For years, the Boy Scouts have had privileged relationships with public schools, police departments and city parks.  But because several cities and towns now have laws against discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, that support in some of those communities is being withdrawn.  Several school districts, churches and synagogues have stopped sponsoring Cub packs and Scout troops.  Police departments have cut their programs.  In some places, the United Way has ended its financial support.  The Supreme Court decision is not the clear-cut victory that the national headquarters for the Boy Scouts based in Irving, Texas thought it was.

       Kevin Egan has been a Cub Scout in Oak Park, Illinois for four years. So have Stephan and Daniel Imans.  Their families were stunned that the Boy Scouts had such a discriminatory policy, even though Mary Egan and Kathy Imans are leaders of their Cub Scout pack. 

       Mary Egan:  "It's just plain wrong.  They're discriminating, and I can't be part of a group that's discriminating like that."
        Kathy Imans:  "We were insulted.  We felt, like 'How dare they tell us what we are to think!' "
       Mary Egan:  "The one thing that I kept thinking is, 'Who are those people in Texas that are telling me how I have to live here in Oak Park, Illinois?  Who are these people???'"
       LESLIE STAHL:  And so, in a revolt against the policy, the parents and sponsors of eight Oak Park, Illinois troups and packs wrote to the Boy Scouts organization in Irving, Texas to say that if a qualified gay man applied to be a Scout master in their community, they would take him.  The Boy Scouts organization responded by throwing them out of scouting.  These Oak Park, Illinois boys have been Scouts together since the first grade. Now they're getting ready to disband.

       Leslie Stahl:  "How did you feel about disbanding?"

       1st Scout:  "I didn't really want to leave the Scouts."

       2nd Scout:  "I was kind of angry because we are the ones who are paying money to the Boy Scouts and we don't get a say in whether we want to discriminate or not."

       Leslie Stahl:  "Do you think that it's okay for a homosexual to be a Scout master?"

       Oak Park, Illinois Cub Scouts in unison:  "Yeah."

       2nd Cub Scout:  "Well, I think if he's a good Scout master, it doesn't matter what he does outside of Scouts.  If he's a good Scout master or even if he's only just an okay one, it doesn't matter whether he's different or not."

       LESLIE STAHL:  If the folks in Oak Park, Illinois wonder, "Where did this anti-homosexual policy come from?", 

the families of Cub Scout pack #114 in Broward County, Florida say, "It's always been this way," and they don't want it to change.  Heather Young, Ken Dooley and Andrea & Scott Schroeder are parents and leaders of pack #114.

       Ken Dooley:  "These kids look up to their leaders, okay?  And what we're saying is that if you have a homosexual leader, then he's [the Boy Scout] is going to look at that [example] and say, 'That's an okay lifestyle then, because this guy is my Scout leader.  So that must be okay.'  And we don't believe that that's okay."

       Leslie Stahl:  "But do you think that if a man is homosexual and a Scout master leading a troop that he's going to try to convert the kids [to homosexuality]?"

       Heather Young:  "I wouldn't say that that's a direct objective of someone [like that], but I think that there are certain behaviors that naturally come through.  On a family campout, is he going to bring his -- his family member?  Are they going to be sharing a tent together?  Do I then want for the children in the pack to be saying, ya know, 'Why is he sleeping with that person?'  Or 'Are they going to be sleeping in the tent together?
What does that mean, "together"?'"

       LESLIE STAHL:  Although these families who comprise the leaders of the Broward County Cub Scout pack #114 agree with the national Boy Scouts organization's policy on homosexuals, the Broward County, Florida School Board doesn't.  It no longer allows the Boy Scouts to recruit in the public schools.  The local Boy Scout Council here has already lost $300,000 in city and county grants and donations from the United Way.  The Boy Scouts have found themselves on the frontlines of the nation's culture war. 

       Leslie Stahl:  "The parents in Oak Park, Illinois say they don't want their kids to be part of any organization that teaches exclusion of any group of people.

       Broward County, Florida Cub Scout leader Scott Schroeder:  "We're excluding based on qualifications.  In other words, these are the qualifications to be a leader."

       LESLIE STAHL:  He [Scott Schroeder] told us that the qualifications to be a Scout leader are "to have high moral standards."

       Leslie Stahl:  "You're basically saying, by definition, a homosexual is immoral."

       Scott Schroeder:  "Yes."

       Leslie Stahl:  "Just by definition of his being homosexual?" 

       Scott Schroeder:  "Yes.  Because [being homosexual] is a sin.  It's immoral."

       Leslie Stahl in Oak Park, Illinois:  "What the families in Florida are telling us is that homosexuality is immoral.  And they don't want homosexuals as role models for their sons." 

       Oak Park, Illinois Cub pack leader Mary Egan:  "If they have that belief, that's fine.  But don't make me believe it.  And all I'm saying is, I don't want to be required to discriminate."

       LESLIE STAHL:  Chuck Wolfe spent his childhood in Scouting.  He became an Eagle Scout, National Explorer Scout President and went all across the country as the Boy Scouts' poster boy to promote Scouting.  Later, he ran a Boy Scout camp program and spent two years on the national board.  All those years, he didn't know the Boy Scouts had such an anti-homosexual policy.  And now he opposes it. 

       Leslie Stahl:  "Do you think this anti-gay policy has hurt the Boy Scouts?"

       Former Eagle Scout Chuck Wolfe:  "Absolutely.  Scouting is about character development and building good citizens.  You can't build good character by teaching people to exclude folks.  You can't build good character by teaching young men to hate.  As long as Scouting does that, Scouting will suffer."

       Leslie Stahl:  "The Boy Scouts argued before the Supreme Court that their policy against homosexuals is rooted in the final two words of the Scouting oath:  '[I pledge . . . to be] morally straight.' "

       Chuck Wolfe:  "The term 'morally straight' never had anything to do with what your sexual orientation was." 

       Leslie Stahl:  "But they say now that it did and that it always did."

       Chuck Wolfe:  "Sounds like a rather convenient argument." 

       LESLIE STAHL:  California Republican Congressman Dana Roerbacher, co-chairman of the Congressional Scouting Caucas and himself an Eagle Scout,
told us that there's also a "practical reason" for the Boy Scouts' anti-homosexual policy.

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "An adult male who is attracted to other males should not be out camping as their adult supervisor, going into the pump [sic] tents, sleeping overnight with them, washing off with them, to teenage boys.  It makes no more sense for that to happen than it does to have an adult male who's attracted to women running around with teenage girls and being their adult supervisor."

       Leslie Stahl:  "Is that because a fear of sexual abuse or molestation?"

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "I wouldn't say it's a fear.  It's common sense."

       Leslie Stahl:  "But the Boy Scouts have a very specific rule that there always have to be two adults chaperoning Scout on camp-outs; that they never sleep in the pump [sic] tents with the Scouts; and that they never take showers with the Scouts.  These are all in the guidelines and the rules."

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "I've been in the Scouts, and if a Scout is sick or is afraid, that Scout Master will be in that pump [sic] tent."

       Leslie Stahl:  "The Boy Scouts of America say flat out that their policy has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fear of pedophilia."

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "Uh-huh.  They're afraid.  They're afraid to make that argument, I'm sure.  Everybody's afraid to say this." 

       Leslie Stahl:  "You think that fear of pedophilia is really behind what's behind the Boy Scout's anti-gay policy?" 

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "It is common sense." 

       LESLIE STAHL:  But "common sense" in this case turns out to be a myth.  According to the FBI and several clinical studies published in reputable journals, gay men are not more likely than straight men to sexually abuse young boys.  In fact, the largest database of child molesters in the country shows that those who molest boys are more than three times more likely to be heterosexual in their adult relationships than homosexual.

       We wanted to go to Texas to ask the Scouting organization's leaders some of these questions, but when we requested an interview with chief Scouting executive Roy Williams, they told us, "He doesn't have time to do interviews, because he's too busy building the character of America's young people."

       So we asked the Scouts' official spokesman who told us that he doesn't do television interviews, only radio interviews.  So we said we'd settle for that.  Then, he stopped returning our calls.

       Next, we called 18 members of the Boy Scouts of America's executive board and finally found one, Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Winthrop P. Rockefeller, who said that he "would be delighted to do an interview" with us.  But then he called back a few days later to say, "[The Scouting] Headquarters had insisted that [he] decline."

       Leslie Stahl:  "Why the secrecy [at the Boy Scouts headquarters]?"

       Former Eagle Scout Chuck Wolfe:  "Fear." 

       Leslie Stahl:  "Fear of what?" 

       Chuck Wolfe:  "It's all based on fear.  These are issues that are the Achillies Heel [weakness] of scouting.  And they're afraid that the more they bring attention to it in many cases, the worse off they'll be." 

       LESLIE STAHL:  Maybe that's because an organization that most Americans thought was about camping and good citizenship considers itself to be a movement about values, values that are heavily influenced by a group of conservative churches.  It was spelled out in the letter kicking the Oak Park, Illinois troops out of Scouting.

       Leslie Stahl: "In the letter [to the Oak Park, Illinois Cub Scout troop leaders], they said, 'The Boy Scouts of America must be guided by the position of its religious partners,' and pointed out that the religious organizations with the three largest Scout memberships are the United Methodists, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints [the Mormons] and the Roman-Catholic Church.  Are the Scouts as a national organization now a religious organization dominated by those three church denominations?"

       Former Eagle Scout Chuck Wolfe:  "There's no doubt that those religious denominations have undue influence on the policies of Scouting. Scouting apparently isn't free to develop its own policies anymore."

       LESLIE STAHL:  In fact, the Mormon Church said explicitly in documents filed with the Supreme Court that it would leave the Boy Scouts if the anti-gay policy were changed.  That might seem like no big deal since Mormons make up less than 2% of the U.S. population.  But Mormons sponsor more Scout troops and packs than any other religious or civic group in the country.

       Leslie Stahl:  Now I don't think that most people realize that if you are a member of the Mormon Church, then if you are a Mormon boy, you are automatically a member of the Boy Scouts.

       Former Eagle Scout Chuck Wolfe:  "Correct. It is their youth program."

       Leslie Stahl:  "So ... ?"

       Chuck Wolfe:  "They sanction it.  They register every Mormon boy in the program."

       Leslie Stahl:  "Could the Boy Scouts survive without the Mormons?"

       Chuck Wolfe:  "I think Scouting's fear is that they couldn't." 

       LESLIE STAHL:  California Republican Congressman Dana Roerbacher says it goes beyond the Mormons:  Without this policy, he says, many religious conservatives would leave Scouting.

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "It is the end of the Boy Scouts of America if they give in to this."

       LESLIE STAHL:  But to Chuck Wolfe, it they don't give in, it's the end of his 30-year relationship with Scouting. 

       Leslie Stahl:  "I'm going to ask you a personal question: What is your sexual orientation?"

       Former Eagle Scout Chuck Wolfe:  "I'm a gay man." 

       LESLIE STAHL:  So the Boy Scouts' own poster boy is homosexual.  And while he says he didn't know it when he was 18 years old, he's no less a role model because of it. 

       Leslie Stahl:  "Now let's say you wanted to do something with Scouting again, like, be a Scout master.  Now that you've definitely avowed your sexual orientation by coming on 60 Minutes, are they going to let you?

       Former Eagle Scout Chuck Wolfe:  "Probably not. . . . Will that hurt? . . . . Yes."

       Leslie Stahl:  "Is Chuck Wolfe finished with the Boy Scouts?" 

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "I think he probably is.  Yeah. . . . But, it's up for them [the national Boy Scouts organization] to say." 

       Leslie Stahl:  "I'm asking: Do you think that's right?" 

       Congressman Dana Roerbacher:  "What I think is that they have the right to set that standard for their organization."

       LESLIE STAHL:  While the grown-ups argue over what's moral and what's right, it's the boys who stand to lose, especially those who love Scouting. 

       Leslie Stahl in Oak Park, Illinois:  "So how many more meetings do you guys have as Cub Scouts?"

       Cub Scouts in unison:  "One."

       Leslie Stahl:  "How are you feeling?

       3rd Cub Scout:  "I think we'll probably gonna end with a lot of people will be depressed and things, but I think we probably should end with a big party with -- "

       Leslie Stahl:  "With cakes, sweets and ice cream? 

       3rd Cub Scout:  "Yeah, not to make it seem so sad, to make it more of a good time to remember." 

       LESLIE STAHL:  For the record, the Girl Scouts of America does not ban homosexual scouts or leaders.  And they do allow men to go on camping trips as long as a woman is also present.