Drawing on Ms. McCoy's strength and encouragement, the ex-sergeant began volunteering at their Y.M.C.A. and even took over a lackluster Cub Scout troop affiliated with Ms. McCoy's school, which is in a low-income district with more than its share of broken homes.
Other scout leaders said that because so many troops are affiliated with churches, a fractious local debate over gay membership could propel issues of faith and religion even more to the fore of scouting than they already are.
But months of Russian airstrikes turned the tide, allowing government troops and affiliated militias to recapture some 4,000 square miles of territory, almost encircle the war-ravaged city of Aleppo, and cut off vital rebel supply routes from Turkey.
Iranian troops and affiliated militiamen have fought a long, withering battle against rebel factions seeking to unseat Assad.
While the BSA insists that religiously affiliated troops, including those sponsored by the LDS Church, can continue to ban gay leaders, many observers doubt such an exemption can be legally defended.
The resolution, which allows previously removed leaders to reapply for their positions, lifts the BSA's across-the-board ban on gay leaders, but allows religiously affiliated troops to determine their own policies regarding LGBT adults, as scout units are chartered by other non-profits to which the BSA licenses its intellectual property.
But a proposal to augment state-trained troops with paramilitary forces affiliated with Kurdish and Shiite political parties is only in the embryonic stages, according to members of the Iraqi Governing Council and Dan Senor, a senior adviser to L. Paul Bremer III, the chief administrator of Iraq.
Troop leaders also appointed the region's first female senior patrol leader, one chosen from the ranks of Venture Crew 52, an all-girl adjunct affiliated with the troop since 1997.
"That's where we figured the arrogance came from". One after another, the six Hanssen children trooped off to private schools affiliated with Opus Dei: the three daughters to Oakcrest, a girls' school now in McLean; the sons to The Heights, a Potomac school also attended by a son of FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.
