Report: Boy Scouts close to dropping national ban on gay members

After being banned for decades, gay youth may soon able to join the Boy Scouts.

"The Boy Scouts of America are actively consider dropping their their national ban on gay scouts or gay scout leaders," NBC's Pete Williams reported on Monday.

According to Williams, the Scouts' national board or directors is now considering a policy that would remove the requirement that local scouting organizations reject gay scouts or LGBT scout leaders. Membership decisions would then be left up to the individual organizations.

The change in policy could be announced as early as next week after the next board meeting.

"But a scouting official says that the consideration of this change is something that's coming from the grassroots level, that individual chapters have urged the Boy Scouts to reconsider this position," Williams said.

After a two-year review last July, the Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed its LGBT ban, saying that a special 11-member committee “came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts.”

Over the weekend, a Cub Scout pack in Maryland was forced to drop a policy banning discrimination against gay scouts after the national Boy Scouts of America organization threatened not to renew their charter.

Watch this video from MSNBC, broadcast Jan. 28, 2013.

[Photo: Shutterstock / spirit of america]