SALT LAKE CITY — The Boy Scouts of America announced revised rules last week to emphasize a duty to God and ban political advocacy, leaving a Utah organizer who applied for a troop with gay leaders wondering if applications like his are targeted.
The changes come at the end of a turbulent year that saw the organization lift a blanket ban on gay leaders.
Restore Our Humanity – which advocated for the legalization of gay marriage in Utah – filed an application in September for an LGBT troop. Director Mark Lawrence expects a rejection.
“I don’t think this is what they were expecting. I don’t think they expected a bunch of new charter applications to come,” Lawrence said.
However, a Boy Scouts executive in the scouting stronghold of Utah said the revisions show that the organization’s values remain intact.
The Boy Scouts’ doors are open, but new troop applications must now be approved by a national body, not locally, Great Salt Lake Council Scout Executive Rick Barnes said.
“We want to make sure that organizations are willing to follow our policy,” he said.
Utah is home to the nation’s largest sponsor of Boy Scout units, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Church leaders said they were troubled by the decision to allow gay troop leaders and had considered leaving the organization. They decided to stay after assurances that the organization would allow church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons, church leaders said.
The change nevertheless caused tension. The leaders of the Orem-based The Utah National Parks Council, which serves about 90,000 Scouts south of Salt Lake County, said last month they were facing staff layoffs after donations dropped.
Barnes said the revisions to the Scouting Code of Conduct reinforce the organization’s commitment to its core tenets.
The revised rules also require prospective troop organizers to confirm that leaders haven’t been convicted of abuse, and to pledge that religious faith will be a guiding principle for their troops.
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