The executive board voted Monday to end the blanket ban on gay people serving as Scout leaders. Individually chartered troops, however, can decide to keep the ban.
A group of Boy Scouts carry a large American Flag down Capitol Mall during a Veterans Day Parade in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday Nov. 11, 2014.
Rich Pedroncelli / AP
WASHINGTON — The Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay leaders on Monday, following an executive board vote that capped off several months of quick movement on the issue.
"On Monday, July 27, the national executive board ratified a resolution removing the national restriction on openly gay leaders and employees," Boy Scouts President Robert Gates said in a video announcing the news. Under the new policy, however, individually chartered troops — many of which are backed by churches — will be allowed to continue the ban.
According to a statement from the Boy Scouts, 79 percent of the board members "present and voting" voted in favor of the resolution.
While change happened rapidly this spring and summer, Monday's vote — in which individually chartered troops maintain the right to continue banning gay leaders — comes more than 15 years after the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Boy Scouts to ban gay leaders.
Evan Wolfson, the lawyer for out gay assistant scoutmaster James Dale in that 2000 Supreme Court case, told BuzzFeed News on Monday that the move was "a big step forward" — but that more was needed.
"I hope that Boy Scouts will finish the job as soon as possible in order to be attractive to parents and young people who only want to participate in an organization that lives up to its own values of respecting all people," he said.
Monday's vote of the executive board followed a unanimous executive committee vote earlier in July recommending the end to the ban.
In addition to ending the nationwide ban and allowing individually chartered troops to keep the ban, the recommended policy approved on Monday night also noted that the national Boy Scouts organization would back any legal challenges faced by religious organizations that kept the ban.
The committee vote itself followed a speech in May by Gates, who previously was the defense secretary under President Obama, that the blanket ban "cannot be sustained." A month earlier, the Greater New York Councils had hired an out gay man, Pascal Tessier, to serve as a leader at its scout camps this summer — a fact noted by Gates in his speech.
Tessier has been a part of the changing face of the Boy Scouts, having been one of the first known out gay teens to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout — the organization's highest rank — after the Boy Scouts ended its ban on gay youth members in 2013.
One of the groups Tessier has worked with is Scouts for Equality, a group aimed at ending the ban.
"This vote marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Boy Scouts of America. Tens of thousands of people came together because they wanted to build a better future for the Boy Scouts of America, and that future starts now. I couldn't be more proud of the tireless work of our members, volunteers, and staff over these last three years," Zach Wahls, the executive director of Scouts for Equality, said in a statement. "As of this vote, the Boy Scouts of America is an organization that is looking forward, not back."
Watch Boy Scouts President Robert Gates talk about the policy change:
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