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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
War on the Boy Scouts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The war on the Boy Scouts continues. It’ll either accept gays or be driven from existence. The long struggle, now going on 20 years, strikes up again, this time in Philadelphia where the city is imposing a $200,000 per year fine on the Boy Scouts for declining to open its ranks to declared homosexuals.
It’s not a fine, literally. It’s rent on city-owned space that has been the Scouts’ headquarters for 80 years. The Scouts built the headquarters in 1928 and renovated it at a cost of $1.5 million in 1994. In addition, it pays about $60,000 per year to maintain it. The city owns the building and land and rents it to the Scouts for $1 per year.
The city has given the Scouts until Saturday to open their ranks to gays or to pay market rents.
The Boy Scouts filed suit in federal court, noting that Philadelphia has free and nominal-rate rents on other facilities with groups that limit membership, including The Colonial Dames of America and some church groups.
The Boy Scouts has a national policy that declares:
“Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed. The conduct of youth members must be in compliance with the Scout Oath and Law, and membership in Boy Scouts of America is contingent upon the willingness to accept Scouting’s values and beliefs.”
The Supreme Court ruled eight years ago that as a private group the Scouts have a First Amendment right to bar gays. It essentially maintains a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy similar to the military. Under pressure, the Philadelphia Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts adopted language it considers a compromise barring “unlawful discrimination.”
“They’re free to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said City Solicitor Shelley Smith. “What they’re not free to do is get a benefit from the city while violating our policy.” He said he didn’t know of other discrimination by groups with cut-rate city rents.
The $200,000 the city wants would fund summer camp for about 800 boys.
Cheap rent is a form of public money given to a preferred group. You take their money, you invite their rules — and their meddling. The solution for the Scouts is to sever all ties with government, to either buy the headquarters or negotiate for the city to buy out its interest in the building and to relocate.
If Philadelphia is successful in punishing the Boy Scouts, it will be a sad day for community and for groups like the Scouts that have a reasonable basis for enacting and maintaining the membership qualifications they do.
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