Fired Gay Boy Scout Leader: ‘Berlin Wall’ Just Came Down

Greg Bourke, a leader fired by the organization over his sexual orientation, praised yesterday’s call by Boy Scouts of America President Robert Gates to allow gay Boy Scout leaders.

“I feel like the Berlin Wall came down yesterday,” Bourke said on MSNBC Friday morning. “It’s a monumental change, historic. When we look back a few years from nowm this will be the defining moment of the modernization of the Boy Scouts of America and the mutual towards full inclusion in the Boy Scouts.”

“The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained,” Gates said at the organization’s annual meeting Thursday.

The Boy Scouts allowed gay members at the start of the year, and Bourke said the organization was moving incrementally, “but in the right direction.”

“There’s been a civil war going on in the Boy Scouts of America for several years,” Bourke said. “There’s been a movement in place internally as well as externally to try to get the Boy Scouts to redefine their policy. So there are leaders inside the Boy Scouts of America who have actively been working for many years to get the policy changed.”

Watch the clip below, via MSNBC:

[Image via screengrab]

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