…So the Philadelphia branch will have to pair fair market rent and lose the privilege of city subsidies OR BE EVICTED because it will not accept “avowed homosexuals” or openly gay scouts or troop leaders. The National Boy Scouts of America maintains that openly gay men are not suitable role models to represent traditional family values. Boy Scouts pledge in part “…to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight”. Apparently heterophobic people, largely homosexuals, feel that their sexual orientation does not violate this pledge. The Boys Scouts of America maintains that homosexuality does. In 2000, the US Supreme Court did not find their policy unconstitutional. The First Amendment afforded this private organization the right to exclude gays, much to the dismay of heterophobes.
Although the Philly chapter says they adopted a non-discrimination policy in 2005 akin to one the New York chapter has, they still have not been able to simultaneously please the mother National Boy Scouts of America who made them revoke one in 2003, and the local city laws which do not permit discrimination against homosexuals. By the way, the current City Solicitor, Romulo Diaz, Jr. allegedly is reputed to be gay (we can’t make conclusions), but of course his pursuits against the local branch is not biased. He is just “doing his job”. The prior City Solicitor worked in conjunction with the Philly chapter to author the 2005 anti-discrimination policy. Allegedly, there have been no reports of discrimination since then, no incidents, yet the language is not clear enough for Mr. Diaz.
The Philadelphia chapter had been enjoying a $1 rent for the scouts office building but since they are violating the City’s anti-discrimination policy by banning openly gay participation, the current City Solicitor who claims he has made continual efforts to bring the troop into compliance, is holding them to a $200,000 tab. Now isn’t homosexuality supposed to be a person’s sexual orientation? A homosexual can be a troop leader or boy scout if he really just wants to be a Boy Scout. The Boy Scouts is not the place to affirm the moral acceptance of this lifestyle. To the extreme, Boy Scouts do not pledge to be heterosexuals. Are there no traditions or even new alliances where heterosexuals are free to just be people and do not have to be stampeded by heterophobic people who fear the lifestyles of people who agree to obey natural laws?
What are these boy scouts to do? Pay up. As many corporations, religious organizations and public interest groups that have withdrawn their support because of the anti-gay discrimination policy, there are so many groups that don’t want to see flagrant homosexuality as an ideal presented to boys as a model of family values. Surely, there must be homosexuals within the ranks of the Boy Scouts. They just comply with the don’t ask, don’t tell culture.
Local chapters need to get subsidies from elsewhere and keep these issues in mind when voting instead of trying to comply with growing pressures for private organizations to dilute their core values and treat homosexuals as a protected class. Remember, 2008 is an election year and candidates who support gay marriages, unions and have opened up to the heterophobic agenda need to hear from you at the voting machines as you overlook them on the ballots.
For more info on this story click the links below:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303420,00.html
www.lambdalegal.org/our-work/in-court/cases/boy-scouts-of-america-v-dale.html
Mulloverthis's Weblog 