enough to outweigh the horror of james holmes crimes and spare his life. jose? scott cohen, thank you very much. a big change this morning for the boy scouts. the organization s decades-long ban on gay scout leaders now officially lifted. the executive board concluded the policy of excludeing gay adults no longer legally defensible. even though the national ban is gone local scout units will be allowed to exclude gay scout leaders for religious reasons. forced to resign his position as official scoutmaster after he revealed he was gay. greg, good to see you. how are you? i m good gooddoing good today. thax thanks for having me. tell me about your reaction to the announcement. this is good news for the boy scouts organization. i had been a scout leader for eight years when i was forced out three years ago, and now because of the ruling yesterday, today i will be able to submit my application for readmission,
a part of an organization that once rejected you? well, i never wanted to leave the boy scouts organization in the first place. i was a devoted scouter for eight years and a registered leader for six of those years. i believe in the scouting program and i m i want to continue to be involved in it because it s a ministry for me. it s very important for me at my church to be involved in ministries and scouting is one of those i choose to participate in. so i believe in the scouting program, that s why i want to get back involved. how will you go about approaching other boy scout groups that say no to gay scout leaders? well, hopefully i can be an example for them because i was an openly gay scout leader. i expect to carry a that ford ward in the future as i get involved with my son s troop. i think along with other people
who are openly gay and serving as scout leaders, we ll set examples and ease people s fears about what it means to be an openly gay scout leader. one of the things about scouting is that there are protections in place called too deep leadership and no one on one contact that protect youth from any kind of inappropriate action by scout leaders and it protects leaders like me because if you have two adults present, you don t have to worry about any false claims being made. so the scouting program has already thought about these thing and they have safeguards in place. and the mormons, they re already saying they may leave over it. the question is why not go all in. the church is still able to decide right now. right. that confuses me a little bit, the statement about the mormons because two years ago the boy scouts of america voted to allow gay youth and i would have thought if they were going to make a move and leave the scouting program they would have done it two years ago but the
it is now official. the boy scouts of america lifted the ban on openly gay scout leaders and employees. reaction is pouring in. it is drawing resistance. especially from the church of the latter day saint. the organization may leave the boy scouts. they say it is deeply troubled by the policy change even with the religious policy issues. and new york s laguardia is the worst in america. joe biden compared it to a third world country. now it is getting a makeover.
ministries not just as scout leaders. i should point out i m also a girl scout leader in addition to being a boy scout leader. the church i think is would be welcoming me back. our particular parish what we re what we re waiting to see, however, how the archdiocese of louisville and the catholic committee for scouting comes down on the scouting. there s a decision to be made and might choose to have a membership standards to overlay kind of what s going to be out there for the rest of the scouting organization. greg it sounds like you are quite the servant to your community for young kids there. real quickly, though, you said a merit badge counselor. quhas the merit badge you have seen someone achieve? that s a tough question. you know the one that gets a lot of the kids is personal fitness because it requires a lot of recordkeeping, not because it s necessarily difficult to do but really it takes at least three months to get that done and lots of recordkeeping and if you re talk