The Boy Scouts of America recently lifted its longstanding policy of prohibiting openly gay youths from participating in the organization.

The resolution passed during the BSA National Council’s meeting in Dallas in late May and states that “no youth may be denied membership in the BSA on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” The new policy will take effect Jan. 1, 2014 throughout all scouting units.

The local BSA council for central Missouri, the Great Rivers Council, sent three representatives to the national meeting to vote. Of these three, two representatives voted in favor for the policy change.

“The (local) majority was in support of the resolution, which states that we’re not going to deny membership to a young person based on sexual orientation alone, but at the same time, that resolution also calls for the reaffirmation of the scout’s duty to God and a scout is reverent,” GRC Scouting Executive Doug Callahan said.

Any type of sexual activity, whether it be homosexual or heterosexual, is against the virtues of scouting, and so having openly gay or avowed youth in the program “shouldn’t make that much of a difference,” Callahan said.

Howard Hutton, the council coordinator for the Scouts for Equality organization in Columbia, became an official member of the Boy Scouts when he was eight years old and has been fighting the Boy Scouts’ membership policy ever since it became public in 1991.

The resolution has been met with both positive and negative reactions. Callahan said he has heard from individuals on both sides of the issue, including people who say they will no longer be involved with the Scouts due to the decision.

“Part of the issue right now is people are misunderstanding what exactly this bill represents,” Callahan said. “A lot of people I’ve already heard from say the Scouts have abandoned their Duty to God and the part of the Scout Law that says the Scout is reverent. And when we talk about a Scout is morally straight and a Scout is reverent, it really means being true to what your faith is no matter what that faith may be.”

There has been a significant decline in Boy Scouts membership in recent years. In 2008, there were 2.8 million youths involved, down from 4.6 million in 1997, according to the BSA website.

Hutton believes this drop in participation is influenced by the organization’s policy and that membership will rise with the passing of the new resolution, Hutton said.

“All kinds of people aren’t Boy Scouts now because of the exclusionary policy,” Hutton said. “I expect that where the Scouts would have continued to diminish with those sectarian organizations, at this point we will see a very slow and then steady rise and increase in membership. In the next 10 or 15 years, I think membership will go back up to 10 or 15 million.”

Though the Scouts revoked its disclusion of gay youths, the prohibition of openly gay leaders remains intact.

“The one thing that most people could agree on was that we wanted to serve kids and we didn’t want to deny membership to youth members,” Callahan said. “But on the issue of adults, there was a lot more disagreement. There wasn’t quite the meeting of the minds when it came to adults as much as there was on youths. So at this time, they decided to only change the policy on youth.”

Callahan stated that there are currently no plans to revisit the issue of allowing gay adults.

However, Hutton said he would like to see an inclusive diversity plan for gay adults by 2014.

“We’ve got gay people around, and they’re just marvelous, incredible human beings,” Hutton said. “Sensitive, understanding, calm, rational, thoughtful, respectful, all the model of character that you could ever dream, and we’re wasting their talent. Those exclusionary policies have to go out the window, and that includes adults, absolutely.”

The BSA’s next step will be to educate the public about the resolution and focus on all the good things about the Scouts, Callahan said.

“Hopefully we’ll minimize the number of folks who still want to leave and we’ll be able to attract new members and parents who in the past have not been happy with Scouting’s membership policy,” Callahan said. “So our plan is for the Boy Scouts of America in the future to grow and to attract more young people.”