EXCLUSIVE: Zach Wahls On The Boy Scouts’ Decision To Reconsider Anti-Gay Discrimination Policy

Today, ThinkProgress caught up with Zach Wahls, who has been advocating for the Boy Scouts of America to change their policy discriminating against LGBT scouts and scout leaders. Last week, he delivered over 275,000 petition signatures from individuals opposed to the policy, a response to the ousting of Ohio mom Jen Tyrrell as a den leader because she is a lesbian. BSA announced today that it will reconsider allowing gay scouts and scouters next year, and Wahls is hopeful that the prospect of change is legitimate, not just a public relations ploy:

WAHLS: It’s not a smokescreen. This proposal was made after Jen Tyrrell’s pettion on Change.org. So even though this has been brought up in the past, it’s never gotten nearly the level of attention that it has today. And as another departure from the past, there’s never been a group — which I actually launched in coordination with a number of other Eagle Scouts today called Scouts For Equality — and we’re going to be working with a number of different groups to really build a community of scouts — Eagle scouts, former scout leaders, that sort of thing — we’re really going to work toward making this policy change.

Watch the full exclusive interview:

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• LGBTQ Equality