legal threats; litigation by wealthy elites is quite a large hammer.
Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at American Principles in Action.
