There are well over 300,000 people who believe Jennifer Tyrrell deserves to be reinstated as a Cub Scout leader for her son’s den, but today, Boy Scouts of America officials are not among them. Tyrrell delivered petition signatures today at BSA’s headquarters and met with officials behind closed doors, where they confirmed she will not be reinstated. The BSA cited the report of an 11-member anonymous “secret committee” that was surreptitiously released yesterday (with the foreknowledge of Tyrrell’s impending visit).  It found that discrimination against gay scouts and gay and lesbian scout leaders is “absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts,” but Tyrrell thinks otherwise:

TYRRELL: This movement doesn’t stop because 11 anonymous men behind closed doors made a decision to keep discrimination in place. This petition may have started out for me and my son, but it’s grown into something much bigger. Something much more important. Today, when you read through the comments on my petition, you can read the stories of literally thousands of scouts, scout leaders and former scouts who are hoping the Boy Scouts of America will take this moment and end this policy of discrimination against gay Americans.

Tyrrell’s efforts have been supported by Eagle Scout and son-of-two-moms Zach Wahls, who has started a new petition calling on the BSA to “stop the secrecy” and allow the board to vote to end the anti-gay policy. Wahls, founder of Scouts for Equality, has been making numerous media appearances since BSA’s announcement yesterday, calling the “secret committee” a bluff that “hasn’t changed anything“:

Indeed, questions abound about this “secret committee,” its membership, its authority, its process, and its rationale, but Boy Scout officials are mum. BSA officials refused to share the study or the names of any of the committee members with ThinkProgress. And as bloggers Bil Browning and David Badash have further pointed out, the organization has released no information to defend its decision. BSA claims that a majority of families involved in scouting support the anti-gay policy, but where is the survey that proves it? What criteria did it supposedly study in determining what would be “absolutely best” for scouts and their families? What social science research or experts, if any, did it consult? And why didn’t this two-year-old committee exist a month ago when officials agreed to reconsider the policy over the next year — an offer no longer on the table?

It might be unfair to hypothesize which stigmatizing falsehoods the BSA “committee” utilized to legitimize ongoing anti-gay discrimination, but if they had done the least bit of research about what’s best for young people, here is what they would have learned:

• LGBT teens who are bullied and ostracized attempt suicide and contract sexually transmitted infections at higher rates.
• LGBT young people who are rejected by their family are more likely to attempt suicide and use illegal drugs.
• Conservative anti-gay attitudes in a community increase the suicide risk for all young people, including straight teens.
• Anti-gay stigma can influence suicidal thoughts over an entire lifetime.
• Supporting people when they come out improves their mental health.
• Inclusive organizations like gay-straight alliances mitigate depression and improve college success rates.
• Opportunities to learn about LGBT people help make young people feel safer and their peers more accepting (Remember, “character counts.”)

The only insight that has come to light about the decision is that the BSA contacted hate group spokesman Bryan Fischer, assuming he can be taken at his word. In addition to this claim yesterday, Fischer reiterated his harmful lie that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and also suggested that gay people shouldn’t be allowed custody of children because they’re likely pedophiles like former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. If this is the kind of wisdom informing how the BSA makes its decisions, the organization’s conspicuous desire to hide this committee and its members makes sense. No secretive committee can undo the harm to families like Tyrrell’s that BSA is perpetuating through its ongoing anti-gay stigma.

In April, the removal of Ohio mom Jen Tyrrell from her position as a Cub Scout den leader purely because she is a lesbian, created a national outrage. Last week, the Boy Scouts of America agreed to consider a proposal to end its nationwide ban on LGBT people and leave the decision up to local chartering groups.

Yesterday, Tyrrell launched a Change.org petition encouraging the CEOs of AT&T and Ernst & Young — both members of the national board of Boy Scouts of America — to endorse ending the group’s long-standing ban on LGBT Scouts and leaders.

Last night, Ernst & Young CEO and Global Chairman James Turley told CNBC that he supports ending the ban:

TURLEY: Ernst & Young is proud to have such a strong record in LGBT inclusiveness. As CEO, I know that having an inclusive culture produces the best results, is the right thing for our people and makes us a better organization. My experience has led me to believe that an inclusive environment is important throughout our society and I am proud to be a leader on this issue. I support the meaningful work of the Boy Scouts in preparing young people for adventure, leadership, learning and service, however the membership policy is not one I would personally endorse. As I have done in leading Ernst & Young to being a most inclusive organization, I intend to continue to work from within the BSA Board to actively encourage dialogue and sustainable progress.

The petition has now been edited to continue to push AT&T Chairman, CEO, and President Randall Stephenson to follow suit.

For more context on the proposed change, check out the ThinkProgress interview with Eagle Scout Zach Wahls.

A new paper called the New Family Structures Study claims that the children of gays and lesbians fare worse than those raised by heterosexual couples, but nothing in the methodology supports those claims whatsoever. Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has already written hefty debunks, but because the study is now getting mainstream media attention, here are some important highlights:

• Everybody who said that one of their parents had had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex” before they were 18 counted in the sample of children of gays and lesbians.
• The study did not ask if those participants were actually raised by same-sex parents — most of them were actually the product of a “failed heterosexual union” or parents who were not even married to begin with.
• The author of the paper is Mark Regnerus, a social conservative who writes from an evangelical perspective.
• The study was funded by the Witherspoon Institute and Bradley Foundation, two conservative groups tied to anti-gay organizations like the National Organization for Marriage.
• The participants were age 18-39, which means a majority of the sample grew up in the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s, when same-sex relationships were more heavily stigmatized and not recognized in any state.
• The study was not longitudinal, relying only on the memories of participants and not actually evaluating their development over time.

Needless to say, the paper has nothing to say about same-sex couples who intentionally seek to adopt children as coherent units. The methodology is flawed and the results cannot be compared in any way to the 30 years of credible studies showing that when all other circumstances are similar, children of same-sex couples fare just as well as those raised by opposite-sex parents. Families like that of Zach Wahls and his two moms were simply not represented in this study.

Unfortunately, several prominent news outlets have chosen to elevate this study as worthy of discussion and dissection. Slate magazine even invited Regnerus to write his own column about the study, and Slate’s Will Saletan humored the paper’s results without critiquing its obvious flaws. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat chimed in that same-sex marriage is a “social experiment,” but managed to identify the one reasonable point Saletan made, which is that “we need fewer broken homes among gays, just as we do among straights.” Such a statement is a convincing argument in favor of marriage equality, but it has little to do with the anti-gay claims Regnerus and anti-gay conservatives have been making from the paper.

ABC News also ran a story about the study by free-lance contributor Carrie Gann. Though Gann highlighted the study’s obvious problems and biases, ABC initially ran the problematic headline, “Study: Kids of Parents in Same-sex Relationships Fare Worse As Adults.” After an inquiry from ThinkProgress, ABC amended the headline to the slightly more accurate “Study of Gay Parenting Draws Criticism,” but the editorial staff declined to comment on the change.

In Internet-age news cycles, journalists do not only report news, they shape public discussion. Choosing to even acknowledge this deeply-flawed “study” carries the risk of legitimizing its harmful claims, but humoring it outright without context is simply irresponsible.

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:

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.