Boy Scouts president says ban on gay adult leaders must end

The Boy Scouts of America must finally end its ban on gay adult leaders, the organization’s president, Robert Gates, said Thursday in Atlanta.

“We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be,” Gates, the former Secretary of Defense, said at the annual Boy Scouts meeting, reports The New York Times. Gates suggested that it is unsustainable and that keeping the ban alive would end the Boy Scouts “as a national movement.”

However, Gates said that local religious groups that sponsor Scout troops should still be able to set their own policies.

“Such an approach would allow all churches, which sponsor some 70 percent of our Scout units, to establish leadership standards consistent with their faith,” Gates said. “We must, at all costs, preserve the religious freedom of our church partners to do this.”

According to the Associated Press, Gates said that the policy won’t be changed immediately at the meeting and the topic should be taken up at a future meeting.

The Boy Scouts came under fire for their treatment of gays in October 2012 when a 17-year-old was denied a badge because he is gay, even though he had been a Boy Scout for 12 years. It took the organization a year before they finally agreed to start allowing openly gay members on Jan. 1, 2014. However, the ban on gay adult leaders has remained and local groups around the country have openly opposed the ban.