Few points
1. What is controversial is not merit badges but religious awards. The religious awards are developed and administered by the religion. The BSA just approves which ones can be worn on the Scouting uniform and can be advertised in BSA literature (note that some religions offer their award to youth members of other organizations such as Campfire or Girl Scouts as well as the BSA). Boy Scout merit badges are strictly internal to the BSA.
2. There is no requirement to earn a religious award and most scouts don't earn one.
Now that that is out of the way. It is also true that
1. The BSA yanked approval for the two UU awards to be worn on uniforms in the 1990s (there are separate ones for Boy Scouts and Cubs) because of the wording of the accompanying literature for the Boy Scout award (the Cub award had no controversial accompanying literature but permission to wear was also yanked).
2. The BSA last spring has apparently approved a new UU religious award for Boy Scouts;1 however, the Unitarian Universalist buttociation does not administer and has officially disavowed the new award (a third party developed the award).
3. The BSA does require a belief in God (and not apparently in the more general sense that the International Scouting organization defines 'duty to God'). This excludes some UUs as well as other non-theists who care about deception (admittedly many local troops are broader minded).
Emma
ps. follow ups to rec.scouting.issues where this belongs.
1 Apparently as in it being officially announced by a group that coordinates many of the religious awards and works closely with the BSA as being approved and it being advertised at last year's national Jamboree but it is not on the BSA web page of religious awards.
-- \---- \* Emma Pease Net Spinster \/ Die Luft der Freiheit weht
