Public Gay-Rights Support, Corporate Pressure Key to Boy Scouts’ Shift

The key steps in the Boy Scouts of America’s long journey to lifting its ban on openly gay scouts are traced by The Washington Post.

The newspaper speaks to Scouts leaders and historians, gay activists, and religious conservatives to examine the impetus for the switch after decades of staunch organizational opposition to allowing homosexual troop members.

They cite several factors in the change, including gains in public support for same-sex relationships and marriage, growing insistence from corporate backers on equal access for gays, and a sense that the Boy Scouts’ image had become that of an exclusionary organization whose appeal was in decline.