re: #370 allegro

Why?

Because, to my understanding, unlike the GSA, the overwhelming majority of chartered organizations for BSA units are churches:

All Boy Scouts of America units are owned and operated by chartered organizations. Of the 103,158 units (Boy Scout troops, Cub Scout packs and Venturing crews) and 3,615,306 youth members in 2010:

68.4% of all units, comprising 62.5% of all youth members, are chartered to faith-based organizations
26.5% of all units, comprising 25.1% of all youth members, are chartered to civic organizations
8.2% of all units, comprising and 12.4% of all youth members, are chartered to educational organizations

en.wikipedia.org

Until those numbers flip, any progress on allowing atheists and agnostics as BSA members will be very slow. Also, in the same vein, Scouting is still very much a yuuuge thing out in Red State America, outside of the urban centers, and those units (and their chartering organizations) can be just as socially conservative.

It’s a long row to hoe, but, in the long run, I do believe major changes will eventually be made IRT to atheists and agnostics in Scouting, because American society’s changing so much, the organization will have to to survive and stay relevant; hell, if you’d told me that Scouting would at least let gay youth be members (for shame on the still-in-force prohibition of gay adult members, though, but that’ll change too eventually) even ten years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you, but it was way overdue.