Disney Cuts $1 million in Boy Scouts funding over scouts gay policy

While the Boy Scouts of America were roundly praised for doing away with policies banning gay adult leaders in their groups, not everybody was enthralled. Walt Disney Company said it was cutting off funding to the Boy Scouts as a result of the organization allowing gay leadership. The cut-off would begin in 2015.Disney doesn’t directly fund the Boy Scouts. However, it allows Disney employees to donate time to troops and it donates money to some individual Boy Scout dens. The Boy Scouts said the group was disappointed in Disney’s decision. Boy Scouts spokesman Deron Smith said the organization believed every child should be able to participate in programs and would be affected by Disney’s decision.

The Boy Scouts once banned gay kids from joining and gay men from becoming leaders. The group reversed position in 2013 following a long public discussion. Disney’s decision to pull out of the Boy Scouts only became known recently and not through Disney itself whose spokespeople won’t comment to news sources.

The new policy became known when Robert Utsey, president of an Orlando, Fla., Boy Scout Council sent a note to local troops about Disney’s decision to withdraw funding. Utsey said the Boy Scouts reached out to Disney to try to solve the issue, but their views didn’t align. Disney is based in Orlando and gave Boy Scouts troops grants of nearly $1 million in 2013.

The note was put online by the Scouts for Equality, a group that opposed the old Boy Scouts policy of prohibiting gay men from leading troops. Boy Scouts attorneys and officials said they weren’t surprise by the Disney action although they were disappointed. Other corporations also have cut off funding to the scouts following the gay decisions. UPS, Merck, and Lockheed Martin cut off funding as a result.