Scouts Offer Gays Quiet Acceptance

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A controversy involving a gay Eagle Scout in Rhode Island has prompted a local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America to state publicly that a Scout can be a homosexual--as long as he doesn’t advertise it.

Gay rights advocates say the case suggests the organization might be relaxing its ban on gays, even as it prepares to protect the policy in the nation’s highest court.

“It sounds to me like the Boy Scouts are in retreat,” said Mary Bonauto, an attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston. “They acknowledge the sexual orientation of their members is none of their business.”

The statement--similar to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gays--was issued by the Narragansett Council of the Scouts, which said it had been approved by and written in consultation with the national organization.

The statement reaffirmed the Scouts’ position that being gay is “inconsistent with” the oath all Scouts must take in which they vow to be “morally straight” and “clean in thought, word and deed.”

But it suggested that Scouts who are covertly gay won’t be pushed out, specifying that the organization “does not accept those who openly self-identify as homosexuals.”

The statement resulted from consultations over a 16-year-old Eagle Scout who said he had been discriminated against.

The New Jersey Supreme Court recently ruled that the Boy Scouts’ ban on gays is illegal under that state’s anti-discrimination laws.