On Thursday, president of the Boy Scouts of America and former defense secretary Robert Gates called for the Scouts to reconsider its ban on gay adult leaders. “We must deal with the world as it is,” he said, “not as we might wish it to be.”

After months of deliberations over the topic of its much-despised ban on gay and lesbian members, the Boy Scouts of America are finally preparing to end the longstanding policy.

The Boy Scouts of America today put the kibosh on a proposal to overturn their longstanding, Supreme-Court-upheld ban on openly gay troop leaders and scouts.