No special rights for the Scouts

By STEVE SANDERS
Published: Saturday, July 15, 2000 in THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

Page: A14

For almost a century, we believed the Boy Scouts were an organization 
devoted to citizenship, service and character development. Having had their 
policy against gays challenged in the Supreme Court, the Scouts presented 
themselves as a private group whose mission includes inculcating certain 
moral beliefs.

Thus, what was once thought to be a civic association "open to all boys" 
has, thanks to a creative reinterpretation of its laws, been repackaged as 
a sort of religion.

The Star editorial of June 29 upholds as paramount the Scouts' First 
Amendment rights to free speech and association. Most letters on the 
subject indignantly made the same point: It's their club; they make the rules.

Indeed, churches and all other truly private groups are logically exempt 
from non-discrimination laws; the Constitution assures that government 
cannot jeopardize their rights of speech, association and free exercise of 
religion.

The tradeoff is this: Having fought for and won the right to choose some 
and exclude others, the Boy Scouts must now relinquish the special rights 
they enjoyed as an organization operating for the general welfare. After 
all, what religious society or members-only club is sponsored and 
financially supported by PTAs, police and fire departments and other 
government agencies, or allowed free and open access to recruit children in 
public schools?

The Scouts can't have it both ways: enjoying the benefits of being, for all 
practical purposes, a public utility while insisting on their right to 
define proper moral conduct without interference from public laws.

It will take courage for teachers, city councilors and other officials to 
point out that public agencies cannot be in the business of providing 
direct sponsorship and resources to private groups that discriminate as a 
part of their "message."

And what is that message? The Star editorial repeats the conventional 
wisdom that for 90 years the Scouts have "consistently maintained that 
homosexual behavior is not compatible with its moral precepts."

The evidence on this point is highly debatable. And it wasn't until they 
were sued in 1991 that the Scouts began to assert that excluding gays was 
based on their oath's commandments to be "morally straight" and "clean."

Leaving aside the implied slur against all gays, as the Supreme Court's 
minority pointed out, the Scout oath actually defines morally straight 
behavior as guiding one's life "with honesty, purity and justice" and 
assuring that one's relationships with others are "open and honest."
"In any consideration of moral fitness," the scoutmaster handbook states, 
"a key word has to be 'courage.' A boy's courage to do what his head and 
his heart tell him is right."

Gay Scouts and leaders know the ultimate act of courage is being open and 
honest about who they are.

The court's decision allowing the Scouts to purge homosexuals is a 
temporary setback in the gains gays and lesbians are making toward 
understanding and equal protection under the law. It is a more serious 
setback for the image of an organization that has contorted its inspiring 
principles to defend a sectarian agenda of which some boys and their 
parents will no longer want to be a part.

Sanders, of Bloomington, is Indiana state coordinator for the Human Rights 
Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian advocacy group.