Boy Scouts in New York hire openly gay Eagle Scout in spite of national rules

[kpete]

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484
Pascal Tessier receives his Eagle Scout badge at his weekly troop meeting at the All Saints Church in Chevy Chase on February 10, 2014. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

On his 18th birthday last year, Pascal Tessier wrote an open letter to the Boy Scouts of America. He was saying goodbye to an institution that, he said, taught him the “morals and values” that shaped the man he had become. He was saying goodbye because, although the organization had recently done away with a policy keeping gay kids out of the group, it still banned gay adults — which, now, included him.

“Today is my 18th birthday, a milestone on my path to becoming an adult and the day I am no longer eligible to be a Boy Scout because I am gay,” he wrote in August 2014. “Despite the Boy Scouts’ historic decision last year to open its ranks to gay youth, the Scouts still ban gay adults. And as of today, that means me.”

Tessier already had become a warrior in the battle against the Boy Scouts policy. In 2013, he stood on a street corner and protested its policy against gay youth. The organization later agreed to lift that ban. In 2014, he earned the Eagle Scout ranking he coveted nearly all of his life. From that moment on, he has been called the nation’s first openly gay Eagle Scout.

On Thursday, the Boy Scouts’ Greater New York Councils announced another pivotal moment: It hired Tessier as a summer camp leader — in direct defiance of the national organization’s rules. By many, it was seen as yet another victory for an 18-year-old Kensington, Maryland, man challenging a system that, by policy, excludes him.



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[Gothmog]

1. This is great news

I am no longer active in my son's old troop but we have been working from inside to change the policy. There are a good number of LGBT leaders in my local district and no one cares so long as they do not wear their uniform to a gay pride event. The change a couple of years ago to allow LGBT scouts was a good first move but it was not the last move.

I bet that the New York council has enough financial backing that the national organization will not mess with them