Boston-Area Scout Unit to Allow Gay Leaders -Report

BOSTON (Reuters) - One of the largest Boy Scout councils in Massachusetts has adopted a policy that will allow gay scoutmasters to be affiliated with some local troops as long as they do not discuss their sexual orientation, The Boston Globe reported on Wednesday.

Brock Bigsby, Scout executive for the council, told the newspaper the carefully worded ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy, quietly approved last month, is consistent with the National Boy Scouts Council's stance on homosexuality, since the doctrine would permit avowed gays to lead Scout troops as long as they did not discuss their sexual orientation.

The policy approved by the Massachusetts Minuteman Council -- an umbrella group for 330 Boy Scout troops and 18,000 Scouts in greater Boston -- bars the exclusion of anyone on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation, the Globe reported.

``Discussions about sexual orientation do not have a place in Scouts,'' Bigsby told the Globe. ``The Scouts will not inquire into a person's sexual history and that person will not expose their sexual orientation one way or the other.''

Greg Shields, the spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America, was attending the National Scout Jamboree in Virginia and could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Boy Scouts have argued that homosexuality violates the Scout oath to be ``morally straight'' and the Scout law to be ''clean.''

In June 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that the Boy Scouts may exclude gays, saying that a private group like the Scouts has the right to set its own moral code and espouse its own viewpoint.

Last month, the Massachusetts Minuteman Council and Scout leaders in several other major cities asked the national office to let individual scouting organizations make their own decisions about gay Scout leaders and members, according to the newspaper report. Bigsby told the Globe the petition was under review.

The Boy Scouts of America have more than 4.9 million youth members and about 1.2 million registered adult volunteers.