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:

Today, the Human Rights Campaign released a new study analyzing the experiences of LGBT youth and found compelling evidence that the stigma and bullying they experience interrupts their ability to focus on their education and careers. Here are some of the compelling findings:

• LGBT youth describe the “most important problem” in their lives as “non-accepting families” (26 percent), “school/bullying problems” (21 percent), and “fear of being out or open (18 percent), while non-LGBT youth were more concerned with “classes/exams/grades” (25 percent), “college/career” (14 percent), and “financial pressures related to college or job” (11 percent).
• Non-LGBT youth were almost twice as likely to be happy (67 percent) than LGBT youth (37 percent).
• Almost a third (29 percent) of LGBT youth feel they don’t have an adult they can talk to about personal problems, compared to just 17 percent of non-LGBT youth.
• LGBT youth are more than twice as likely to experiment with alcohol and drugs (52 percent) than non-LGBT youth (22 percent).
• LGBT youth are more than twice as like to have been verbally harassed at school (51 percent) than non-LGBT students (25 percent).
• Nearly half (42 percent) of LGBT youth say their community is not accepting of LGBT people.
• A third of LGBT youth (33 percent) say that their family is not accepting.
• Almost all LGBT youth (92 percent) say that they hear negative messages about being LGBT.

Combined with the data from GLSEN’s 2009 school climate survey, it’s clear to see that bullying and homophobia are still rampant in schools across the country. These young people are optimistic, but the negative reactions they face for their identities is interfering with their life goals in disconcerting ways.

Eagle Scout Josh Israel, 1991

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the only major national youth organization that actively discriminates against would-be members and volunteers based on sexual orientation, has agreed to reconsider its policy — a potentially huge shift for the 102-year-old organization.

In 1990, Eagle Scout James Dale was removed from his position as an assistant scoutmaster — despite having attained Boy Scouting’s highest rank — after the organization learned he was gay. He challenged the decision in court, under New Jersey’s state non-discrimination laws, but, in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that as a private organization, Boy Scouts of America was free to discriminate as much as it wanted to.

While the decision was, on its face, a win for BSA, the group’s discriminatory policy against gay scouts (and non-theists) has come at a great cost to the organization. United Way chapters across the country stopped funding the organization and membership declined significantly.

In recent weeks, the nation was reminded of the BSA’s discrimination after it ousted an Ohio mom from her position as a Cub Scout leader because she is a lesbian. GLAAD circulated and Eagle Scout and pro-equality activist Zach Wahls delivered a Change.org online petition calling for her reinstatement, with more than 275,000 signatures.

The Associated Press reported today that the organization has agreed to consider a new policy for 2013 that would allow local Scouting groups to decide for themselves whether to accept gay members and leaders, but no official decision will likely be made until May 2013.

Though a BSA spokesman notes that there is no guarantee the policy will actually be changed, the group’s mere consideration of the matter after decades of intransigence represents a significant step.